Christian Web Resources

Introduced in Church Websites 101: Easy. Not Simple, we're now going to dig deeper into the strategies you can employ to build and maintain a more effective website for your church or ministry.

The easy fixes are things you have, or should have, direct control over - the content is yours. This is all about what you post online. Examine your topics, your schedule for posting and updating, the language you use and your presentation. Do it now and keep doing it - establish a discpline (be a disciple) for your ministry.

Point. Click, Type, Click. Drag, Drop. Share. Take a fresh look at your website - it might be easy, but it ain't simple! The number of easy-to-use site building and publishing tools is cllimbing, but the task of building and maintaining a good website is not getting any simpler. Until now.

The concepts are easily learned and, with proper discipline, you can have an effective, enjoyable website for your church.

Having a web strategy for your church is really a part of having a communications strategy for you church - your website is just one aspect of all your communications media. Even your web strategy will be broken into several components - a website, possibly a Facebook page and a Twitter account, maybe other online channels like YouTube and MySpace.

There are many pieces to your web strategy, but just having all the pieces doesn't mean they all fit together - yet!

Just like shaking the box won't assemble the jigsaw puzzle for you, you need to have a picture of how it will all fit together and then take steps to make it all happen. Today, we'll look at the pieces and the steps in the context of an overall strategy.

People are bombarded with information - radio, television, magazines, newspapers, text messages, email and social media updates. Despite all the noise, people are still starved for good information. How do you get heard above the noise? Contribute to the noise? Quantity does not guarantee quality.

The biggest factor in getting heard is actually saying something on a regular basis. Not just anything, but something of value - timely and relevant. I will bet you have something of importance to share with people, but you haven't used your website to share it. Or, by the time you did post it, the timeliness or relevance was lost.

'We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.' ~Aristotle

A conversation consists of more than 2 people talking - it also involves listening by all parties involved. What does this have to do with your church website? Everything!

Are you using your website as another vehicle for broadcasting your message, or are you also using it to listen to what others are saying? A recent study by LifeWay Research indicates the majority of churches (even those with fewer than 50 in attendance each week) maintain websites for their church. Yet, of those, only about 40% are actually engaging their members and visitors in conversations on their websites through features such as prayer requests.