If you look in the right-hand sidebar, you’ll see a new section called “Quick Thoughts.” Let me quickly tell you the main points of how I’m doing this and then strategize for a moment about how something similar might be useful for churches.

I’m a member of a few different social websites (I’ve linked to my profiles in case you’re interested):

• LinkedIn (I use it 3-4 times a week)
• Facebook (I use it every day, usually multiple times)
• Plaxo Pulse (I don’t use it very much - someone invited me, so I signed up)
• Plurk (I just signed up a couple of days ago - I’ve heard good things about it)

Of course, there are many other social networks. I also have a Twitter account (until recently, I hardly ever used it).

If you look in the sidebar under the heading “We Recommend,” you’ll find a link to Turtle Interactive. Turtle Interactive is the design boutique of Tim Bednar.

What can I tell you about Tim? Tim pastored a multi-ethnic, inner city church for nearly 10 years, and so he has a good idea of what makes a church “tick,” so to speak. He’s also a brilliant designer and web developer who develops strategic social websites and applications to facilitate online community. He’s been around the web, and specifically around the portion of the web populated by churches and parachurch ministries, for a long time. That’s why we recommend him so highly.

If you’re a church or ministry in need of a new website, you now have a chance to learn from one of the best!

Tim has recently started a new project called the Ashford WordPress Theme.  This new project was born out of Tim’s recent work with WordPress on Greg Boyd’s new site (worth a look just in itself at www.gregboyd.org). In working with WordPress on this project, Tim realized that “most WordPress themes are not really created for normal people who are responsible for building and maintaining web sites. Most of the time, free WordPress themes offer killer screen shots but are a pain to use.”

The Ashford WordPress Theme is for building simple web sites. Tim’s philosophy is to build a theme which focuses on giving “in place tips on how to build and maintain the site.” He is about to release v0.1.2, and is looking for a few ministries who would be willing to test the Ashford theme and give him feedback on the project. Once this test phase is up and running, Tim will be developing additional subthemes, configurations, page templates and widgets.

To apply to be a test ministry, you can fill out the online application.

I just received an email from Mike Boyink asking me to help get the word out about a new project he’s starting through his Train-ee website.

Before I tell you about the project, though, let me give a quick word of explanation about Train-ee.com.

I’ve been using content management systems from EllisLab for about three and a half years. I first used pMachine and then switched to ExpressionEngine when it was launched. I’ve never been sorry. I now use or have implemented ExpressionEngine on 13 different websites.

Guess where I found out about EllisLab? That’s right — Mike Boyink has been a champion of EllisLab products for over four years, and he was the one who first turned me on to the joys of using EllisLab products.

In January of this year, Mike launched a new site — Train-ee.com — where he shares his wisdom and experience “to help web professionals get up to speed on ExpressionEngine^® as quickly as possible.” Through Train-ee, Mike provides online and in-person training, ebooks, and screencasts, all designed to help you learn the best content management system around in a minimum of time and with a minimum of pain! Mike is considered one of the experts in the ExpressionEngine support forums, and his combination of knowledge, wisdom, internet strategy experience, and extensive experience with ExpressionEngine means there is no one better to help you learn to use this great CMS.

Now, on to Mike’s newest project. One of Mike’s first projects for the Train-ee website was a series on “Building an ExpressionEngine Site - Small Business.” The series was very well-received in the ExpressionEngine community. And now, he will soon begin another “how to Build an ExpressionEngine Site” series, this time building a church website.  At the end of the series when the site is complete it will be auctioned off on eBay, with proceeds going to a TBD charity. You can learn more here:

A New Blog, A New Series

If you have been looking for a content management series for a new church website or to start redevelopment on an old church website, I am confident that this series will prove extremely valuable to you. Mike is the developer of the Manna? church website and is very experienced in working with churches to effectively use their websites. I would strongly encourage you to visit the Train-ee website and start following Mike’s new series!

Dean Peters has posted a great list of ways to use a church website to make it more effective. From the introduction to his article:

A problem I find with many church websites is vision, that those responsible for delivering the goods don’t really see their site as much more than an online color brochure. As a result, more often than not, very little staff and/or funds are allocated to the church’s web presence past the server, the domain name and perhaps a content management service.

In no particular order, I’d like to offer 10 real-world examples you can expand your church and/or charity’s impact by expanding your vision past mere ‘brochureware.’

His second point ("Convert Seekers") made me think about an aspect of church websites that I have generally resisted in the past and gave me a good reason to consider changing the way I think about that aspect (I’m purposely not telling you what that aspect is to make you go read the article!).

Here’s a link to the article.

By the way, the article appears on a great new site called digital.leadnet.org, a collaborative blog about technology in the church from Leadership Network.

manna?, a church in Holland Michigan, is experiencing a fascinating scenario on the home page of their website. The manna? website is set up differently than most church websites. Here’s a hint of the difference (from the bottom of their home page):

Hey - we don’t hold much on formality at manna?- if you want to contribute something to this weblog there’s no committee to work with. Just register (or log in if you already have) and use the Control Panel to speak your piece.

Did you catch that? Anyone can post a story to the front page of their website.

You might think that’s a recipe for danger, but a person does have to register as a member on the site before they can post, so the church does have some control over what stays on the website (although I believe they moderate after the posts are made rather than before). Although you might think it is dangerous, take a look at this article which was posted to the front page of the site recently (I’m linking to the permanent link of the article because it will eventually fall off the home page as new articles are added). Also take a look at the comments. Fascinating.

A person who has never attended manna? posts to the front page of the site telling them they are planning on attending a service. People from the congregation respond and ask the “newcomers” to introduce themselves. The newcomers are invited to join the congregation for a meal before they ever attend a meeting.

How do you think those people will feel when they show up at their first meeting of the congregation? Will they feel like they already know some of those who are part of the church? Will they feel welcomed?

In my opinion, the potential “danger” is far outweighed by the potential benefit.

What do you think?

Bill Seaver of the MicroExplosion Blog posted recently about a free ebook he wrote called Web Two Point What? A Pastor’s Guide to New Media. It’s being made available via download at the Do More Ministry Blog

Mike is blogging about this conversation at GodBit in his post Fear Behind Namby-Pamby Church Websites. It’s a fascinating discussion, and I firmly believe that Mike is landing on the right side of the discussion.

The following was something I wrote to an internet evangelism mailing list in which I participate, in response to some comments made on the list regarding this article by Dr. Stephanie Bennett.

In many ways, I live in a digital realm. My day job is completely concerned with the web and ways it can be used for business. The overwhelming focus of my ministry is in finding ways to use the internet and other digital means to spread the gospel. I am “in the digital realm” in some form at least 10-12 hours per day Monday through Friday (somewhat less on the weekends), whether that means actually “surfing the web” or spending long hours formulating strategies for the use of digital means to further either God’s purposes or the corporation’s business.

I have spent years on the web, developing virtual relationships with many people. Some I have gone on to meet face-to-face, but many of these relationships remain completely virtual.

And yet, Stephanie’s article rings very true to me. While I might not go quite as far as she seems to (in almost seeming to say that we should abandon the internet for face-to-face relationships only), I do believe strongly that those of us involved in internet evangelism in the West have, in many cases, devalued face-to-face relationships and neglected (or even abandoned) the local aspect of Christian community.

I have not been posting a lot over the past couple of months. One resource which I should have mentioned earlier is the new Church Site Design Checklist from the Internet Evangelism Day website.

Your church website has enormous potential as part of your outreach strategy to reach into your community. However, not all churches understand how to design a site that will do this effectively. This self-assessment questionnaire can help you assess your site, and find new ideas or areas that could perhaps be modified.

When I first learned about the checklist, I worked through the questions with a particular church website in mind — a website I had developed a couple of years ago which was not as outreach-oriented as I would have liked to see it. I was pleased to see that the checklist seemed to rate the website just about where I would put it on a scale between being not outreach-oriented at all and being very outreach-oriented. Obviously, my opinion is not the final word on whether or not a church website is effective in terms of outreach to unbelievers, but it was good to see that the checklist seems like it will be helpful to churches.

Blake Atwood recently wrote an interesting article for BetaChurch.org about a new website he launched a few days ago. It’s a city portal designed to allow the church to, in Blake’s words, “enter into the conversation of the city around it.”

I’d encourage you to not only read the entire article but to also visit IFoundGeorgetown to get a flavor of Blake’s new project.

I just noticed that it’s been a month since I last posted to the blog. It seems like it’s only been a few days. That’s probably because I’ve been very busy with a couple of other major projects and also because I’ve been spending a lot of time in the back end system of the blog battling trackback spam. I think I have that sorted out, at least for the moment!

In the meantime, I found this article on Gadgetopia to be very relevant for churches. The article talks about what a content management system won’t do.

The trend we’ve seen over the past couple of years in which churches have moved to sophisticated content management systems to manage their websites is a very good and important trend as it addresses one of the major flaws in most church websites - the ability to easily add up-to-date content while minimizing bottlenecks in the flow of information.

However the article at Gadgetopia correctly cautions us that the use of a content management system does not mean that our content will be written, formatted, edited, organized, or approved for us. Churches still need talented copywriters to create effective websites.

For churches that do some form of pay-per-click advertising (on Google or Yahoo, for example), I wonder if you have some mechanism of tracking response in terms of people who attend one or more services as a result of seeing one of your PPC ads.

If you currently are engaged in a pay-per-click program, I would be very interested in knowing if you have devised a method to track response. Feel free to use comments to respond.