Developing Your Church Website
Websites are the new "front door" to churches - if you do not have a well-designed website, you risk failing to connect with your mission field. Below, we outline the basic parts of a website. If you would like more information on web design, contact Rev. Cameron Trimble.
Adversace, Inc. is an Atlanta-based marketing company that offers their services to churches. They have developed pricing packages for the churches of the Southeast Conference which are notably below retail price. Their sercives are extensive and include:
- Branding and Identity
- Website Development
- Web Hosting
- Custom Publications
- Marketing Programs
- Educational Workshops
If you would like to know more about Adversace, Inc. or are interested in using their services, contact Rev. Cameron Trimble.
Technology Articles
Message Boards and Forums
By: Bridget Starr
Message boards and forums serve two broad purposes on a congregational web site: They can help you get work done, and they can help you build community.
On the work side, just about any committee or organized group within the congregation can use a message board to extend its productive capacity.
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Summarize issues to be considered by the committee and provide links to additional resources
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Allow longer term contributions to discussions, especially from people who may have mobility issues, or find it difficult to make a scheduled meeting
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Keep a record of the ongoing conversation, making it easy to refer back days (or months) later
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Integrate with other tools, such as polls or surveys, allowing you to get a snapshot of member opinions or even take a vote on line.
Community can also be enhanced with the use of message board or forum tools. It doesn’t replace face to face contact, of course, but it provides more opportunities for interaction among members and the community at large.
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People who already have an ongoing, personal relationship, as members of a congregation do, can use the convenience of an online meeting place to deepen and extend their relationships. Forum topics can be anything from “How should our congregation reduce its greenhouse gas contributions,” to “Who wants to go to a movie next Saturday?”
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Not everyone is comfortable making small talk in coffee hour. A virtual coffee hour may stimulate increased participation from some folks who otherwise might keep silent. Some young people – particularly boys and young men – are often much more comfortable interacting online than face to face. A message board can be a door opener.
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A public forum or board can also provide access to members of the community at large to get involved with your congregation. It’s a low-barrier, low-threat way of checking you out and seeing if they might like to actually come meet you in person.
In order to capitalize on these opportunities, you need to pay attention to two different areas: the functionality of the forum tools you select, and the resources you commit to helping build community.
We’ve uses “message board” and “forum” interchangeably here, and they do have a lot in common. A message board is usually an entry level product with limited functionality. It can be helpful, but to make serious use of the application you’ll want a more fully-featured tool which will probably be described as a forum.
Some features to look for include registration and confirmation, moderation, topic organization, notification or subscription, and spam protection.
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Registration and confirmation means you have the ability to require that members register with a valid email address before they’re allowed access to your forum. It ensures that you have a way of contacting all contributors.
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Moderation gives you the option of having a moderator review all posts before they become public. This may not be necessary for message boards restricted to members of your congregation, but can be useful with public forums.
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Topic organization is one of the features that may distinguish a forum from a simple board. A Message board may allow you only a single list of topics. A forum more often provides a way of collecting similar topics within themes.
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Notification or subscription means you can set up some way of being notified by email when someone makes a contribution to a topic you’re following. It’s an important tool to help keep the conversation going.
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Spam protection may be built into the registration system or it may be an additional component. Robots roam the web looking for unprotected forums that they can register for and then fill with unwanted messages, from insurance sales to… well, you know. A “capcha” system, which ensures that the entity filling out the registration is actually a human being, is an important feature.
Finally, “If you build it, will they come?”
No, actually, they won’t. Community on the web – like community in the congregation – can be a maddeningly difficult thing to nurture and grow. It takes consistent attention and encouragement. Here are some tips:
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Start small, with only a few topics, and grow as your community increases. Pick an area where your chances of success are high. Maybe it’s a committee with a complex, important job to do; maybe it’s an issue that is engaging your congregation and motivating people to express their views. Maybe it’s a group of adult members seeking ways to mentor the congregation’s youth. Maybe it’s a mission project where people are geographically dispersed and need a tool like this so they can organize and communicate. Maybe it’s all of the above.
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Develop an ongoing communications plan to support your forums. Use bulletin announcements and ads, messages in email, prominent links on the congregational web site, skits during worship. It takes time for a new forum to work its way into your members’ consciousness. Keep at it.
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As the community begins to form online, find ways to bring it back into the life of the gathered community. Quote interesting forum posts in your newsletters or use them in homilies, for example.
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Recruit a team of resource people to act as forum moderators and help build community. This is not an IT job (though the team members will need to be well versed in how the forums function, so they can provide help where ever it’s needed). It’s a welcoming and encouraging job. Make sure your moderators understand that their job is not to ‘police’ the forum but to encourage participation. Encourage, encourage, encourage.
Bridget Starr, of Lightworks New Media, is Senior Client Relationship Manager for the FaithStreams Network, which offers online service to enhance congregational communication, build online communities and fund ministries. Contact Bridget at bstarr@faithstreams.com or visit www.webmedley.com for more information.
Blogging
A blog is your easy-to-use web site, where you can quickly post thoughts, interact with people, and more. All for FREE.
A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world.
Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules.
In simple terms, a blog is a web site, where you write stuff on an ongoing basis. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what's new. Then they comment on it or link to it or email you. Or not.
Since Blogger was launched in 1999, blogs have reshaped the web, impacted politics, shaken up journalism, and enabled millions of people to have a voice and connect with others.
And we're pretty sure the whole deal is just getting started.
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