The research project performed by Ellison Research which I mentioned in my last post is getting a fair amount of play in the Christian blogging world today. David Wayne at JollyBlogger has some very insightful comments in response to the article. I would recommend that you go and read the entire article, especially David’s recommendations at the end of his article. A few of his recommendations in particular stood out to me:
Change your church web page to a blog page. Most churches web pages are of the “brochure” model and, though they communicate information they really don’t build community. You can still put links on the sidebar to all of the “brochure” type stuff, but let the heart of the web page be a blog that stays constantly updated. I can envision such a page having a small, static welcome message at the top of the page, followed by blog entries that will build community. Make sure to allow commenting on everything and make sure that someone reads the comments and responds
And ....
Instead of having a “cyber-pastor” get all staff members to maintain a blog either linked from the church’s “homepage” or somewhere on their own.
And finally ....
Face to face ministry is still the bread and butter of the church so it needs to be the bread and butter of all we do
Keeping (this) in mind, don’t forget what was said in the Agape News article - people are using the internet more and more to learn about churches. Wise use of the internet will be that which facilitates much face to face ministry.
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.
