When I started Strategic Digital Outreach in the Fall of 2004, I would never have imagined that we would be involved in publishing a book. But here we are, three-and-a-half years later, and we have recently helped our friend and advisor Dave Dias publish his first book, Irene’s Journey Of Faith.

Readers of this blog may remember an earlier post in which we shared about the disease Irene Dias has contracted.

Here is the description of the book we are using on Amazon and other websites:

The inspiring story of Irene and Dave Dias and their courageous battle against a rare, incurable and terminal disease, Primary Amyloidosis. Although the suffering they face is severe, this is not a story of despair, but of an incredible faith and even more of an incredible God who sustains His followers with lavish grace, extravagant kindness, and unrelenting love. Compiled from selected blog entries at IreneDias.com, this devotional recounts the story of the initial diagnosis of the disease, Irene’s long hospitalization, the eventual stem cell transplant, Irene’s release from the hospital, and Irene and Dave’s ongoing challenges and victories.

If the challenges you face are frightening ....
If your circumstances seem hopeless ....
If your life is falling apart and you don’t know where to turn ....

Irene’s Journey of Faith will encourage you and strengthen your faith in the God who promises to uphold you no matter how difficult and painful your life’s journey may seem.

I would strongly encourage the readers of this blog to visit Irene and Dave’s website, IreneDias.com (this link will take you to a page from which you can either purchase the book or proceed to the blog to read its entries).

Tony Whittaker of the Web Evangelism Guide and Internet Evangelism Day has written a brilliant parable called A Tale of Two Golf Clubs. See if you can figure out what the meaning of the parable is!

By the way, this year’s Internet Evangelism Day is scheduled for April 27. That’s only 78 days away. Have you started to prepare?

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

Manna?
Holland, Michigan
http://www.mannais.org

I like this site because it’s really just a community blog. Anyone in the congregation (or outside the congregation) can post to the website. The lack of traditional trappings combined with the simplicity of the site and its group nature make me feel like this church is authentic.

I especially like the Manna FAQ section, in particular the answer to “So who preaches and are there sermon series or points or whatever?” Beautiful. A close second is the answer that mentions snake-handling, although the lack of that time-honored tradition would probably keep me from being a part of Manna? if I lived in Holland, Michigan (Gee, if Mike Boyink can suggest I get a tattoo, I ought to be able to get away with suggesting Mike start handling snakes! How about it Mike?).

All kidding aside, take a look also at this article about the Manna? website which touches on the power of the Manna? website concept.

The Manna? site also uses my favorite content management system, ExpressionEngine.

Contact: Mike Boyink is the designer/developer.

Jacob’s Well
Kansas City, Missouri
http://www.jacobswellchurch.org

This is by far my favorite church website. The “Community” section is brilliant. Through the use of biographies (it appears that most of the people in the congregation have contributed at least a short bio) and photos, it presents people rather than an organization. Through its use of blogs and discussion forums, it presents the authentic voice of the congregation (not just its leaders) to unbelievers in the Kansas City area.

The one thing I don’t like about this site is that these elements which are so strategic to reaching unbelievers are actually in a password-protected area. When the site was first launched, I registered and was given a username and password which is still functional. I have no contact with the church at all, so I assume they allow anyone to register (and probably use that information to police the forums and other places where users can contribute), but I would like to see the information in the Community section presented publicly, without any need for prior registration and login. They could still require registration and login for a user to contribute (or edit previous contributions), but presenting the information publicly would, in effect, open the authenticity of the congregation for everyone to see, whether believer or unbeliever.

Contact: Scott Raymond () is the designer/developer

I was asked yesterday by a reader of this blog for a list of church websites I like. I responded to the email, but thought it would make a good subject for a series of articles, so here goes.

To be honest, because I have some fairly strong opinions on these issues, there are not a lot of church websites I like. But in this series, I’m going to mention a few that I admire, along with the reasons for my admiration and any further information I might have. I may not like everything about these sites (and I’ll tried to point out what I don’t like), but there are aspects which are encouraging to me. Where I list contacts, some are people I know (almost always virtually), but some I have never met.

Feel free to suggest other church websites you like in the comments section, but if we can, let’s try to point to church websites who are effectively using the web in terms of their strategy not just websites that look good (which is not bad in itself, but good-looking websites without an effective online strategy are irrelevant, in my opinion).

Church of the Resurrection
Leawood, Kansas
http://www.cor.org

The main reason I like this site is because it features “normal” people. If you visit the Resurrection Stories section of the site, you’ll find brief testimonies of normal people from within the congregation. One of the strategies I advocate for church websites is to include an extensive set of life stories of believers in the congregation. These are then used to promote the church to various segments of society. While I am not a big fan of religious testimonies on church websites (which the stories on this site resemble to some extent) — largely because the vast majority of unbelievers won’t initially care about religious testimonies — I do applaud the prominence this church gives to the “normal” people in its congregation. In an earlier version of the site, the photos of the people and their stories were prominently featured on the front page, and I would like to see them go back to that, but in general, the fact that they feature people from within the congregation means I don’t get the sense that this is primarily an institution — instead, it’s a group of people.

Contacts: the folks who write the Appian Way blog - Clif Guy, Brian Slezak, Chuck Russell, and Leo Johns.

This is the fifteenth session in our multi-part series on internet evangelism.

In this session, we discuss the next part of 1 Peter 3:15 — “always (be) ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you,” emphasizing the need for internet evangelists to have a good knowledge of the truth.

I’m going to take a bit of a hiatus in the video series after this session and try to come back to it early next year.