No Man Is An Island

As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. -John Donne

One common mistake made by many churches putting together their websites is to heap all the responsibilities for the site on a single person. This may seem reasonable, having only one contact for everything web related, and while this is feasible in some cases, it is usually far from ideal to maintain a smoothly running and functional site.

As an analogy, would you expect a single pastor or reverend to:

• Write and preach all sermons.
• Lead all outreach activities.
• Organize all fellowship activities.
• Lead children's and teen ministry activities.
• Field all phone calls.
• Schedule all church use.
• Perform all building maintenance.

The honest answer, is "No", because it is simply asking too much of an individual. That is why most churches rely on a core of people, both paid and volunteers, to help keep the church running smoothly. Each person is responsible for a subset of the church's needs.

Churches and Christian websites should take the same kind of approach to their presence on the internet. We cannot expect to have one person in charge and being forced to wear so many different hats (especially if that person is volunteering their time). The responsibilities for the site should be divided amongst several different individuals, each with a defined set of duties. Some of the key roles you should consider are:

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Webmaster

The Webmaster should be responsible for maintaining the daily operations of the site, formatting of the content of the site, and adding new features and functionality. If a link breaks, it is the Webmaster's responsibility to fix it. If a form-based interface for updating page content is needed, then the Webmaster should create it.

Think of the Webmaster as a building superintendent. He's responsible for making a place where everything can go, keeps things in running order, and plans for expansion and additions needed in the future. However, he's not responsible for the content being provided inside.

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Scribe

The Scribe should be the person responsible for the main content of the site. This includes all welcome messages, major announcements, church information (descriptions of ministries, vision statement, church history, etc.) and any other major written content posted on the site. The Scribe may very well be the same person who is providing these items for the church in a standard printed format, which is a good approach because it leads to consistency in presentation.

Please note that the Scribe doesn't need to have any technological savvy (though it would be nice if they could at least e-mail the content they produce to the Webmaster), but a little HTML experience can lead them a long way towards producing more visually appealing content.

Keeping with our running analogy, the Scribe would be to the website what the pastor is to the church building. They're not personally responsible for the building, but they are in charge of what is going on inside of that structure.

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Datekeeper

The Datekeeper should be responsible for keeping people "in the loop", and similar to the Scribe, little technological experience is needed. While the role may sound like it could be handled by the Scribe, it is often a good idea to keep the two separate. The main reason for this is a different target audience. The Scribe's main audience is those people who are searching for a new church or searching for God, the Datekeeper is targeting those people already involved in the church community. Besides that, in a busy church body, there's usually more than enough going on for one person to keep track of!

So, the Datekeeper for the website is much like the Secretary or Activities Coordinator for the church. They may not be in charge or putting together the actual events, but they make sure that everyone knows what is going on and keeps the place running smoothly.

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Now, I've only mentioned three major roles which will help a church website run smoother, but there are many more roles that can be played, depending on the size of your church or organization and what kind of features are desired on your site.

The important thing to remember is that you shouldn't try to lump all these roles into a single person, even if they are extremely talented all-around. In order to best provide the best website you can, you need a team of people working together.

Just like having a single person in charge of doing everything for the church building and body will leave them pulled in so many directions that they can no longer do them to the best of their ability, leaving all the responsibilities of a thriving church website to one individual may cause that presence to crumble.