Did you notice that this week’s commentary is very late? Do you want to know why? Perhaps it has something to do with the nine hour drive from Penang to KL this past Sunday as we made our way back to Singapore. I really need a vacation to recover from our Lunar New Year vacation. But that is not the reason for this week’s late commentary. This disruption to normal service is due to the fact that the Graceworks commentary is undergoing some key changes and may be off for another week or two. Here are two changes:
1. From plain text to HTML
The Graceworks commentary started life as the Grace@Work ecommentary and has been sent out roughly once a week for more than ten years. The conventional wisdom when we first started was to send out mailings in plain text for two reasons: one, not everyone’s email client could read HTML (yes there was a time), and two, the fear that HTML documents might carry viruses. Since the ecommentary was content driven, there really was no need for bells and whistles and so plain text has served the purpose well all this while.
But times have changed. Everyone online can read newsletters in HTML now and the plain text commentary looks dull and aesthetically challenged. So when we come back, be prepared for a commentary that is more “pleasing to look at and (still) good for (spiritual) food.”
2. Tighter integration with the Graceworks website.
The Graceworks commentary is one of the ministries of Graceworks. We have a website at www.graceworks.com.sg. After the revamp, all on the Grace@Work ecommentary mailing list will be members of Graceworks. You will be assigned a password and you can log in and change your password if you want to. You will still get your commentary delivered to your in-box. After the revamp, subscribing/unsubscribing to the Graceworks commentary will be done through the Graceworks website.
Grace@Work was the ministry I started and ran when I was based in Malaysia. Its mission was to see lives transformed through love and truth. I am now based in Singapore and I run Graceworks together with Bernice. The essential mission remains the same. Graceworks both focuses and expands on Grace@Work. Our mission now is to promote spiritual friendship in church and society and we do it primarily through publishing and training. I will be winding up Grace@Work because it would not make sense to be residing in Singapore and running a ministry based in Malaysia. The taxes alone would make it financially untenable.
Graceworks is a company and we are not allowed to ask for donations. We are sustained by the work we do. One way you can help support our work is to sponsor our weekly commentaries. We continue to be very convicted that the ministry of Graceworks is something that the Lord has called us to do. We have a few key initiatives planned for 2011 including new materials on spiritual friendship and spiritual mentoring. Please pray for us, and let us know if we can partner together in seeing lives transformed by the friendship of Christ through the friendship of our brothers and sisters.
On another note we are stunned that we have lost four friends already this year: Raja, Benny, Mee Hwa and Chee Seng. And it is only February. We know that they are with the Lord and that we will meet again but this takes away only some of the grief. We are challenged afresh to live our lives intentionally.