You may or may not be familiar with Squidoo, a service that allows you to create and share "lenses" which focus on information specified by a "lensmaster". They are a great way to share useful resources that you've found with the world. For you to see a lens in use, I've created the Church Webmaster Resources Lens.

You may be thinking, "Ok, neat…but how would I use them with my church website?".

Here's 3 good ways to use them:

1. Let Your Pastor Create A "Reading Corner" – There's often a lot of good information on the web, but we don't want to clutter up our church's website with 101 links to different articles. A lens from Squidoo allows you to create this collection of links and have just one link on your website.
2. Create A Community Of Sites Related To Your Church – Does your church provide services to other groups, or are associated with other ministries that have their own web sites? Do you sponsor missionaries who maintain a website? If you do, then a lens is a great way to coordinate that information into a single place for your visitors to check out.
3. Publicize Your Church – While it may be in a more indirect way, you can publicize your church through Squidoo. If you have an RSS feed for your church, you can have it displayed on your lens as well. Then you can also tie your lens in with other related sites such as the city or town website, the denomination website, or a similar churches in the area. You can even add a map to your lens to provide easy directions.

As you can see, a Squidoo lens can be applied in a number of different ways. On top of that, they are also extremely easy to maintain. Take some time and see how you can fit it into your website.

And if you'd like to add your website to the Church Webmaster Resources lens, please either leave a comment below or contact us.