All posts tagged Ekklesia360

We Recycled Our Old Website

Last fall, in partnership with MonkDev/Ekkelsia360, Park Community Church donated our old website design to a church plant that needed a solid web presence.

Our old site design was great but we had outgrown it. You can read more about the backstory here.


Instead of letting our old site go, we wanted to do something with it that could help build another church’s web presence and that’s where the idea for giving it away was born. After talking with Drew Goodmanson and his team at MonkDev we agreed to find a church plant that was in its final stages of being launched and bless them with the gift of a website. Park donated our old site design and MonkDev donated their time to help make the site customized to the church as well as donating a free year of service on CMS.

Over 30 different churches applied and in the end we selected 2 Pillars Church in Lincoln, Nebraska, to receive our website. They had been using WordPress very effectively, but definitely needed to get a solid web presence as they began to spread the word to their community about their church.

2 Pillars will be holding their first public service this weekend and with it have officially launched their new website!

Huge thanks to MonkDev/Ekklesia360 for making this possible! To 2 Pillars, we pray for God to continue to bless your ministry and hope this website helps you effectively communicate and spread the word about what God is doing in Lincoln.

In all of this, let me say this: sometimes it’s OK to recycle. Recycling is different than copying. Recycling maintains some original properties but recycled material can take on new forms. In this case, you can see echoes of Park’s old site, but it’s now something completely different that better suits the needs of 2 Pillars Church.

If you’ve seen something work somewhere else or are inspired by something you’ve seen… don’t copy, recycle. Reshape and reform what you see to fit the needs of your unique context.

Coast-to-Coast Tour!

On Saturday I’m embarking on a coat-to-coast tour… kind of…

  • June 5 – I fly to Charleston, South Carolina. This will be my first time in Charleston… I’m excited. I’m going to hang with my friend and former Park-er, Zhenya, who is about to open a baby boutique called Sugar Snap Pea.
  • June 6 – I’ll be checking out at Seacoast Church and hanging with Shawn Wood.
  • June 7 – I’m participating in a Dream Session with some brilliant minds at Water Missions International.
  • June 8 – I fly to San Diego and get to meet my new nephew Raef!
  • June 9 – Hanging with Drew Goodmanson and his team at Ekklesia360.
  • June 10 – Road tripping to Orange County for the Saddleback Conversation Gathering featuring Rick & Kay Warren, Jim Belcher, Soong Chan Rah, Skye Jethani and more. The focus of the conversation will be The Future of the Global Church. We’ll be talking about the future church, next generation leaders, and what it all means! There’s still a few spots left, so if you are in or near LA, sign up! If you can’t make it, this will be the first Conversation Gathering that will be broadcasted LIVE online from 7-9 PM (PST)! Deets here.
  • June 11-13 – Back in San Diego getting some R&R and hitting up the beach!
  • June 14 – I’ll be back on the ground in Chicago and will be a part of the Story Unfolding webcast amping up for the Story Conference. You don’t want to miss it!

So all of that to say I have a busy week ahead of me and also to let you know if you’re in the Charleston area or near San Diego or LA, I’d love to connect! Drop me a line and we’ll see what we can arrange!

We’re Giving Our [Old] Website Away

Websites are the front door to your church.

When people move into a community and are looking for a church, they go to Google, not the YellowPages. Having a good web presence is detrimental to whether or not people will choose to come one of your services.

The experience you create online is just as important as the experience people have when they walk through your doors.

When I started on staff at Park, our original website was good but it wasn’t great…

We knew we needed a new site that would better communicate who we were and accurately reflected that we were a young, urban church.

We searched around for a company to help us redevelop our web presence and landed with Ekklesia360.

There were so many reasons why we chose to partner with them, the main reason being that they were constantly thinking of new ideas, designing new applications [like the Cobblestone Community Network], and seemed to be the ones thinking about how to create simple, yet effective web solutions.

In June of 2008 we launched a new website with Ekklesia360  [check out Park 1.0 here].

The new site was a hit. It was featured as one of the Top 90 Church Websites by ChurchRelevance.com, was featured on a few design blogs, and was even stolen by one church [that was a fun time].

But, change and adaptability are some keywords for us at Park … even more so since around the time we launched our new site we also killed our weekly bulletin.

Our website was no longer just an accessory, it was a necessity.

A year after launching our new site, we knew it was time to redesign, so we went back to the drawing board and launched Park 2.0 in October of 2009.

Our old site is a great website, but not for what we needed it to do for us… and we know that for some church out there it would be a perfect fit.

So, that’s why I am excited to let you know that in partnership with Monk Development/Ekklesia360, we’re going to give our old website away to a church plant.

If you are a church plant that needs to establish a solid web presence and don’t have the resources or finances to make it happen, this is an opportunity for you to get a solid web design and 1 year of support and hosting with the Ekklesia360 Content Management System.

To enter, simply leave a comment, sharing a bit about who you are, where your church is/will be, and the vision of your church.

We’ll be accepting entries now through Friday, February 26. Myself and Drew Goodmanson, the CEO of Monk Development/Ekklesia360 will pick the winner and announce them on my blog on Friday, March 5.

Not-so-Fine Print…

1. You get the site as-is. Monk Development will insert your logo at no charge. All images on the site can be changed with the CMS.

2. Don’t like the colors? Colors can be modified for a one-time fee of $500.

3. You’ll get one free year of hosting and a subscription to the Ekklesia360 CMS. You are responsible for normal rates after the first year (currently $50/month or $75/month if you’d like to integrate the Cobblestone Community Network).

4. Monk Development retains ownership of the design/code for the website.

5. This offer is for one church plant and is valid for 90 days.

Spread the word!

*UPDATE March 8* Winner will be announced soon!

The Evolution of the Park Website

The full story, process, and strategy coming soon… in the meantime, check out the all-new parkcommunitychurch.org.

webjune08

2.0

3.0