Rob over at Effective Web Ministry Notes was blogging my post about pet stores yesterday and brought up some good additions to my list of things which make church websites unfriendly.

I commented on his site and ended up sharing an example of how a church website I developed a couple of years ago tried to be visitor-centric. I thought the example might be helpful to my readers here, so I’m going to repeat some of my comment to Rob. But you should definitely visit Rob’s post as well because he has some valuable insights to add.

That being said, read on to learn about the example.

Bezahlt(dot)Org has some great things to say in response to the recent discussion about Ellison Research and the Agape Press article. Here’s just a sampling:

While I think the internet is a good way to introduce people to spiritual matters, it certainly is not the best way to care for people.

People require interaction. People need to be able to look you in the eye, cry on your shoulder or shout for joy with a person, not a keyboard and monitor. Jesus ministered to people, He did not have Matthew write down a sermon and post it on a sycamore tree or in the town square and wait for others to post rebuttals or praises....

No website, no blog, no band, no book, nothing can ever replace the Holy Spirit working through you and I, reaching out to a lost an dying world.

Websites, blogs, streaming audio and media are great teasers but nothing can replace that personal touch that all of us need. We’re the reason the church grows (I’m speaking universally now) not some amalgam of electrons piped into homes across the world.

If your church has a website tell your friends about it. Maybe they’ll hop on the internet for a few minutes to check things out. Then follow-up with them. Invite them to meet God at your place of worship. Websites are a tool for drawing people to Christ. Let’s not exalt the tool above the Toolmaker.

Excellent commentary. A church website’s primary purpose should be to draw unbelievers into face-to-face relationships with believers. If our websites don’t accomplish that purpose, I think we need to take a step back and re-evaluate.

A few weeks ago, I posted this article about how New Hope Bible Church in Albany, Ohio is effectively using their website to draw new people to their Christian community.

Unbeknownst to me (I thought I had added their RSS feed to the list of blogs I monitor on a regular basis, but evidently I hadn’t - remedied that today), quite a conversation broke out over the following portion of this white paper:

Consider the following premises which, although they may be shocking to some, reflect what I believe is the common perception unbelievers have
about today’s church:

-People don’t care about your service schedule or calendar of events because they don’t plan on attending your meetings.
-People don’t care about your statement of faith because they have little to no desire to become affiliated with your organization.
-People don’t care who is on your pastoral staff because they don’t anticipate any occasion when they might meet those staff members.
-People don’t care where your facilities are located because they can’t foresee a time when they would set foot in those facilities.
-People don’t care what this week’s sermon title is because they don’t plan on listening.

A Question: If the above premises are true, why do so many churches make these the most prominent pieces of information on their websites?

What DO People Care About?

-People today care about the stories of other people - people with similar interests to their own, people with similar life experiences, and people with similar problems.
-People today care about relationships with people who have similar interests and life experiences.
-People today care about the thought of a possibility of unmerited love revealed in the midst of true community.

You can read the conversation between (I assume) various members of New Hope here and here.

Since the folks who commented raise some excellent points which reveal some possible misconceptions about what my perspective is, I thought it might be helpful for me to respond here for the benefit of others who might read that white paper and come away thinking I’m out of my mind (wouldn’t be the first time someone thought that, though!).

The research project performed by Ellison Research which I mentioned in my last post is getting a fair amount of play in the Christian blogging world today. David Wayne at JollyBlogger has some very insightful comments in response to the article. I would recommend that you go and read the entire article, especially David’s recommendations at the end of his article. A few of his recommendations in particular stood out to me:

Change your church web page to a blog page.  Most churches web pages are of the “brochure” model and, though they communicate information they really don’t build community.  You can still put links on the sidebar to all of the “brochure” type stuff, but let the heart of the web page be a blog that stays constantly updated.  I can envision such a page having a small, static welcome message at the top of the page, followed by blog entries that will build community.  Make sure to allow commenting on everything and make sure that someone reads the comments and responds

And ....

Instead of having a “cyber-pastor” get all staff members to maintain a blog either linked from the church’s “homepage” or somewhere on their own.

And finally ....

Face to face ministry is still the bread and butter of the church so it needs to be the bread and butter of all we do

Keeping (this) in mind, don’t forget what was said in the Agape News article - people are using the internet more and more to learn about churches.  Wise use of the internet will be that which facilitates much face to face ministry.

Agape Press ran a story yesterday about a research project performed by Ellison Research, in which various statistics about the use of the internet by churches is presented. One portion in particular, quoting Ron Sellers (the president of Ellison Research), was especially intriguing:

“Pastors need to take a hard look at where technology might no longer be a matter of style or a luxury for the congregation, but an expectation,” he says. He says it is “amazing” that one out of four medium and large churches do not have a web presence—“particularly with many churches trying to figure out ways of attracting younger people, who are particularly likely to use the Internet to gather information and explore their options.”

Important: see the wise comment from Mike Boyink before running out and implementing this idea. As I said in my response to Mike, I’m going to give this some further thought.

In the meantime, check out Mike’s newly designed website, where you can regularly read insightful commentary on the state of web design today (and many other topics).

Recently, I’ve been having fleeting questions run through my mind about how a photo blog might be used for outreach purposes. Until a couple of hours ago, I would have said that there really isn’t much use for them in terms of outreach. But then I was reading a post by Jordon Cooper about how Bible colleges and seminaries could make better use of their websites. Jordon was lamenting the sterility of most efforts by Christian educational institutions to reflect the life of their community through photos:

Of course tools like Flickr and Movable Type working together make it a lot easier to show a day by day life of a community, from academics, to spirituality, to the social life of the community.

That made me think about how a church might be able to better present the life of their community to the public through frequently updated photo galleries which would remain largely unmoderated. What if a church were to establish an official photo team and ask them, armed with digital cameras, to take photos of congregational life and post them to these galleries on a regular basis. Would this serve to present the life of the community effectively? Just thinking out loud. Anyone know of any churches doing something like this?

Joshua Porter wrote an interesting article early last month entitled “Home Alone? How Content Aggregators Change Navigation and Control of Content.”

It’s a very interesting article about how content aggregators (search engines, blogs, news sites, links pages, etc. - virtually any form of website or software which gathers content from other digital sources and presents them in an aggregated fashion) are changing the way people receive information, and I would strongly encourage you to read the entire article. I’m going to touch on one point he made and how it possibly relate to church websites, but I think the whole article has some very important things to say to us as Christian webmasters.

Here is an excerpt which I found especially compelling:

Aggregation hinges on gathering content from other domains. This dramatically affects the search for content. Users no longer need to start their search in the domain where the content lies. In fact, they almost never do.

I use a website (and its accompanying RSS feed) called Threadwatch to monitor various message boards related to search engine optimization. I probably miss some things by relying on Threadwatch to choose the most interesting conversations, but on the other hand, I don’t have to spend countless hours monitoring several message boards.

Recently, I noticed a post on Threadwatch about a conversation taking place at cre8teasiteforums.com about the ability (or lack thereof) of photographs of real people (rather than stock images) to create credibility in a website visitor’s mind. Since this is an issue that churches often struggle with when developing their websites, I thought I would check out the conversation.

But when I took a look at one of the links which was referenced in the conversation (The Web Credibility Project from Stanford University), I found myself considering the broader issue of credibility in general and specifically how credibility might relate to a church’s website.

Many churches today see the need to have a website, but don’t know where to start.

Part of the problem is that a church feels it needs to have what they envision as a “complete” website - with service times, staff biographies, ministry descriptions, etc., etc. To create that level of website and also have a site which is graphically appealing normally requires an outside designer, which can involve a significant cost - a cost the church may not be willing or able to incur.

But there is an alternative approach which does not require an outside designer, does not need a fancy graphical appearance, and should also prove to be much more effective (in reaching the lost) than the typical church website.