First reason: “No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.” Too many churches operate on the assumption that they should be like the comfy little restaurants where you stumble across them, fall in love with them, get to know the regulars, and hope no one else discovers them because that would ruin the ambiance.
The church should be all about standing out where it can be seen. Some of the people who might come to your church will only look online. Now, that’s good enough reason for having a website right there. (And to the dour parish expert who says, “Oh, no one around here would do that,” the correct response is “By not making the parish perceptible online, you’ve already guaranteed that no one will.” Online access and broadband access are both increasing at a rate that itself indicates that someone you want to reach is looking for your parish online.)
Not only that, but (a) these are visitors who have already set out to find your parish in one way or another. They’re not just passing by, they aren’t getting up to go to the bathroom while your expensive cable-access commercial is on TV, they came looking for your church. And (b), many people who set about looking for a church online come from a body of our neighbors who are disproportionately underrepresented in church (in Episcopal churches I know of, anyway).
So by taking the simple step of putting a web page on an ISP somewhere, with directions, service times, and a non-repellent design, a church will significantly increase the likelihood of being available to a would-be visitor when that visitor comes looking. (Which would our hypothetical visitor prefer to encounter: a simple web page, or a voice mail phone chain?)
Second reason: Because part of the value of a web page is its constituting a public self-definition of a congregation. “This is who we are, and what we stand for.” That definition serves not only to invite (or fend off) visitors, but also to help the congregation recognize its own reflection in the mirror of the culture. Of course, that works better if the self-identification is clear and honest, which can’t be said of every website. But even a deceptive site plays that role to some extent, since it communicates to parishioners the message that their congregation is living a lie, even if that’s the way (uh huh uh huh) they like it.
Third reason: The attention that an effective web site requires grows from, develops, nourishes, articulates, and extends the very energies that contribute to vital parish life. A web site should be all about communication, quite public communication. A good site helps a congregation with an overview of what’s going on. It provides visitors with a sense of what kinds of people and interests they’re likely to meet. Whether you make available recorded selections from your music life or not, you can signal a lot that your visitor may care about by how you characterize a parish’s music life.
More reasons: An easily-constructed, frequently-updated web site expresses, generates, reflects, and encourages a conversational sense of what the congregation is about. A living congregation partakes of many of the characteristics of a good, long, satisfying conversation; why not permit those positive characteristics to show online?
I haven’t used the word “rural” yet — but I think all these apply to rural churches at least as much as (if not more than) suburban or urban churches. The need for deliberate information-spreading increases as the likelihood that you’ll spontaneously bump into another parishioner (or potential newcomer) on the street.
I’ll think of more reasons when I’ve had a good night’s sleep, and when I read the comments. Till then, that’s at least a start for my in-laws. Tomorrow I’ll try to look at my friend Holly’s church website and see whether I have anything useful to say about it. Goodnight, now!
Posted by AKMA at March 27, 2004 10:26 PM | TrackBackWhen we started at our home parish at the beginning of 1998, it didn't have internet access/email, much less a web page. By the end of the year, it had all of those things.
The rector though it would be "neat" to have a web site, as did the vestry, but I don't think they had a good idea why.
So a web site was created.
It started with ideas from the Society of Archbishop Justus, partially because I already knew Brian Reid (but only in passing.) It also drew from church web sites that were already around at the time.
It took about three months of organizing and prototyping and tinkering before it was soup. If a site has more than the bare minimum of information, it takes thought to make it all hang together.
The site ain't fancy - no scripting, no Flash, no Java, no fill-in-the-box prayer requests. It would be nice if it looked better, did more things. Right now, there's too much on the front page, and it needs to be reorganized. I should be re-implemented using a good authoring tool. But it's there, and six years later, it's still fairly regularly updated.
The parish is the closest Episcopal church to the Microsoft corporate campus. While we don't have many Microsoft folk in our midst, it's not for lack of a web presence. I know of instances where people came to our church BECAUSE of the web site.
Sorry this has gone on so long. I don't get to tell this story very often, but I feel some passion for this because it's my story.
So, if you wish to take a look, www.resurrectionbellevue.org is the place.
Posted by: Wes at March 28, 2004 12:34 AMOf course by contrast, a website that is horribly out of date also sends a message.
I'm rather pleased that our office staff has been able to find their way through MovableType fairly easily and can add/update their own entries, but just today I realized it had been about a month since we did anything with it (other than uploading sermons).
Still, it is an improvement over having the website say "Sunday school is off for the summer" when it was, in fact, October.
Fortunately the bar has been lowered enough that it is fairly easy for folks to update it, especially if one happens to have at least 1 tech-savvy person who can get the ball rolling. After that, it's just a matter of remembering to do it.
Oh, and rural? Yeah, I think the last census had us at a population of about 4200, but you never know when someone might move to the area.
As for the Microsoft folk not going to church, I will refrain from any unkind comments about their church attendance or potential for salvation... I won't even raise the question as to whether Bill actually did eBay his soul to the devil for 95% marketshare... I'll just say that it may have something to do with the 16-hour workdays.
[Truly kidding above: recently met some former Microsoft programmers who are about the nicest folks I have ever met. Sort of a paradigm shift for me, but I'll try to adjust...]
I will confess that I try to avoid checking out a church site I designed as XHTML Strict and WAI/Bobby accessible and then turned over to some well meaning folks who were not as well versed in web design standards and accessibility.
Thanks so much! This is enormously helpful to present to the skeptical. Pat
Posted by: Pat at March 28, 2004 04:49 AMWe have a tiny "living room church" in Yuma AZ. We also have a static website and a blog. In our case, the website and blog came first, before deciding to hold regular church services.
Posted by: Trudy W. Schuett at March 28, 2004 11:15 AMWhen we decided recently to find a new place to worship, the first thing we did was to check the web. We ruled out (perhaps unfairly) any church without a website. It just feels too risky to walk blind into a new place where you may not know anyone. If I feel this way as a 40-something, church-going person, I can only imagine how a young person, or someone who hasn't been to church in a long time (if ever) might feel.
Posted by: Kathy at March 28, 2004 11:53 AM"This sermon was recorded during the 11:15 am Worship Service of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, held at Central Synagogue"
http://www.fapc.org/sermons/sundaysermon.html
(I was sent a picture of a sign saying that Services of this church will be held at a Synagogue, and was asked if it was real or was it Photoshoped so I sent the person a link to this churces' website).
Posted by: Hanan Cohen at March 28, 2004 05:14 PMGreat Stuff! And of course every Church should have a website! The $30/mo is made up just by each memeber missing a coffee one day each month. But the initial reason you gave at the start is more true than you think. These NAmerican Christians are out for comfort and not exposure and they are all for winning souls to CHRIST, as long as it's the Pastor doing it. Sad. I believe that we are showing GOD how thankful we are for HIM Saving us from Hell, by the number of souls we win!! Maranatha!!!
Posted by: RayGunn at March 28, 2004 08:49 PMAre you aware of the blog Heal Your Church Website? He has a lot of good information as to how to have a church website that doesn't stink.
Posted by: Douglas at March 29, 2004 01:40 AMI started our church website a few years ago...was feeding pages with content from ONCLAVE which seems to have closed its doors. The best part of the are sermons ... Starting in 2000, weekly, to present. http://www.npcpearl.org .. I have begun posting sermons via Moveable Type. Problem is that the comments, which I've left open to allow some intelligent discussion are often used for spam.
Posted by: Sarah Chauncey at March 29, 2004 06:01 AMThanks, AKMA, for helping me to articulate the reasons more clearly!
Posted by: Holly at March 29, 2004 08:23 AMAKMA -
Thanks for writing this! I think the advice in this post can be applied to non-church groups as well. I've worked with a local charity in the past that has had difficulty keeping their website up-to-date. To some extent, I think it's a drag on membership, donations, and overall activity.
-Brian
Posted by: Brian St. Pierre at March 29, 2004 09:03 AMGreat post! I posted a link from my blog and went a little further to promote the idea of church RSS feeds:
http://www.tallent.us/CommentView.aspx?guid=210b5318-979a-4550-ab13-20555caca5c7
A web site. Churches.
How is it different from saying churches should have newsletters? Sure, there are a few differences in their media. But what are the essential differences?
There's a newsletter that you pin to you refrigerator for the calendar of events and updated phone numbers. Handy, useful, facts and figures.
Then there's the other kind. The newsletter you read in bed. The one that leaves you chuckling, maybe reflecting on it during your week. The one that makes you pick up the phone and call your friends, or someone you usually just see at services. The newsletter that changes your mind. The one that makes you proud. Or that provokes you to share a life story with those strangers in fellowship, making them less so.
Lord knows there are enough software tools to improve operational and organizational productivity. But reaching out for more abstract goals is much harder. Affiliation. Emotional engagement. Pedagogy. Institutional memory. Goal setting. Frame shifting. Play. Self awareness.
We get there through social artifices. Music. Theater. Dancing. Paintings. And verbal ones. Poetry. Prayer. Sermons. Testimony. Study. Debate. Parable and storytelling.
Cyberspace whisps away what economists call transaction costs. Want to do something? Doing it on the web lowers the time, effort, embarrasment, and cognitive burden. It can also reintermediate, and join people despite distance or time.
Metabloggers often talk about concentration of a writer's voice. One blogger can speak for the congregation in a newsletter or a web site. If you're lucky, an entire chorus of voices sing with and among each other, and they're heard out the window and into the street. And through that conversation, they redefine themselves, for themselves, and for those passing by. And in the rhythm and harmony lies an intimacy and the immediacy of things done together, bonding the singers in that moment, to that moment, to the text, and with each other.
If you're lucky, you get a feel for how to tell the stories of your congregation, and how to help your members overcome their fears and inhibitions to share their own.
Blog on.
Posted by: Phil Wolff at March 30, 2004 03:22 AMMy search for a church in Milwaukee has consisted solely of internet surfing. Unfortunately, the only places that I've been able to find are those massive, mega-churches that I'm not really interested in. So I agree, they should all have an easy-to-find webpage that briefly describes their congregation and their point of view.
Posted by: Adam Robinson at March 31, 2004 08:32 AM