In case you, your pastor, or anyone in your congregation doubted the potential in a well-designed and well-maintained website, you can turn them to the FACTS on Growth report and get the numbers to back you up. They're very strightforward and compelling.

Thanks to the Web-Empowered Church Developer blog to bring this to our attention!

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.

I happened to read this article from Jeremy Wood over at BlogMinistry, and felt an obligation to address it myself. I'll let you read his comments yourself, but basically Kevin Denee of The Restored Church of God (which originates from the Worldwide Church of God, which had some questionable doctrine itself) takes blogging to task, basically claiming the majority of blogs as dangerous, vain and rooted out of boredom.

The truth is that most blogs originate for one of two reasons:

1. A Desire To Express One's Self - A lot of people just need an outlet to express themselves.
2. A Desire To Help, Guide, and Inform Others - Sharing expertise to help others be able to do more.

For him to throw blogging under the bus like that shows a lack of understanding of the technology and fear that it will do something to the people. Truthfully, some of his concerns are earnest, but he's pointing the finger in the wrong direction. Blogs and personal homepages can be potentially dangerous if their users do not use them properly, but so can your debit card if you write your pin number on it and start walking around in crowded streets waiving it around. The finger must be pointed at the individual, and not the tool (unfortunately, this seems to be a recurring problem for Christian leaders to blame the "new things" in a world of advancing technology that they may not fully understand).

Yes, there are some blogs which are focused around getting attention or make the mistake of keeping a personal journal in a public forum. But to classify the vast majority of blogs as such shows a real lack of understanding in the power of blogging and social computing in reaching a world that is eager to learn more.

After all, if blogging was as evil as he makes it out to be, I'm pretty sure IJHAW and the numerous constructive Christian blogs out there would not be here today.  But we are here...working to do the will of God.

It's been a contemplative week for me, as I've been taking a step back out of my little programming world and taking a look at how others do their work.

Today, I wanted to ask where you get your ideas and inspirations in your designs and site development. We all have our tried and true resources, but oftentimes there isn't too much in common from one developer/designer to another. Sometimes, it's good to come together and share our resources, and maybe see things a bit differently.

Here's a quick list of some of my inspirations:

• Open Source Web Design - For a bunch of "starting points" in the layout and design process.
• Andreas Viklund - Who reminds me that both form and function are important.
• Ray Camden's Coldfusion Blog - Covering a lot of the little things in ColdFusion development that help make a better end-product.
• Blog Ministry Lab - A small group, but trying to move Christian blog design forward.
• The Church Webmasters' Forum - Sharing experiences and ideas with other church webmasters with a wide range of experiences.

This morning, Dan Lee of Blog Ministry announced the creation of the Blog Ministry flickr Lab. This is his blogging answer to the Church Marketing Lab, and is using it to try and encourage better design on Christian blogs. I think it's a great idea which I had briefly thought would be useful following my first visit to the Church Marketing Lab. Thanks Dan, for bringing the idea to fruition.

I'm eager to get involved! What better resource to bounce new ideas off of than each other?

I wanted to pass along this really good article from Jim Walton over at Church Tech Matters where he talks about the perceptions of those who "work with computers" and how not everyone who fits that description is the right person for specific tasks within the church (i.e. site design, web applications, tech support).

So, if you are a pastor or other leader in a church, there is a fairly good chance that you are not that technical and there is nothing wrong with that. But, how can you find the right kind of technical expertise? The truth is, being a computer guy does not mean expert at everything technical. There are different kinds of programmers, plus a graphics person is not necessarily a network administrator too and a network administrator may not be skilled at desktop support or PC troubleshooting.

Each of us has a level of expertise within our computing knowledge, and it's something that important to make clear when we are recruited for specific tasks. For example, I'd do great as a web application developer or database administrator, but I'd make a lousy graphic designer (as may be evident by my MS Paint based site logo).

Check out the rest of Jim's thoughts in his article 10 Feet Tall and Bulletproof.......Really?

Normally, I try to stick to information directly related to church website design, but from time to time I like to hilight other uses to technology churches are using to reach out to the world.

Today, I came across a very cool article on ESPN today about how a number of German churches are looking to appeal to soccer fans by showing World Cup games in their buildings. Not only that, but the churches in communities where games are being held will be holding services in the languages of the countries playing there that day. Talk about trying to appeal to the masses.

While the article does raise some concerns being made by observers, the general idea is a great way to get people in the door. Once people come and find a friendly environment, they are more likely to come back and hear what you have to say about God. As always, any good relationship is built upon a solid friendship. And if that friendship is built upon soccer, then there is nothing wrong with that.

I know that this probably goes without saying, but I ran into this situation several times over the past few weeks so I thought it warranted a post. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE remember to post your service times during Holy Week, Lent (if you celebrate this church season), and Christmas. It is imperative that you post this information in an easy to find location (hint hint: the homepage or link from the homepage is best) so that visitors to your church can easily find out what time to show up! Over the Easter weekend, my wife and I travled to the beach for vacation. Since we knew we would be out of town we tried to find service times in the area to which we were traveling, only to find none listed on the website. We did find a church to attend, but it was not of the tradition that we were familiar with and will soon become pastors in. So my point, please post your worship times and keep them updated.

Over the past few years, one of the growing trends with blog-style sites has been the Podcast. Basically, the podcast is like a radio show that is shared over the internet and can be played at almost any time. In the case of the church, the podcast can be a sermon recorded and made available on the church website.

Now, some people may worry that making their sermons available through podcasting may lead to a replacement for attending church. While this may happen in a few cases, most of the time the podcast can be used to give visitors to your church website a "sneak preview" as to what your church is like. Through the podcast, visitors can check out your pastor's or pastors' preaching style and approach. It's almost a small kind of advertisement as to what your church is all about.

Secondly, the podcast can be very useful for keeping your church family together. For those with jobs who require them to miss the occasional service, they can keep up with sermon series or even announcements at your church. Even for those who are bound to their homes, such as the elderly, the podcast can be used to bring them the weekly sermon, either through the technology available to them in their homes or the sermons can be put on tape or CD and brought to them by anyone with access to the podcast.

As you can already see, the podcast can be a very powerful tool for your church website. For more information on podcasting, I encourage your to check out the following:

• Podcasting: helping the church move at the speed of technology
• Podcasting Your Church