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!
I believe that the internet provides today's church with a historic opportunity .... to tell the old, old story of Jesus and His love in ways which could only have been imagined in times past. The objective of this website is to explore the various ways in which today's technology can be used to spread the gospel around the world.
