If Jesus Had A Website

Outreach Magazine is running an essay contest for university students asking the question: What is one major spiritual challenge facing my generation today? (BTW, thanks for bringing this to my attention, Dan)

I'm curious to hear what you all have to say about it. I'm sure there are many that we can come up with…but here's one I've been seeing:

From some of my conversations with campus pastors and people in general, I feel that one of the major growing problems is the dwindling of personal relationships. Many students today have had "tools" available to them that allow them to keep from developing many social skills and personal relationships with others, such as video games, computers, texting, and MySpace. The result is an avoidance of emotionally taxing situations, like confrontations.

Family relationships suffer when students are able to avoid communication with their family, such as talking about their day over dinner, in favor of non-personal communication while surfing the internet or playing video games. Even "romantic" relationships then suffer because alternatives like casual sex are preferred over a deeper emotional relationship because they are "easier". At the same time, many are desperate for any kind of personal communication that they look for it in places like online games, like World of Warcraft, where they can talk with others, but only get to know them on a superficial level.

Meanwhile, most of these individuals are in search of some kind of emotional bond, but don't know how to establish or build them. These are those who we need to be reaching out to as a church, and an inviting church website can be a great way to do so. However, it cannot be the work of the website alone, but a combined effort of the foot-in-the-door approach of the website, and the welcoming love of a strong congregation.

Don't get me wrong, as I do play video games and spend time online (obviously ) and they clearly have their benefits, but I have plenty of outlets for "offline" personal communication. Heck, I would rather speak to my friends on the phone than IM them, and I'm definitely not much of a phone guy. The key is a balance, so that we don't lose touch with the world we are living in.

Forgive me if I'm oversimplifying this, but it's a concern I, and others, have been seeing develop. Just one more thing to keep in mind as we go down the line…

What are your thoughts? What is one of the major spiritual challenges facing our/your generation today? And how do we deal with it?

A Very Merry Christmas To All This Coming Monday!

I will be out of town spending the long weekend with family, so I'll be taking a few days off from posting. My best wishes and prayers go out to all of the webbed world!

Feliz Navidad!

Joyeux Noel!

God Jul!

Sung Tan Chuk Ha!

Shub Naya Baras!

However you say it, enjoy the season, focus on the message of joy and hope, spend time with loved ones, and I'll be back shortly after the holiday to get things started towards the new year!

God Bless You, Every One!

Coming up on the end of the year, I'd like to do a quick wrap up of a few of the things we've seen this past year, and what we expect (or at least would like to see) in the next year. Let's thank Darren for the inspiration, and get on with the list.

3 Things Church Websites Should Have Learned In 2006

1. Jesus Loves Web 2.0 – To borrow one of the t-shirt slogans from eBible. Christian websites caught on to the web 2.0 craze this year as eBible, myChurch, CrossConnector, People2Pray and others all made technical strides, providing churches with more resources to enhance their sites.
2. It's So Easy, A 5-year-old Could Do It – Well, close enough. Adding audio and video podcasts, streaming audio and video, and other multimedia resources to your website has become a whole lot easier in the past year, and it's no longer just for large churches with big budgets. Still dangerous if not used properly, but can be a great way to give a better look into the life of your church to visitors.
3. Design Matters, No Matter How Much We Want It Not To – Thanks to scientific studies, we now know that the appearance of our site is judged in a fraction of a second. We must work to make our website appealing to visitors and treat it as if it's important to the church (which it should be, IMHO), and not give the impression that it was just thrown together so that we're not missing the boat.

3 Things Church Websites Can Expect Or Hope For In 2007

1. The Growing Importance of Viral Video – It's already beginning, but I expect to see more Christian videos on services like YouTube (like the CCC-Canada Swimming video and the Christmas Eve In Canton rap) that look to break some of the stereotypes held by the world. It's a great conversation starter, both through the web and face-to-face, and we should be taking advantage of it.
2. Teamwork Makes Us All Stronger – Maybe this is more of a wish on my part, but I'd love to see collections of smaller churches start to work together on their websites. Not only does it make the available resources go further, but it also brings together members of different congregations and helps build inter-church community.
3. API = All Possibilities Included – Expect to see the growing Christian web 2.0 companies continue to follow in the footsteps of their secular counterparts and offer API's to access their functionality more directly. This will allow for more customizable, and likely more powerful, resources to use on your church website.

That's what I've seen (at least as much as I can remember) and what I'm seeing (and hoping for) in the coming year. Anyone got anything else I just completely ignored/forgot/missed the boat on? I'd be curious to hear what you feel were the big stories for church websites in the past year, and what you'd like to see in '07. Feel free to let me know in the comments below.

I read a quality article a few weeks ago at ProBlogger where Darren Rowse, a former church pastor in Austrailia, writes about building community in a blog by giving jobs to readers. Please take the time to read it because it's excellent advice.

Now, I've previously written about how managing a church website can be made easier by having people in specific roles, but the idea of building community through them is a great idea! And Darren is right on with his analogy to the church's welcoming strategy. We should aim to do the same things with our websites and get people involved early and often. Delegate different jobs, such as updating events or church news, to different people. Even if they just write up the basics in an e-mail and send it to you to put into the site, they can contribute! It also creates a sense of usefulness and community within the site, which builds involvement and a great online environment.

So try to think of ways that you can share the wealth of serving the Lord through the web. I'm sure you'll be able to find several people in your congregations that will be more than eager to lend a helping hand if they know you're willing to accept it!

You may have noticed that I've been holding out a bit early this week. Well, I'll be leaving for a short vacation tomorrow evening until Monday, Dec. 18th. So I've been saving up a good piece for you to think about while I'll be gone, which I'll be posting tomorrow sometime, so be on the lookout.

Or, if the article doesn't pique your interest, feel free to use the time to finish your Christmas shopping instead!

Today, I was doing my typical web surfing, and I came across the Christian vs. Christ-follower post over at Think Christian. Basically, they have a set of three commercials that parody the Mac vs. PC commercials you've probably seen either on the internet or TV. Now, while the commercials are interesting in their own right, they're not the reason I'm pointing you to Think Christian.

The reason for that is way that Think Christian is using an available and popular technology in the embedded YouTube videos, to spark a conversation amongst visitors (and not just a little one…this has over 133 comments right now). And look how little other content the author added: almost none. This is a good way to get things started, especially with content that could potentially be divisive as the readership may not know where the author stands. This allows both sides to more freely have their say than if they already know the discussion will be biased. Very savvy!

Secondly, I'd like you to notice is the date of the post. It went up on November 1st, and there's regular comments that go through today, and will probably go on for a while longer. In this day and age of the internet, that's a long time for regular conversation over a blog post. Usually that means that people are talking about the post elsewhere, either in real life, or in their own blogs. This is the viral effect that we often hear about.

The lesson here is not to be afraid use these resources available to us to stir the pot a little bit to get people talking. After all, we can't start conversations about God if we don't start any conversations in the first place.

Well, another month has come and gone already, and that means we're collecting poll results and bringing them to you. I have to admit that November's results to the question "How often do you redesign your church's website?" were pretty much what I expected. Most major redesign is done every few years, which I'm sure is a combination of indicators, such as: a) good design, b) time and resources and c) laziness (and don't get me wrong, it's a lot of work to do a major redesign…I'm hoping mine tides me over for a while ).

Not only that, but I was also expecting the continual-process crowd to be the next largest. However, I did expect a few more in that group. Maybe there aren't quite as many Type A personalities amongst us as I had thought.

Kudos to those who take the initiative to do more redesigns, but make sure that you're doing it for the benefit of the site, and not just because you don't like it anymore!

December's poll builds off the Christmas season and my recent post about seasonal designs/modifications. We're asking if you make any seasonal changes, such as the Google logo changes, to your church website. Let us know if you like to put up any virtual decorations for the holidays by voting after the jump!

We're now full-tilt into the Christmas season (well, three months in if you follow the retailer's timeline), and maybe you'd like to do something on your site in recognition of the time of year. It's a pretty common practice, and anyone who visits Google on a daily basis can tell you that a minor change, like a logo modification, is noticed by a lot of people. It makes a site seem less cold to know that there's a person who's paying attention behind the scenes.

However, if you're going to make these types of changes, we also have to remember to avoid the Christianeze. We should be trying to do this on our sites to try and make a welcoming place for non-Christians to visit, but this time of year we can apply this to the images we use on our site as well.

For example, there are Christians who feel that images of Christmas Trees should not be used because they have pagan origins, and would not want to place them on the church's website. However, the Christmas Tree is a long-standing part of the traditional Christmas celebration in most households, and someone who was raised celebrating "Christmas" in a non-Christian household could easily perceive the church as being elitist. When we are working to promote an atmosphere of love, being elitist is not an image we want to perpetuate. However, these "comfortable" images should also be included among the more "Christian" images of the nativity, to make sure that the spirit of the season is not lost completely on a visitor.

So this Christmas season, if you plan on making a seasonal design change to your site, try to take time to think about how it reflects upon your church in the community. Make sure you're sending the message that you mean to!