Web Pages as an Essential for Church Growth

This just in - web pages are an essential part of growing churches, per an article from Agape Press titled:  Church Websites -- Now a Luxury?  Perhaps a necessary outreach in near future.

The article cites several pieces of research from several sources, with much information coming from George Barna.  Among other things, this article notes that :

According to Ellison Research, almost 90 percent of churches that typically have 200 or more people attending worship on Sunday morning have a website. That compares with 60 percent of mid-size churches (100-199 people) and 28 percent of small churches.

And:

Ron Sellers, president of Ellison Research, acknowledges the probable reasons behind the disparity, but also offers a word of caution.

"Small churches often don't have the budget to pay for technology, or the staff or volunteers to implement it," he says. "[But] the increased use of technology in churches has a real potential to widen the gap even further between small churches and medium or large congregations."

Furthermore:

Why the concern about something as commonplace -- or as "worldly," some might say -- as a website? Sellers suggests it may be a matter of what today's church-goers are beginning to expect in this age of information accessibility.

"[P]astors need to take a hard look at where technology might no longer be a matter of style or a luxury for the congregation, but an expectation," he says. He says it is "amazing" that one out of four medium and large churches do not have a web presence -- "particularly with many churches trying to figure out ways of attracting younger people, who are particularly likely to use the Internet to gather information and explore their options."

Such a consideration could be critical to a church that wants to graduate from the "small" category to the "mid-size," or from the "mid-size" to the "large." For example, Barna noted in 2001 that teens -- typically more computer-savvy than the older generations -- have a "very different profile of cyber faith interests" than their elders. He found that "activities such as reading devotional passages online and submitting prayer requests were of much greater interest to younger people."

Those are all very interesting things and I would like to add a few more thoughts. 

Back in 2000 or 2001 a couple of my fellow pastors went to a Barna seminar where he was sharing some of the same things as are cited by this article.  They came back saying that Barna was suggesting that what we needed was a cyber-pastor.   Looks like Barna was right about these trends.

However, with the explosion of blogging the internet itself looks very different than it used to.  I got started blogging after reading Biz Stone''s book Blogging, and one of the points he made is that the static web page is on its way out, to be replaced by dynamic web content.  This is one of the reasons for the explosion of blogging - it is dynamic, whereas the traditional web page is static.  Stone pointed out that the most popular of the traditional web pages (think Amazon and ESPN) are very dynamic things. Every time you come to Amazon or ESPN there is different content.  This is why people keep coming back.  When you come to Amazon or ESPN there is not only dynamic content, but there is interactivity with opportunities to participate in polls and do book reviews and things like that. 

Blogs have taken the best of the traditional web page and have improved upon them.  Blogs are content driven, are dynamic and are interactive.  And, as Hugh Hewitt said in his book
In But Not Of, blogs "represent the most important communications development of the new century."  I don't have Hugh's new book, Blog, yet, but according to Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost:

In explaining the twenty-first century “information reformation” Hewitt compares it to the sixteenth century’s Protestant Reformation. While many others have compared blogging to the invention of the printing press, Hewitt delves into the history of the event and shows how a young monk named Luther used the new technology to transform Western culture. In doing so he revives an often overused metaphor and gives it new life, making a convincing case that 2005 really is “1449 and 1517, at the same moment.”

I bring all of this up to say that this article is great but it may not go far enough.  In my limited experience, the church continually stays about 10 years or more behind the curve of technology and communication.  When they were in the planning stages of MTV, George Grant got wind of it and encouraged some of the big CCM types of the time to look into that as a means of getting their message out and they pooh-poohed it.  So MTV took off and Christians came to the party well after it started.  Similarly, when the internet arrived on the scene back in the 90's there were the usual Christians who figured this was one more step on the way to the mark of the beast, a very few early adopters whom the rest figured were wasting their time, and the majority couldn't see any way that this would be helpful to ministry. 

Today, most of those who pooh-poohed and shunned the internet are using the internet, and as this article says, most of the growing churches now have web pages.  However, most church websites still use the older static webpage version which, if Biz Stone is correct, is on its way out.  The ChangeThis site has a manifesto called The One Minute Site which says that the old model of the "Homepage" is a sacred cow which must be killed.  Their thesis is that most websites take the form of an electronic brochure about the company.  They are there to pass on information to customers.  However, in today's world most websites have one minute or less to connect with a viewer and the traditional homepage won't enable that.  These folks say the following:

Your site must create a relationship between your potential clients and those in charge
in your company. Nothing else counts.

But the Web providers want to make you believe that instead of doing this honest job,
your site should take on the embarrassing role of a telematics charlatan.

Start thinking about your site’s real job. Get it into your head
that it must be a catalyst able to create a pleasant business
dialogue between you and your potential clients.

I don't know what these folks mean by the word "telematic," but I get the idea that they are contrasting web sites which dispense information with those that build relationships and create dialogue. 

And this is where the web is now.  A few years ago, web sites were artistic showcases where the site with the nicest graphics were the best.  I can remember seeing an article on the "flash revolution," or something like that, saying that Macromedia Flash was the wave of the future because of all it could do.  Flash is still great and there are still alot of great flash things out there on the internet, but the internet is becoming far more content and community driven than graphic driven.  Flash may look nice but it doesn't deliver content and doesn't create community.  This is what blogs do - they deliver content and build community.

So, getting back to the article that started this, I would go a step further and say that churches that want to get on the web need to go to more of a blog driven format.  Unfortunately, remembering the 10 year lag, most churches today don't see the value of blogs.  I often get the same reactions to my blogging today that I got to using AOL and reading e-mail back in the 90's - what's the use, why the waste of time? 

But if this article is correct in saying that growing churches will make good use of the web, then I would say that the churches that make the best use of the web will go to more of a blog driven format.

So, here's a few suggestions:

1. Change your church web page to a blog page.  Most churches web pages are of the "brochure" model and, though they communicate information they really don't build community.  You can still put links on the sidebar to all of the "brochure" type stuff, but let the heart of the web page be a blog that stays constantly updated.  I can envision such a page having a small, static welcome message at the top of the page, followed by blog entries that will build community.  Make sure to allow commenting on everything and make sure that someone reads the comments and responds.

2. Instead of having a "cyber-pastor" get all staff members to maintain a blog either linked from the church's "homepage" or somewhere on their own.

3.  Look to the Heal Your Church Website blog for ongoing information and inspiration.  Start with The Seven Deadly Sins of Church WebSite Design.

4. Don't look at a church website as another church growth technique.  The internet, and particularly the blogosphere is becoming a means of community building.  Those teens and others that Barna mentioned are looking for spiritual substance and community not gimmicks and sales jobs.  For a challenging view of things check out Tim Bednar's We Know More Than Our Pastors, which says that blogs are the vanguard of the new "participatory church."

5. Don't forget that there are still vast numbers of folks out there who are not technologically savvy.  As I read and write about this kind of stuff I get excited, but most of the folks in my church aren't nearly as excited.  In fact, I would say that, having been on staff in three churches over the past 10 years, well over 90% of the people in the churchs really don't care much about the latest and greatest happenings on the internet.  Face to face ministry is still the bread and butter of the church so it needs to be the bread and butter of all we do. 

6. Keeping #5 in mind, don't forget what was said in the Agape News article - people are using the internet more and more to learn about churches.  Wise use of the internet will be that which facilitates much face to face ministry.

Hat tip: Evangelical Underground