Ecclesiology and Church Websites

A couple of examples:

First example: It should come as no surprise to regular readers of this site that I look to John 17:21-23 for a lot of the inspiration for my thinking on how church websites should be used. Those verses convince me that the most effective outreach takes place in the context of community. That leads me to consider how Christian websites can be used to expose unbelievers to authentic Christian community. The strategy I advocate for using church websites for kingdom purposes comes from my understanding of a particular passage of Scripture.

Second example: Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about why church websites are so focused on attempting to persuade unbelievers to attend regular Sunday morning services.

I’ve probably been thinking along those lines because I’ve just started reading Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results by Bryan and Jeffery Eisenberg. I haven’t read very far yet (largely because I frequently stop reading to contemplate how the principles they espouse could be better used on the website I market in my day job), but their focus on persuasion has made me think about how churches use their websites to persuade their site visitors.

While I tend to think that the persuasive techniques used by business websites may not be entirely appropriate for church websites (demonstrating the authentic voice of the Christian community through blog technology would, for example, seem much more appropriate to me - of course, businesses should do that as well, but that’s another story and actually another blog), their focus on persuasive techniques has led me to start thinking not about how the church attempts to persuade unbelievers, but instead about what the church is trying to persuade the unbelieving community to do through their websites. The unmistakable conclusion from most church websites I see is that churches are trying to persude site visitors to attend a service.

The problem, as I’ve written elsewhere, is that the vast majority of unbelievers who are in our communities are not interested in our service schedules because they don’t plan on attending our services. So while the church tries to persuade unbelievers to attend services, the unbelievers themselves are wholly uninterested. Not a great formula for success, it seems to me. That’s why I believe that the life stories of real believers have the potential to be much more effective at persuading unbelievers to be open to the life of the local church.

In most of today’s churches, the life of the local Christian community revolves around services which take place at a particular place and at a particular time.

Here’s where our theology can inform the strategy we employ when using our websites to reach the unbelieving world.

I firmly believe that it is a mistake for churches to be event-oriented. I have come to this conclusion after literally years of thinking about John 4:21-24:

Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.

Under the old covenant system ("in Jerusalem"), worship was performed 1) in a place; 2) during an event; and, 3) by others on our behalf.

New covenant worship is different.

I believe that Jesus was speaking of more than the place where worship would take place under the new covenant.

I believe he was saying:

1) No longer will your faith find its foundation in a place.
2) No longer will your faith find its foundation in events.
3) No long will your faith find its foundation in acts performed on our behalf by others.

If our faith should no longer find its foundation in a place or in events or in acts performed on our behalf by others, then why are we trying to persuade unbelievers (through our church websites) to come to a place to attend an event and witness others performing “acts” on our behalf?

Why are we not instead trying to persuade unbelievers to witness the life of the local Christian community (which takes place much more in the everyday relationships between believers than it does in a once-a-week service)? Why are we not instead trying to persuade unbelievers to meet the believers in our local Christian community and converse with them about their common life experiences and interests?

That’s an example of how my theology informs the strategy I advocate for using church websites for kingdom purposes. You may very well disagree with my theology (probably 95% of the church world seems to disagree!), but it seems to me that we should at least be thinking about these issues and trying to let our theology influence how we think about web strategy.

How else can we allow our theology to inform what we do as Christian web strategists, church webmasters, etc.? Any thoughts you might have are definitely welcome as comments.