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Church Planting, Technology & Culture
Ideas for Church Websites and using Technology on Mission
Author: D. Goodmanson27 Feb
ChurchBIT (a group of people who are involved in and passionate about how to use technology for the church) Here are some suggestions from discussions about ways to enhance a church website.
(1) Use stories in your community. Eg. Watermark Testimonies
(2) Allow people to participate in 'journal- like' responsive writing. Eg. a church 'reading through the Bible' plan (http://www.jointhejourney.com/).
The Journey" is a church-wide bible reading plan. Each day everyone who has joined the journey gets an email with a devotional that has been written by a member of the church. This has been going for about 3 years and I have seen a lot of fruit from this approach. This approach has fostered great discussion within our Body. With everyone reading the same passage everyday, there have been several opportunities for questions/difference perspectives. I like the continuity that this approach provides.I also think that the daily emails serve us a eAccountabilityPartner reminding you to get in the Word that day. Our church has a bi-monthly meeting that allows people to ask questions/process what they are reading in the "Journey."
(3) Find the right social networking sites to participate in. Eg. The Rock ISU
Our ministry (rockisu.com ) is focused primarily on college students at Iowa State University. We have a reputation for "out advertising Coca-cola" as far as flyers, etc, but we rarely see visitors show up simply because they saw a flyer. Flyers tend to act as a name-recognition driver (ask most people around our campus of 28,000, and they have heard of the Rock, even though our average attendance is only "130-give-or-take-20"), and event reminder for most people.
However, advertising events using Facebook, there have been several times we've seen folks with no other connection come to check The Rock out.
In the next couple of weeks, I am going to lead an advertising charge using Facebook, and attempt to track results by measuring average attendance over a couple of weeks and comparing it with pre-advertising numbers. I'm also going to try to randomly sample new folks to get an idea of how they heard about the event.
Join ChurchBit to participate in these discussions. Members include the founders of Church Marketing Sucks , Godbit, MyChurch Blog Ministry, Beta Church, Strategic Digital Outreach, Ekklesia 360, and the list goes on…
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Drew Goodmanson
Drew is an elder/pastor at Kaleo Church and CEO of Monk Development. Kaleo is a church planting movement in San Diego. Drew spends much of his time thinking about church planting strategy, web missiology and being a husband and father of two (Gideon & Roman). More about Drew Goodmanson.
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3 Responses for "Ideas for Church Websites and using Technology on Mission"
One of the enhancements to occur in 2007 to our Park Community Church site is an Alumni page. We are a city church of about 1,500 folks 20-45 years old right in the heart of the northside of Chicago on the lakefront. Because of the natural transience of the city, we see anywhere from 15% -30 % of our congregation cycle out every 1-3 years. While this can be disheartening at times, it is awesome to know we have equipped folks to be lights for the kingdom in other cities and countries. So we are going to celebrate that fact on our website with an alumni page, showing where God is using Park “alumni” to be lights for the kingdom. We currently know of alumni in 11 countries and about 35 states. Let me know if this resonates with any of you….
Steve - Sounds interesting. What is happening on the alumni pages?
I heavily researched social networking sites to post our events on…and came up discouraged. I looked at facebook, evite, and mypunchbowl.
Facebook
Good looking layout
Social networking and event planning
Everyone that wants to rsvp must sign up for a facebook acct.
Tried it for a recent event. No one used it b/c they had to sign up for an acct
Evite
Most options
Horrible looking
Mypunchbowl
Nice layout
Very quick and easy to use
Don’t think attenders need to sign up for an account
Attenders can’t view the rsvp list. Only the host.
A lot of our people like to be able to see who’s coming (so they’re not the only ones there) :)
After being burned on facebook, decided just to have signup sheets in the back of church. That doesn’t work too well either (even after an announcement in church) unless you grab people and personally invite them to sign up. Why’s it so hard to get people to commit in our culture! :)
Venting ends here.
Thx,
Jeff
New Valley Church
Phoenix, AZ
http://www.kriegs.org
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