If Jesus Had A Website

Today I've got a question on my mind:

What Do Your Wish Your Church Website Could Do?

We've spent a lot of the last year or so discussing what should and shouldn't be done with your church website, but I've been wondering lately what some of you would include if you could. I'd like to hear from you whether you do work directly on your church's site, or if you've just been visiting your church's website and found something lacking. Also, it can be anything; from something more complex, such as secure online tithing, to something that you may have seen on another site, like a church photo album or a message board.

For me, I'd love to be able to offer secure online tithing on my church's site (hence the example) because it's more convenient. My wife and I barely use our checks because we pay most of our bills either online or by AutoPay scheduling. Right now, from time to time we forget the checkbook at home on a Sunday, so if we could pay our church tithe online, then we could still pay it instead of having to wait a week. Plus, the church would get the money immediately, instead of having to wait until the next bank run by the treasurer.

Now it's your turn! What other features would you like to see on your church's website?

I'd just like to wish all my American brethren a happy Thanksgiving Day! I'm looking forward to spending the day with my family as my wife and I host them for the first time. Should keep us pretty busy!

But let's make sure to take time amongst all the food, parades and football to remember to be thankful for all that God has given to us. For that's the intent behind the first Thanksgiving. The pilgrims were thankful for surviving their trip to a land where they would worship God freely. We should feel privileged to live in a land where we can do so ourselves, especially when there are so many places where one can still not do so around the world.

Give thanks to the Lord!

I have to thank Frank Johnson over at Strategic Digital Outreach for pointing me in the direction of an article from Gadgetopia entitled What Content Management Won't Do. As you've probably read before, I'm a semi-advocate of the CMS. I am strongly in favor of the ease of use and plug-in capabilities of most CMS software, but then there is the problem of cookie cutter websites where they can all begin to look the same.

The above article also lists some other potential pitfalls of CMS, and it could have easily been titled Content Management Won't Save You From Yourself. It points out that a CMS cannot write for you, edit for you, format your text, prevent you from writing something, or force you to update your site. These human errors are outside the realm of Content Management, so they must be addressed by other means, such as human editors, screening processes, or some other management structure to make sure only appropriate content appears on your website.

Like the name suggests, a CMS simply manages content. Controlling what that content consists of is up to you.

I've been sitting on this information for a little while, because it's a lot to absorb. I'm not saying it's complex, but it's definitely food for thought.

What I'm referring to is Dan Lee's Ministry Funnel (click to view full size):

As a general model, I think it's a good approach and addresses one of the often overlooked steps when it comes to online evangelism: engaging community. This step is important for two reasons:

1. It allows non-believers to ask questions and discuss understandings of faith and Bible passage meanings with believers. Everybody could read a passage and come away with a different understanding, but only through the exchange of these understandings can we work to pull out the intended meaning of the passage. Oftentimes, this can strengthen believers as well!
2. It allows believers to demonstrate their faith by more direct actions than just listing beliefs and proclamations. Usually, non-believers are more willing to see things from our perspectives when we treat them in the loving, Christian manner which we aspire to.

As always, the decision part is out of the evangelists hands, but it's always interesting looking at ways we can help bring them answers and the opportunity for them to come to that point.

So, what's your current approach to web ministry? Are you allowing for visitors to get the information and community they need to make a decision for Jesus? Are there even better models for accomplishing this?

Over at Art of Mission, they're doing a Church Website Survey as part of a research project. It'll be interesting to see if they'll pass any of their findings on to the rest of us, because, even though it's just a short survey, there are some questions I'd like to see the overall answers to.

This survey is for all people, not just those who work on the sites, so feel free to pass it on to your fellow congregation members. They even have a short PowerPoint presentation about it if you'd like to mention it during your service.

Kudos to Ryan for giving church websites the research attention that they need!

To close out this week and give you some weekend food for thought, I thought I'd pass along these ideas from Gospelcom.net, in last months Web Evangelism Bulletin, on ways to make your website an evangelistic tool.

Some are very good, which I've advocated before:

5. Avoid all ‘churchy’ jargon and ‘Christianese’ language throughout the site, especially on the homepage.

While others seem to cross a line between evangelistic and gimicky:

16. Games and fun stuff are attractive and make a site sticky (i.e. encourage repeat visits, because of the interesting and possibly frequently changed content).

As you may have guessed, I may not agree with all of them, but they definitely left we with a lot of thoughts and ideas. Hopefully they'll do the same for you.

Also, make sure you hover over the "More" links to get additional information about a suggestion in a pop-up box. Not a big fan of that design plan, but I didn't want anyone to miss out on the information.

Well, the results of our October poll are in (a week late…boy, does time fly by). Anyhoo, it looks like 74% of churches don't seem to be taking full advantage of their websites as sources of key information.

I personally am a bit disappointed in this result, but not surprised. I feel that there are two places that key information needs to be placed: the church bulletin and on the church website. The church bulletin is important because then you can make sure that everyone who walks in your doors has access to the information, but the website is just as important. If people miss a service, are looking into your church, or, unthinkably, lose their bulletin, then they can turn to the website for the same information, if not more detailed information.

We have to remember, the goal is for the church website to be an extension of the church, and that's best done by getting the two to work together, and not independently.

November's poll follows up on our Site Longevity series, asking how often you redesign your church's website. Check in on the main page to vote today!

One other factor that is likely to have an impact on the longevity of your website is technology. While we usually have some level of control over design, usability and utility, technology is an outside influence that is typically beyond our control. However, we can anticipate changes in technology and adapt to them appropriately.

One example of changing technology that influences our websites longevity is the ongoing “browser wars”. Recently, all three of the major browsers (Internet Explorer(IE), Firefox and Opera) received major upgrades, most notably IE. In this upgrade to version 7, Microsoft modified their implementation of web standards and CSS, which has led to a more uniform appearance between the three browsers. However, many webmasters who had designed their sites specifically to IE6 were forced to make quick changes to keep pace.

In hopes of avoiding a situation like this, most webmasters were quick to download evaluation or Beta copies of the latest upgrades in order to see how their work appeared in advance. This allowed them to pro-actively make the adjustments to their sites in order to support both versions of the browser in order to ensure a seamless transition to the upgraded technology.

This proactive approach is the one we typically want to take with our websites. We want to work to keep pace with the current technology, and take advantage of the new features that it presents us with. In the end, we wind up with a professionally run website that should function properly with the new wave of technological advances at least until the next wave comes along. It also reflects positively upon our church and commitment, which is a great message to convey as well.

Well, that wraps up this series on site longevity…I hope you collected a few pointers or got some new ideas to take into consideration the next time you sit down to revamp your church’s website!

We've already identified design and useability as important factors in site longevity, but one of the other major areas we can look at to help increase the longevity of our sites is it's utility. Whereas useability refers to the ease of use, utility refers to what is available to use. It's also a factor that has two extremes that we need to be aware of when we put together or revamp a site.

The first extreme of utility is absence, meaning that there is nothing on the site that is useful to a visitor. While there are not many sites that fall into this category, there are some. For example, there are sites that put together sets of popular search keywords and then place tons of advertisements on the page. The idea of these pages is to deceive people to visit their pages in hopes that enough will click on the ads for them to make money. For the average visitor, these pages provide no utility at all.

In a church website example, a site that comes awfully close to absence is a page that just gives a picture of the church, a little blurb about the church, maybe a photo and paragraph about the pastor, and an address and phone number. While this kind of page does provide basic information about the church, it's overall utility to the average visitor is very low. It's likely that a visitor would not come back to the church's website because they can see that there isn't much of a chance of new information being available if they do return.

However, at the other extreme of utility is inundation, meaning that there are too many tools available for a user or community of users to make use of. Again, there are not many sites that fall into this category, but one example of a page that comes close is Netvibes. Nothing against Netvibes, since I make use of it as my browser's start page, but there are so many different modules available that many have little utility, are never found by users who may utilize them amongs all the features available, or they quickly become outdated as the Netvibes infrastructure gets upgraded.

Applying this to church websites, an inundation of utility may be as simple as adding forums to a church website. Now, in many cases, the addition of forums may be a great opportunity for communication and outreach, but in the case of a small church (around 30-50 members, and let's assume only 50-60% use the internet regularly) forums are likely to be vastly underutilized as there are just not the numbers of users available to maintain a healthy set of forums.

The overall lesson is that utilization is a balancing act. We want to avoid having a site that is devoid of useable features, while at the same time avoid providing too many features that go to waste. If we can find that midpoint that best fits our church website and situation, then we only have to worry about redoing the site as the church situation changes (growth, decline, technology usage, etc.), and that will help to increase our site's longevity.

I just wanted to pass along that I was recently asked to participate in ChurchCommunicationsPro.com's 5 Questions With Blogging Pastors/Believers series, which has included all kinds of influential Christian bloggers. I have to admit that it was really cool to be asked to be a part of the project by Cory.

If you'd like to check out my answers, then you can check here. You should at least check out some of the other responses. It's an interesting look at why many of us do what we do.