Strategic Digital Outreach

Church Websites That Repel Potential Visitors

Tony Morgan has a good post on his blog entitled 10 Easy Ways to Keep Me from Visiting Your Church Because I Visited Your Website.

All of his points are important, and I would encourage you to go to his site and read the entire post.

I would, however, take slight issue with one of his points, entitled “Avoid telling me what’s going to happen at your church this weekend.”

While I will accept the idea that there are some people looking for a church to visit on the weekend (and that churches, for that reason, should include up-to-date information about their services), I think the vast majority of people in our society today simply are not looking for a church.

For those people, what’s happening at a church service on the weekend will be irrelevant. I’ve said it before - people don’t care what your service times are because they don’t plan on attending. People don’t care what your sermon title is because they don’t plan on listening. People don’t care who your pastor is because they don’t plan on meeting the pastor. Etc., etc. Am I overgeneralizing? Definitely, but to make a point.

To reach people in today’s society and persuade them that the life of the church is relevant, we need to tell them the stories of real people in our congregations. Not churchy testimonies, but their stories. Tell us about their life experiences, their interests, their passions, etc., and then tell us how their relationship with Christ impacts those areas of their lives. Preferably, let them tell us in their own words (through video, audio, interview transcripts). Then people will realize that the church is made up of people like them - with the same struggles, the same interests, the same passions - and hopefully want to meet those people. Suddenly, we’ve used the web to facilitate a face-to-face relationship around common life experiences and interests.

For more on this concept, read my white paper Effective Church Websites For Emerging Generations. I’ll warn you up front if you haven’t read it before - when it was first released, it caused a bit of controversy because I purposefully tried to be somewhat shocking. That being said, take it for what it’s worth. If it helps, great! If it doesn’t help, ignore it!

That small caveat aside, though, I would strongly encourage you to go and read Tony’s post. He has some great advice for churches!

Posted by on 05/21 at 07:40 AM
The Collective Voice!
Bill Willoughby continues the discussion:

I disagree. People are looking online to find churches. As the Webmaster for a Christian newspaper we have found that out time and time again.

We have a large military population with families rotating in and out on an average of every two years. We get emails both from those people and from area churches asking for specific information or in the case of the churches asking us to update their information.

They know how important a witnessing tool their site is. In fact, my company offers free seminars to churches on how to build effective Web sites. Our number one suggestion is to hire a professional designer and not let a member build the site. We’re doing this for God, not as a vanity issue, shouldn’t we give Him our best effort?

contributed on 08/02 at 06:59 AM
continues the discussion:

Bill - thanks for stopping by and commenting. I appreciate your contribution. I’d be interested to know which Christian newspaper you are speaking of. Is it a local newspaper or does it have a wider, regional base?

A question - what percentage of the people who ask for information on churches are already believers or at least have some church exposure?

If you believe Barna (and I’m not sure I always do), then approximately 87 million non-born-again American adults, teens, and children have not attended a religious service of any type during the past six months. Barna says that 1 in 3 American adults are unchurched.

Maybe “vast majority” was a poor choice of words on my part. I will say, however, that most of the people I interact with on a daily basis have absolutely no interest in the church. I think if believers were to spend more time outside of church activities, they would come to the same conclusion.

Notice that I said in my article that I am not opposed to churches including information about their services, etc., but I think we should realize that there is a huge number of people who simply are not interested and that information about our programs will do nothing to persuade them that the church is relevant to their lives.

I believe that the content on our church websites should be predominantly aimed at persuading the unchurched to begin to immerse themselves in Christian community (although they wouldn’t think of it in those terms) so that they will be convinced of the truth of the gospel.

I am personally committed to a cyberspace version of Romans 15:20-21 - “And thus I aspired to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already named, that I might not build upon another man’s foundation; but as it is written, ‘They who had no news of Him shall see, and they who have not heard shall understand.’”

Thanks again for your comment - disagreement, when it is presented with a humble spirit as you have done, always stretches us and helps us to grow.

contributed on 08/02 at 07:29 AM
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