SantaCruzLife.com

We propose the development of a Santa Cruz County website dedicated to presenting the gospel to unbelievers by facilitating contact between local believers and unbelievers, both living in Santa Cruz County, who have similar interests and life experiences. Such contact will be facilitated primarily through the presentation of hundreds of profiles of local believers, corresponding to various categories of interest.

This website will draw traffic through becoming the de facto web-based resource for residents of Santa Cruz County. This will be accomplished by featuring a comprehensive set of links to websites of particular interest to county residents, a county-wide calendar of events, local news items of interest to families, a classified advertisement system, etc. The sites will include links to the websites of local businesses, schools, churches, youth organizations, community organizations, family resources, senior resources, government agencies, employment resources, entertainment options, etc.

In many ways, the website will be a �Yahoo!-like� portal for Santa Cruz County.

Through this comprehensive sets of links, as well as ongoing marketing activities such as search engine optimization, online and print advertising, word of mouth, etc., the website will draw an increasing number of visitors. The goal will be for SantaCruzLife.com to become the web-based resource to which our area’s residents turn first for information on the Santa Cruz area.

This portal will then intrigue those visitors who do not know Christ by presenting online profiles of hundreds of vital believers living within Santa Cruz County.  These online profiles will include:

• life summaries;
• interview transcripts which will focus on the believers� interests as well as their testimonies (presented in a tasteful, non-preaching manner since our initial objective will not be conversion but a face-to-face introduction of unbelievers to believers);
• video excerpts from the interviews;
• photographs; and,
• collections of favorite web resources which will correspond to various subjects and interest categories which will appeal to Santa Cruz County residents.

The idea will be to present an engaging profile of each believer which will include information on their interests and life experiences (auto racing, surfing, cancer, music, art, hepatitis c, etc.), but which will also include a tasteful presentation of their testimony and how their relationship with Jesus integrates with their interests and life experiences.

Introductions to believers to be profiled will be obtained through relationships with the pastors of local churches. These profiles will also be made available (through syndication technology) to the churches of profiled believers for use on their individual church websites.

SantaCruzLife.com will enable website visitors to contact the people who have been profiled on the website through the use of email and instant messaging technology, thus facilitating face-to-face contact between unbelievers and believers with similar interests and life experiences. Interested unbelievers may also be referred to specific Christian support groups when appropriate.

These contacts will draw unbelievers into the circle of friends and acquaintances of one or more believers, thus exposing them to the authentic Christian community which will demonstrate to them the love of God and the reality of Jesus� mission (cf. John 17:21-23).

For example, a page of links to cancer resources in Santa Cruz County would also contain links to profiles of 3-5 Santa Cruz County believers who are cancer survivors. These profiles would include general information about the believer, how they felt when they discovered they had cancer, how their faith enabled them to cope with the disease, what their ongoing struggles are, etc., along with the opportunity to contact the believer through an email form.

The ultimate goal would be to include at least 3-5 profiles for every link category on the website.

Other categories which would include such profiles might be (this is definitely not an exhaustive list):

• single parenting
• surfing
• music (various genres and artists)
• auto racing
• art
• parenting children with terminal illnesses
• camping
• vegetarianism
• spirituality
• hepatitis c
• accounting
• heart disease
• baseball
• strokes
• gourmet restaurants
• foreign students studying in the U.S.
• gardening
• owning dogs
• owning cats
• stamp collecting
• financial planning
• local authors
• environmentalism
• etc., etc.

Through this system of interest-related profiles, our mission of connecting believers and unbelievers in Santa Cruz County and facilitating face-to-face relationships will be accomplished. The ultimate objective will be to introduce unbelievers to the Christian community in Santa Cruz County, that community which is expressed through the evangelical churches in our area and which is crucial to effective outreach (cf. John 17:21-23).

For a more detailed explanation of the philosophy behind SantaCruzLife.com, feel free to read our white paper entitled A Strategy For Local Internet Outreach.