I found an intriguing piece of copywriting on a church website today - the website of Seed Church in Bothell, Washington. The welcome message on the front page of the site begins with these words: “It is time for you to lose control.” Eight simple words - definitely unexpected words for a church website. And in that alone, I think the website of Seed Church will intrigue unbelievers. Even their domain, dyingtolive.org, evokes curiosity.

The words we choose to use on our church websites are very important and deserve careful thought.

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.

An interesting website:

StandPoint

Is there an opportunity for outreach here?

Recently, I wrote an article about MySpace and Teens. Scott Reese has written an extended article about MySpace which I would highly recommend you read. I especially like Scott’s comparison of MySpace to the Athens of Paul’s day, encouraging us to use Paul’s strategy in Athens to reach the “residents” of MySpace, as well as Scott’s call for the church to support internet ministry.

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.

Seth Godin, a well-known marketing expert, has just released a new 18-page free e-book called Flipping the Funnel. It’s about how to use Web 2.0 sites such as del.icio.us, flickr, and Squidoo to increase the knowledge of your product or service. It comes in three versions: one for companies, one for non-profits, and one for politicians.

I just finished reading the version for non-profits and found it to be intriguing. It’s not a how-to manual on using Web 2.0, but simply a treatise designed to make you think.

Seems to me it would be a good read for churches and ministries looking to increase their reach.

Thanks to Darren for the heads up!

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!

I am pleased to announce the relaunch of the website of The Northern California and Nevada District of the Assemblies of God.

The district’s resource center, located in Sacramento, California, serves approximately 125,000 people, roughly 440 congregations in over 360 cities throughout Northern California and Nevada, and about 1,500 ministers. The resource center supports local churches and ministries through providing materials, lending advice, organizing seminars, etc. As such, communication with various constituencies is vital. Similar to many Christian organizations, the district is not wealthy and is therefore always looking for ways to improve the efficiency of their communication while lowering costs.

This relaunched website (actually the third iteration of the site which was initially launched in the summer of 2000) takes advantage of the Expression Engine platform to accomplish just that — improved communication for less expense.

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. 

Check out this post on Scott Reese’s blog, Adventures of a Web Evangelist. Scott has some great thoughts on using teams to reach out to unbelievers outside of the United States.