One of the aspects of our ministry is what you could call "domain returns." I haven't really talked about this in the past, but this is an integral part of our ministry.
We “rescued” the domain lakevalleybaptist.org back in 2006. The “Domain Rescue Mission” was started when I had been updating our Baptist Ministries Database and found a church link that pointed to a pornographic website. Since then I have “rescued” many domains that have active links to them, and are still viable ministries.
The church has gone through multiple pastors and I have worked with many people there. Their website has transitioned through two sets of templates and is currently up on WordPress. We have maintained the integrity of their online ministry during all the transitions. Back in 2014, working with a church member, I registered two additional domains for them (lakevalleybaptist.com and lakevalleybaptist.net). This post is available to read blicking here.
The church wants to get a professionally designed website at this time, and has requested to “take control” of the domains. Since we present ourselves as Missionaries to Cyberspace I view domain returns as similar to planting a church and turning the church over to a national pastor. There is nothing better than to see a ministry get a professionally designed web presence to glorify the Lord and further the Gospel.
Over the years I have had to work with various levels of competence in turning over domains to ministries. Many of the people I have worked with were competent. Some were so hard to work with and had no idea of what they were doing I invested days trying to get the domain to where they wanted it to go. Because of this I now have a boiler plate process for returning a domain to a ministry.
I spoke to the pastor about the domain transfers, he now has control of all three domains. Their website should continue to function normally until the new hosting service builds and activates their new website.
