February 22, 2006 Update: A local news channel, WNDU, ran a story about the sermon series and the use of billboards by the church. Note the complaint from a local resident. Something to keep in mind with regard to this particular subject matter, whether you are thinking about using billboards or cinema advertising. It’s the subject matter which makes the use of the billboards suspect, however, not the strategy in general (at least it seems to me). Thanks to OldTruth.com for the heads-up on the news story.

Recently, we wrote about a campaign called IHateMyMarriage.com, devised by NewSpring Church in Anderson, South Carolina. Now comes news of a similar campaign called MyLameSexLife.com from Granger Community Church.

The additional twist here is that Granger Community is not only using billboards but cinema advertising as well. Great idea for a community like mine which doesn’t allow billboards.

Read more about the campaign, with additional links, at Church Marketing Sucks.

Recently, I’ve run across two (relatively) new websites for church webmasters:

If Jesus Had A Website
With a tagline of “Helping Church Websites Improve Their Digital Homes,” Greg Nilsen (webmaster for South Pittsburgh Assembly of God) helps to answer questions and provide guidance to Christian web designers. Each week, Greg provides articles that focus on different parts of the design, operation, and technology of websites to help Christian webmasters make their site more functional and appealing to both Christians and seekers.

So You Want A Church Website?
With a tagline of “Resources for the Accidental Church Webmaster,” Jason Fowler (webmaster for First Baptist Church Fairdale in Fairfale, Kentucky) offers help to church webmasters who want to “build a functional, useful, and possibly beautiful website for (their) church.”

Why not visit these two sites and drop a line to Greg and Jason to encourage them in their new ventures?

Mark Batterson is blogging this week about an innovative marketing campaign created by NewSpring Church in Anderson, South Carolina.

NewSpring’s pastor, Perry Noble, preached a sermon series in early 2005 called “I Hate My Marriage.” To advertise the series to the unchurched, NewSpring advertised the domain name ihatemymarriage.com on billboards in their area.

Currently, the site includes some introductory text and links to .mp3 files for the 5-part sermon series. You can see what the site (presumably) looked like during the series by checking out the archive.org version from February 2005.

If you think along these lines, you can probably come up with some good ideas to promote your own sermon series. A couple of interesting thoughts have occurred to me:

1. I wonder if domains such as this could be used by multiple churches?

2. I suspect that using a similar approach, but choosing domain names which correspond in some way to cultural distinctives in your geographical area could be quite effective.

My friend Neil Cox has started a very interesting project: ModelChurch.com. This website presents a fictitious church in a fictitious neighborhood community.

The stated purpose of the ModelChurch.com website, from Neil’s IndyChristian website:

Church-leaders are often asking us these days how to start building out a free, easy, team-oriented set of highly-functional websites. So we’ve started fleshing-out that question, starting with a ‘model church’ website for discussion.... We call it “Model Church.com”. From there we’ll be linking off to sites of our people in that neighborhood or community. In fact, it’s more than that—you might say we’re using the internet to centrally sketch out a model of some basics that reflect what ANY LOCAL CHURCH might start looking like in reality… given the increasingly ‘connected’ nature of the local Church body.

Very interesting and something to keep an eye on.

Ben Dubow, the pastor of St. Paul’s Collegiate Church at Storrs in Storrs, Connecticut has written a masterful article for BetaChurch.Org called Ten Things To Know About Your Church Website.

Ben begins his article with these words:

Eighteen months ago I knew virtually nothing about websites, web design or anything else .... But after a year of working through website stuff for the church, here is what I’ve learned.

And Ben has learned a lot! And even better, it seems to me that Ben has learned the right things! His analysis is spot-on!

If I could somehow imprint one part of Ben’s article on every church leader’s mind and heart, it would be this:

Do not follow the path of least resistance...you will regret it.
I almost made this mistake. I knew we needed a website so I thought something was better than nothing. And in today’s world you can get a website up and running pretty quickly and pretty cheaply using services like Register.com or using a volunteer with frontpage. If a website is all the things we have been talking about, then take the time to strategically think through what you are trying to accomplish.

Now go and read Ben’s article in full. Nail it to the door of your office and call it “Ben’s 10 Theses on Web Design for Churches!” Well, okay — maybe not, but please read it!

Walt Wilson’s column in the December 2005 issue of Christian Computing Magazine is all about podcasting. It’s a great challenge to churches to take advantage of this technology, and the article also has some interesting thoughts about the advantages of podcasting over traditional radio and television. The article requires Adobe Reader. 

Michael Lukaszewski, pastor of Oak Leaf Church (a new church plant in Cartersville, Georgia), started a blog this year called You Can Know God. Besides the intriguing title (which shows promise of having an outreach element to it), Michael has a simple but great word about keeping church websites up-to-date: The Church That Doesn’t Care. Nothing earth-shattering, but something that we can easily forget as busy church webmasters. Thanks for the reminder Michael!

Here’s an interesting article on search engine optimization for churches: Search Engine Marketing For Pastors.

While I wouldn’t agree that the keyword meta tag has much importance these days, the rest of the article (especially the emphasis on fresh content) seems very helpful.

Here’s another good article on search engine optimization for churches, this one by the guru of internet marketing, Ralph Wilson: Beautiful Website, Invisible on Search Engines — Why?.

Here is a very innovative and valuable project. PlanterBlogs.com is, in their own words, “an aggregator of the personal blogs of a diverse group of church planters. It is an opportunity for current and potential church planters to learn from the experiences of their peers. This collection of blogs is meant to offer a range of views in planting style, personality, and theological background.”

What a great idea!

About a month ago, I had a nice conversation with Drew Goodmanson, an elder at Kaleo Church in San Diego. Kaleo is doing some innovative things on the web. Drew is also heavily involved in the development of Ekklesia Systems, a new standards-compliant content management system for churches (actually, it’s a lot more than a content management system, but it’s easier to point you to their site than try to capture the breadth of the system in just a few words).

One of the things Drew and I chatted about was the use of church websites to draw unbelievers into community. During the conversation, Drew mentioned Kaleo Church’s success in using a targeted page on their website about pre-marriage counseling to draw unbelievers to their regular gatherings. Drew writes more about the successful strategy here.

Steve Evans of Bridge Chapel Christian Church in Liverpool is saying that offering sermons in podcast form has increased attendance at Bridge Chapel’s regular services. This was interesting to me because it flies in the face of my conviction that we should be careful about podcasting sermons. To get a better sense of my perspective on the issue, see my earlier articles on podcasting:

Outreach Magazine Articles
NY Times Article on Godcasting
Videoblogging Article
Godcasts Growing In Popularity
Podcasting and Video

My perspective in the past several months has moved a lot more towards a positive outlook on podcasting, largely due to some of what Mark Batterson has written on the subject.

I still believe that a podcasting church should be careful to teach those who participate in their gatherings, that the gathering of the church is not primarily something to be watched or listened to. Instead, it is something in which all are called to participate (1 Corinthians 14:26).

As more churches get involved in podcasting (which is obviously a certainty despite my hesitation!), it will be important I think, to quantify the results as much as possible. I first learned about this article from Blogging Church, but it’s also being talked about at Church Marketing Sucks. The question and commentary from James Higgenbotham in the comments at Church Marketing Sucks is a very important one it seems to me and suggests the type of quantification that I’m thinking about here.

One of our readers, Graeme, recently wrote me with this question:

Have you come across anything new in the technology field that allows the deaf and hearing impaired to be included in contemporary church worship services? I personally consider there is something “out there” that (for instance) converts voice to text to include the deaf and hearing impaired and also two other groups : English as a second language and visual learners.

Through an employee I have become privy to the isolated world of the deaf and want to see our church provide a way to include these members of our society. Signing is not an entirely practical solution in the postmodern church because of the variety of speakers and hosts who do not entirely work from a prepared script.

Does anyone have any ideas for Graeme? Please use comments to contribute your ideas so we can all benefit.  Thanks!