Important Announcement: SermonIndex.net Migration and Discussion Forum Closure

Dear saints,

SermonIndex has been running for over 20 years on the same software system (this has been short of a miracle!). However, when I started SermonIndex in 2002, there were several pastors online who suggested I close the forums and they thought it would muddy the waters beside such an archive of godly preachers from the past.

Though it was a consideration by far my heart was to allow expression and unity in the body of Christ and a community to form around these godly biblical revival truths that were being promoted.

In retrospect, I am so glad that I followed the leading of the Lord to keep the forums open. Personally, I cannot count the number of times I have been blessed, encouraged and spoken to by other believers and what they have shared. God has used the means of the forums to help be a core element of the SermonIndex site.

Through a lot of consideration, prayer and counsel. Technically and perhaps spiritually there is wisdom to allow for the forums to be officially archived in a God-honouring way. And also in a way to honour the contributions of all the believers who have given their time, and prayerful writing into the forums.

It is a bitter-sweet moment but I believe God will have other means and ways to allow a community to still thrive and be encouraged around the resources on the site.

We are not putting an exact timeline on the day we will close the ability for contributions to the forums but at this point, it is looking likely in the coming 1-3 weeks (possibly as soon as a week). This date will be determined at what stage we are in the migration of the website to a new platform (WordPress).

Updating the coding behind the site that is over 20 years old is quite a task and we covet your prayers. It will be a multi-fold venture and we are praying for God's perfect leadership and supply of technical coders to help (paid and volunteer).

We will stay visible and active on social media to allow free interactions there:
https://twitter.com/SermonIndex
https://www.facebook.com/sermonindex
https://www.pinterest.ca/sermonindex/
https://www.instagram.com/sermonindexnet/
https://www.youtube.com/sermonindex

As well on the new SermonIndex platform on WordPress we will be having a "multi-blog" system that will allow commenting via (Disqus) a 3rd party tool. I believe interactions around very godly blog content will even amplify the blessing this community can have.

I personally am grateful and blessed by so many who contribute who I know personally through meeting in person and those who I have talked to online or emailed. It is such a humbling place for me to be able to know and experience fellowship with so many believers worldwide from so many denominations and groups. We are one body of Christ together under our glorious Head (Jesus Christ).

"I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one””as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me." - John 17:21 (NLT)

"What is impossible for people is possible with God.” Luke 18:27 (NLT)

"Yes, the Lord has done amazing things for us! What joy!" - Psalm 126:3 (NLT)

Eternity is soon. Life is fleeting. Christ is coming. Look up for our Bridegroom comes!

Just to clarify brother the forums will be closed here, you won't be able to reply and post for 1-2 months (perhaps faster) while we migrate all site data and content in the backend to a new development server and then release the final new website.

This process will be about 1-4 months maximum. So Lord willing latest July 2024 we will see a new Sermonindex.net site by God's grace.

Once the new site is up commenting will be allowed on blog posts immediately.

It would be hard for me to recommend any other forums, I do feel SermonIndex attracted a very special grouping of believers who in many ways expressed great unity in the ways of God across many theological camps.

Bro Greg, thank you for all the great work, you have done w/SI.
I’ve been here many yrs w/you, appreciating the special selection of materials you have available to us, and being able to freely share on the forums..
It’s truly been a blessing.

I hope I can keep up w/you along the way, w/your new endeavor….?not very
good w/new technology.

God bless His work…. in looking to Him w/singleness of eye.,… we must work while it is day.

Thank you, dear sister, it will be the same SermonIndex, just an updated backend and a bit of a re-designed front end. We will have ways for the community to interact on a multi-blog system (ultimately 20-30 contributors) this should give a great variety of discussion topics to interact around!

So thankful for you and other brethren who have contributed and been in such a wonderful community sharing the words of the Lord together. Great things are ahead.

So blessed by all these comments. The unique grouping of saints God has put together is amazing. Running SermonIndex conferences one of the highlights was meeting people from the forums at the event.

Please pray for Mike Balog (one of the original moderators) I have not heard how he is doing in the Lord in many years.

May we all finish well. Lord willing it could even be sooner that we can have the new site live. Please pray for all aspects of this.

It is important for us in humility to maintain a teachable spirit, and realize that we don’t have all the answers. We are just one member in need of the whole Body.

Amen, brother! Every time I humbled myself to have a teachable spirit even from someone I disagree with strongly, I was always blessed. We are all growing and learning more about our unexplainable, glorious Lord!

Saints,

Here are some additional questions answered about the SermonIndex Migration that some have asked and some have alluded to:

1) Was the Fund-raiser successful for SermonIndex for the Migration?
Yes, by God's grace $10,000 Canadian was raised for the site migration, this is such an answer to prayer. Over the years we have never done a fund raise-type appeal, though to a few this might seem like a lot of funds overall to move a large website into a new platform can take well over this amount. We have a group of 4-6+ coders, and developers who also are donating "some" of their time as they are able.

2) Is There A Desire to Censor People or A Conspiracy To Close the forums for Other Reasons?
No. The plan to close (archive) the forums has been in planning for quite awhile. The forums as some can recall were shut down twice in the history of SermonIndex due to spam issues. At one point it was closed for several months. I love the free expression of the saints and giving many people a large voice on the forums who otherwise would not have an audience to share their burdens and hearts with. The plan to have a multi-blog system with godly contributors and allowing a great community commenting system below those has been a prayer and desire for nearly 2 years. God's timing seems like it is now to make the migration.

3) Why can't the Forums be open till a later period right before the Migration actually starts?
We will need to get the entire SermonIndex site in a static forum well before the migration starts. This means we will at some point not be adding more sermons, no forum posts, or any content to the site, as the database will be downloaded and start to be cleaned up and optimized to migrate it table by table to a new database structure. The forums login will be taken down as well as the edit/reply buttons.

4) How Can I communicate with SermonIndex and the community while the migration period is happening?
We are encouraging saints who have questions or desire to share anything to share it on one of our social media accounts or directly to my email: greg@sermonindex.net
I am going to pin a post on social media accounts to allow an accessible place to interact, add questions and give suggestions:
https://twitter.com/SermonIndex
https://www.facebook.com/sermonindex

If there any other direct questions please post it here or email saints.

I was taken aback and wondered what happened to cause such an about face in three months?

Brother,

At first I thought to archive the forums and just do the blogs initially this was over 2 years ago and the need for migration came up first. Then after talking with a lot of people I realized there was still a good desire to have the forums active even if they were not featured on the front page. So I planned to do both the mult-blog system and the forums in the backend.

But in the last month as there has been a lot of research and planning towards migration it was clear that running the forums off the Wordpress databases seemed not plausible, there are tons of issues with virtually all Wordpress forum plugin software (they basically don't scale well for larger forums). And spending a lot of time trying to develop or custom code things really is not possible either for this as it would be something we would need to maintain.

Another option was to host the forums separately in different software on a subdomain which just complicates things with a separate database, etc.

So the final decision has been to archive the discussion forums and offer a robust commenting system (3rd party) for the multi-blogs. I am still praying and thinking through the multi-blog system at this point there would be a sermonindex blog where announcements, quotes, articles and featured sermons would be shared. The blog would post 4-5 times a week and a day would be specified for each type of post similar to (Challies blog or others that follow a schedule). I am also looking and going to approach 15+ individuals who are godly ministers who would have time to commit to write a blog post bi-weekly. And another 10-15 ministries who would do similar. This would offer a great variety of content and subjects for discussion and encouragement.