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.

• 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!

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!

In case you missed it… you can get a $15 discount off the admission price for the Cultivate Conference coming up at Park on October 27 (discount now-Oct 6) and I’m giving away 3 one-year subscriptions to COLLIDE magazine. There’s a rather epic giveaway coming soon, but for today, I want to take a minute to thank my sponsors!

FellowshipOne is a fantastic resource for church management. I pushed to get it at my former church and was stoked when I came on staff at Park and found out they were using it. F1 provides excellent people management and great tools to help people give and pay for events online; we use it for children’s check-in and more! They are offering a free 30-Day trial if you’d like to check it out for your church. Click here for more info.

Is it time to upgrade your church website? As we shopped around for someone to redesign Park’s website we knew we needed a solid content management system. After searching for awhile we landed with Ekklesia360. They have provided an excellent CMS for us and helped us develop a web presence that has gotten some attention. But more than that, our site has been incredibly effective and helped us communicate and get information to people in a seamless way.

I totally encourage you if you are shopping around to consider doing a demo with them to see what they have to offer. We’ve recently teamed with Ekklesia and CHANGEffect for a new web design we will be unveiling soon. And part of the new site will be the integration of a new product Ekklesia has designed called the Cobblestone Community Network. It will be a social networking site for Park that will enable us to help create community and connection for people in our church, online. I’m very excited about it!

Thanks to FellowshipOne, Ekklesia360 and all of the other advertisers on here for helping make this little blog possible. Interested in advertising on here? Click here for details.

Stay tuned for the EPIC Giveaway… more details coming soon!

I Tweeted about a week ago that I think September is the new January, especially in the church world… how do you all feel about that?

I don’t know about your churches, but at Park, September is when we officially kick off the ministry year. Summer is a major down time for us in the city… people are on vacation or just outside enjoying the three reasons why most people live in Chicago: June, July, and August.

So, September, rather than January has become our natural “reset” for the ministry year.

For me, it’s shaping up to be a wild month for a few reasons…

1 – I’m moving.
I’m moving from Lincoln Park to Wicker Park. From the land of the preppy “Chads” and “Trixies” to Hipsterville, I’m moving across town and I’m really excited. Wicker Park is an awesome neighborhood that has a lot of diversity and it’s literally like moving to a whole new city. So much to explore and experience, and I’m confident there’s new opportunities to minister. Catch is: I don’t move in my new place until September 15 and I have to be out of my place today… so today commences 15 days of couch surfing at some different places. Should be exciting!

2 – Park’s new website + Social Networking site launch.

It’s true.  A year after a major website overhaul we are going to launch Park 2.0 in late September. We had a winning team working on the redesign… CHANGEffect on the design and Ekklesia360 on the implementation and CMS. We’re also excited to be one of the first churches to implement the Cobblestone Community Network, a resource I really is going to help the church be the church in MASSIVE ways! More on blog entries on why the change, the process and design coming soon! (And, bonus… we’ll be launching a mobile site, too!)

3 – My first speaking gig.

I posted about this last week but my first speaking gig on the topic of church communications is right around the corner. I’ll be presenting a workshop called Do-it-Yourself Church Communications at MinistryCOM. Super excited. REGISTER! BE THERE!!!

4 – Innovate

So excited for Innovate at Granger Community Church. It’s seriously one of the best experiences for your team. Hear from some of the best and see a church that’s doing some incredible things that are making a huge impact for Christ. The thing I love about Innovate is that you don’t just hear ideas, you see them in action and get a hear the heart behind it all.
And if all that weren’t enough don’t get me started on October… Catalyst, Cultivate, and Story.

(By the way… what’s with all the cool kid conferences being one word?)

I’ll post Drew’s notes on this when I get them, they will be more accurate than mine!

Are church websites effective tools for outreach and evangelism?

• John 17:18… as you have sent them into the world so I have sent them into the world.
• Facebook is now the “5th largest nation in the world.”
• The world is online so we need to be.
• 64% of wired Americans have used the internet for spiritual or religious purposes. – Pew Research Study
• 0.17% (1 person) said they were not a Christian and influenced to go to the church as a result of visiting the church website.
• 60 million Americans say they use the Internet to make big decisions.
• 6% of churches have Gospel presentation on their websites.
• At present, church websites are ineffective tools of evangelism.
• One possible reason… if you’re not a Christian, you’re not going to go to a church website to learn about God.

How are people finding the church website?

• On average, 25% are on a search looking for it.
• 43% are direct.
• 30% are clicking on a referral.
• What does search hits mean? Non-Christians are finding your site.
• Direct traffic typically means its people in your church, who know.
• The search represents the content of your site and how well it’s laid out.
• The higher the direct traffic, the higher the community involvement
• Referral means your online presence elsewhere.

During usability studies, 88% of web users went to a search engine first to accomplish a task.

Traditional church marketing has its message and you hope it connects with the person’s situation… online searches allow us the opportunity to be a “just in time” church based on what people are searching for.

• Life change – reach people when they need the church the most. (depression, marriage, health, death, illness, transition).
• Think about your town and how you can optimize the life changes people face in your community.
• People stay on a page for about 45 seconds… what are you going to do with that time?
• What are you going to do with the traffic that comes to your web? (Wherever it comes from!)
• Church websites are an effective tool for reaching Christians.
• 16% of people say that the church website is the first time they heard about the church
• #1 area people went on websites for information for new people… how are you thinking for that population?
• Many churches are creating websites for internal purposes, but what are you doing to connect people on the outside.

There’s three populations of people who visit your church website: visitors, beginners (3-6 months), and regulars (6+ months).

• 30% of people who were new to the church said the website is where they learn about the church.
• 77% said the church website was very important in making the decision of whether they were going to visit your church or not.
• A church’s website is people’s first filter to find a church.
• Spend your homepage connecting with first-time visitors and new people to your church.

Triperspectival Design

• Normative
• Existential
• Situational

• What do you want to communicate about your vision?
• What behaviors do you want the visitors to imitate?
• 82% of beginners say the website was important in their participation in the church community.
• 45% said it was important for their spiritual growth.
• 73% said the website was helpful in their evangelism efforts.
• 76% of regulars said the web was still important in their involvement in their church community.
• 47% said it was an active part of their spiritual growth and discipleship.
• 52% of regulars said it was important in sharing their faith.
• 82% of regulars visit the church website at least once a week.

Web Development – Developing a Church Web Strategy

• Internet Presence Management – how and what is your presence online? We have to develop a strategy and lead our people that way, or people will be all over the place. Where are your people online? What are they using? Is all your info on Facebook? Google Groups, etc? Think about the principal issues and how you’re going to accomplish them.
• Website Development - what behaviors do you want from people?
• Community Development - how are you going to engage your community? How do you create space for community online and use Facebook missionally?
• Church Management - online donations, event registration, etc.

—
Monk Development and a number of other faith-based media outlets are sponsoring a study of the Church online… looking at how churches are using and interacting with social media and the web. [Check out Drew's blog for more.]

Some results they found…

• 51% of participating churches are on Facebook
  - Churches are using Facebook as an extension of their church.
  - More informational, used more as communications vehicle, less of a community building presence.
• Limited use of MySpace, Second Life, GoogleGroups, etc.
• 21% on Twitter
• A small number are using a members portal or private community site (Unifyer, TheCommon.org, 360Hubs, etc).
• 82% of surveyed churches didn’t even know about the different products out there.
• Encourage your church to register your church name on different social media outlets so you have rights to your name.
• Church networking and community sites have made little inroads into the church.
• A problem with all of the different avenues out there is that there’s not a collected, central spot to communicate from… especially if your church is not leading the way and providing a consistent platform for people to use.

Social Media Desires
What feature/funcationality are people in our churches looking for from our church websites?

• Event Sign-up/RSVP’s.
• Post Prayer Requests.
• Connect People to Service Opportunities.
• Connect with Small Groups.
• Integration with church website.
• Resource sharing.
• Ability to access TV/phone directory.

Congregations didn’t care about:

• blogging
• ability to post classifieds
• ability to post photos in photo galleries
• ability to post jobs

Most mainstream social networking sites do no offer churches the seamless solutions they seek.

Questions to Ask on Building Community

1. Is virtual community real community?
2. What is Biblical community? How are we living out Biblical community in a real way?
3. How can technology assist in this process? It can assist, but it cannot replace. It must drive people into real relationships.

Discipleship

1. How many of you feel like you have been discipled online? Online discipleship is a dangerous thing when it’s done outside of real life relationships. It’s more than courses, training and learning… it’s about relationships.
2. How can technology assist this process? There are tools and resources we can use to communicate and enhance discipleship.

Most church online media is used for communication, contact, event and small group management, etc. Primarily focused on “us” and not focused on the individual and not contributing to building community, connecting people, etc.

Top challenges of using social media in churches.

• Amount of effort required
• Identifying appropriate goals/ROI
• Fostering real community
• Cultural resistance from congregation or church leadership.

For more information about the State of the Church Online Study, click here.

Also, check out the Cobblestone Community Network, a new tool designed to help the Church be the Church, online… designed by Drew + his team at Ekklesia360.