Gospel Communications International is shutting down its webhosting services. The Gospel.com Alliance includes more than 300 members.

Here’s a story about the decision from the Muskegon Chronicle (Gospel Communications International is based in Muskegon, Michigan).

Let’s pray for the employees and the ministries who will be affected.

A few days ago, I came across the website of His Hands Media. Here is how they describe themselves:

His Hands Media uses digital technology to present stories that inspire people to invest and participate in God’s important work in the community and around the world. We specialize in video production and website design that extends the reach of Christian organizations and ministries allowing them to raise the funds necessary that will bring aid and hope to people in need, through the message of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

I was especially intrigued by a video they have optimized of a trip to Ghana by volunteers from Opportunity International. The video is located here. As the folks from His Hands Media point out, the quality of the video is surprisingly good seeing that it was filmed with the inexpensive Flip Ultra video camera.

What would it be like if our short-term missions teams brought several of these Flip Ultra cameras to capture video of their activities? Depending on the availability of internet access, the teams would be able to quickly upload video of the mission which could then be shared with friends and supporters back home.

I ran across a new blog a few days ago - ChurchTechToday, written by Lauren Hunter, a public relations consultant who “(assists) church technology providers in communicating their desires to help churches do ministry better through internet-related technological advancements, whether it’s through using church management software, online newsletters, or cutting-edge social communities to spread the Gospel.”

Launched in mid-July, Lauren’s blog has touched on internet evangelism, the iPod Bible, the “Death of Print,” and technology for church bookstores.

I would encourage you to visit Lauren’s blog and “give it a whirl!”

In May of 2007, James Cooper launched a new website called MinistryPool. James’ original idea (still a good one!) was to build a repository of top quality, easy to remember, domain names for use in ministry and Church marketing projects. The twist is that when one ministry or church is finished using the domain name for its project, the domain goes back into the “pool” so that other ministries or churches can use it.

James sent me an email this morning to let me know that he has expanded the concept of MinistryPool. From James’ “relaunch post”:

ministrypool will now bring together the best of online resources and other stuff for Churches. You’ll find reviews and rating of resources in a wide range of categories that can help your Church or ministry get the best out of the web.

After a brief review, I can say that James has gathered together a great set of resources that will be helpful to any church or ministry looking to improve their digital outreach.

Here’s another blog I came across on Thursday:

ChurchSMO

Here is what the author, Aaron Marshall, writes about himself and his recently-launched blog:

My name is Aaron Marshall, I work for DBS>Interactive, a large web development company in Louisville, Kentucky, as the Director of Sales and Marketing. Being involved in projects from beginning to end gives me copious amounts of opportunity to see web strategies successfully executed. I read between 10-20 RSS feeds a day, regularly finding gold-mines of useful services that could be applied to church and ministry.

I especially like Aaron’s use of videos throughout his articles. It lends a personal touch which is quite engaging.

Here’s a blog that’s been around for awhile but is new to me:

Church Website Help

Mickey Mellen, webmaster at Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church, has been writing the blog since September of 2005 (gee, where have I been to only have noticed it yesterday?).

The article entitled Church Websites Around Atlanta Are Pretty Bad caught my eye immediately since I used to work a bit on a website for a church in the Atlanta area (not on Mickey’s list thankfully! ). The article talks about some of the common mistakes churches make and it also brought the issue of proper canonicalization for search engine optimization purposes back into the forefront of my mind (the issue wasn’t entirely new to me, but I had never given it much thought until yesterday when I carefully read what Mickey had to say on the subject). It made me start testing a lot of my sites! Thankfully, most of them add the “www” in automatically, but the website of my last remaining “design client” (as vs. “strategy client") does not pass the test, so I’ll need to work on that a bit.

All in all, it looks like there is a wealth of content to explore on Mickey’s blog and I encourage you to add it to your list of RSS feeds so you can read him on a regular basis.

The Rock at Iowa State University
Ames, Iowa
http://www.rockisu.com

This church has boldly made their home page an aggregation of their church members’ blogs. They call their aggregation “Planet Rock” — if you click on that item in the navigation menu, you’ll find that they are currently aggregating the blogs of 50 different church members. Refreshing! The sense I get from this is that the church is a group of people rather than an organization.

Beyond aggregating blogs, the site makes good use of a couple of Web 2.0 technologies — MySpace and Flickr.

Another great thing about this site is that it is standards-compliant (valid XHTML 1.0 Strict and valid CSS). Standards compliance is an aspect of website development that is not talked about much among church and ministry designers, but I believe it has vast implications for the spread of the gospel.

Contact: Matt Heerema

Seed Church
Bothell, Washington
http://www.dyingtolive.org

I think this website excels in its writing. The first time I visited it, this is what the home page said:

It is time for you to lose control.

“Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains by itself… alone. But if it dies, it produces many others and yields a rich harvest. Anyone who loves his life, loses it. But anyone who despises his life in this world, will keep it all the way until eternity.”

2000 years ago, Jesus said these words. Then, he embodied them. He was God, yet He lived his short life, not to propel himself to greatness, but to serve others. He gave his life to save ours.

The secret of true living is found in a paradox. If you choose to hold on to the control of your life, to find purpose in yourself and your own interests, your choice guarantees you will lose your life when you die. If you choose to give up control of your life now to God, to find purpose in God and in His interests, your choice guarantees you will keep your life after death.

Seed Church invites you to lose control.

I like that because I feel it appeals to the inner desires of many (if not all) unbelievers — to live for something beyond oneself — and because it does so in a fashion which is very atypical of a church website. Today’s tendency among top-notch designers is to concentrate on graphic appearance (which is important because people make a decision about a website almost immediately), but well-written content is usually an afterthought. Often, a church will just republish something that was originally written for a brochure targeted, it seems, at believers moving into an area or looking for a new church rather than at unbelievers in a local area.

By the way, check out the domain name they chose. Very intriguing!

Contacts: Unknown

The City Church
Seattle, Washington
http://www.thecity.org

I like this site for a number of reasons — 1) the design is excellent (not a surprise given the involvement of Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain, one of the premier designers on the web today); 2) the navigation system is particularly well-thought-out; 3) the site features a voluminous amount of content; and, 4) it uses my favorite content management system (Expression Engine). The proper use of a content management system can help enhance the flow of information and eliminate bottlenecks in publishing information to the church’s website (which is a huge challenge for most Christian organizations).

Unfortunately, while the site is well-designed, it definitely presents an institution rather than a community of people, which again, is one of my pet peeves about church websites today.

Contacts: Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain and Sean Sperte

Southside Church
Chilliwack, British Columbia
http://www.southsidelife.com

I like this site because it gives a great deal of prominence to the stories of its members. The front page has a dominant feature about the life story of one of its members, and every page on the site has a prominent feature at the top of the right-hand sidebar which points to the story of one of its members. In all, there appear to be 14 stories (I might wish for more, but this is a good start). The stories are also used on LoveChilliwack.com, designed by the same firm (Stir Communications Group) which had a part in developing SouthSideLife.com and also ChilliwackLife.com (which is a community portal with a subtle strategy, I believe, of bringing unbelievers into relationship with local churches).

Contacts: If I’m not mistaken, Stir Communications Group is behind much of the work here (and also behind KamloopsLife.com which is similar to LoveChilliwack.com).

National Community Church
Washington, D.C.
http://www.theaterchurch.com

I like this site because they tend to make good use of Web 2.0 technologies — podcasts, videocasts, blogs, mobile version, etc. I have a love-hate relationship with churches making their sermons available via their websites (because I think it can discourage people from joining the physical gatherings), but Mark Batterson (the pastor of this church) is a great apologist for the effectiveness of podcasting. He routinely stretches my thinking about podcasting and videocasting. Here is an example from his blog — an article in which he compares podcasting to the field preaching of Wesley. I respect Mark so much that when pastors and church leaders ask me about podcasting their sermons, I give them my opinion, but then I invariably tell them to go check out Mark’s articles on podcasting for the other side of the coin.

In some ways, the National Community Church website tends to present the church as an institution rather than people, which is one of my pet peeves The easiest way to see how a church thinks of itself — as an institution or as people — is to take a look at the “About Us” or “Who We Are” menu on their website. Churches that think of themselves as an institution tend to populate their “About Us” menus with items like “Core Values,” “Leadership Team,” “Mission,” “Vision,” “How To Give,” etc. That’s the language of an institution, not of a community, and I believe it turns off unbelievers. On the other hand, National Community Church gives a lot of prominence on their website to their small groups, which I applaud (because it suggests that the church is people).

Overall, I like the National Community Church site because of its modern design and willingness to employ Web 2.0 technologies.

Contacts: David Russell is the church’s digital pastor, and Mark Batterson is the senior pastor.

University Christian Fellowship
Syracuse, New York
http://www.ucf.org

This appears to be a fairly run-of-the-mill church website until you read these two pages:

Questions We Get Asked About Our Church Service, and Our Snappy Answers
UCF Order of Worship

The humor is priceless! The only thing I wish is that they would give those two pages more prominence (if you start from the home page, they are a bit hard to find).

Contact: Unknown