All posts tagged web

The Truth About Church Websites and Effective Online Outreach

by Tim Schraeder on 07/30/2009 in Church Communications, Echo 09, Notes, Principles, Social Media, Web & Email with 3 Comments
  • Drew has a passion to help churches use technology to do outreach, build community and advance the Gospel.
  • 2,600 churches use Monk Development technology.

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.

Using Technology without Technology Using You

by Tim Schraeder on 07/30/2009 in Church Communications, Echo 09, Notes, Principles, Resources, Social Media, Web & Email with 1 Comment

John Dyer lives in Irving, TX with his beautiful wife and awesome new son. He works at Dallas Seminary as the director of web development (meaning “main code guy”) where he also earned a theology degree. He is actively involved in several open source web projects, builds ministry resources such as www.bestcommentaries.com, and blogs about technology and faith atwww.donteatthefruit.com.

—

  • Just for fun: John’s full name is John Charles Dickey Dyer
  • One of the worst things you can do is imagine that technology is neutral.
  • There’s to camps… tech lovers and tech haters.
  • Both sides use the word “change”
  • Tech lovers say it will “change” for good.
  • Tech haters say it will “change” for the worse.
  • It’s hard to balance our use of technology.
  • Humans make tools…. our tools make us.
  • What we create has influence back on us.
  • We become the things that we behold.
  • Psalm 1 … if we sit with those who are righteous we become righteous.
  • We tend to believe that about many things, but not about our use of technology.
  • Technology is an extension of humanity.
  • Technology can be an amputation of humanity.

Evolution of New Technology

  • Excitement – “YES! I got a shovel!”
  • Difficulty – After you use it, you get blisters
  • Transformation – You get stronger as a result of using it.

What kind of tool do you want to become?

  • Tech Crunch publishers 1,881,152 words per year… more than the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare, Moby Dick, etc.  combined.
  • We don’t  read blogs like we read books, we scan.
  • Content doesn’t matter… we’ve cultivated the skill of scanning text on the screen… much different than reading it in a book.
  • Content doesn’t matter, technology does.

Technology often has unintended effects. Most of us don’t think a lot about those effects. We just use what we’re told to use… whatever comes along and what’s new. Do we really need it?

Ages of Technology

  • Oral – community memorizes common information.
  • Print – logical individuals. (aka… The Bible is true. The Bible says God exists. Therefore, God exists). Many of our beliefs rest on rationale before faith.
  • Image – emotional story tellers. We are surrounded by images… we tend to think of how to emotionally convey things with story, instead of logic. That’s the technology we use today.
  • Machine – tireless producers. We became what we beheld… machines worked hard, we should work hard.
  • Computer – data gatherers.
  • Interwebs – loosely re-connected community?

There’s a world of disconnection and reconnection that happens with technology. If someone bothers us, we can block or unfriend them. We have switches.

What the Scripture says about Technology

  • The story moves from the garden to the city.
  • Who made the stuff in the city?
  • Our human creativity is written into the story.
  • What we create plays into the story.
  • The First Technology in the Bible: clothing (Genesis, Adam & Eve).
  • Rebels against God – expresses Imago Dei
  • God’s Imago Dei is reflected in our creativty.
  • Redeems the effects of the Fall – Foreshadows His return.
  • Cain and the City – Cain builds a city, a place that’s alternate from the garden. (Gen 4)
  • All the people who made tools and art came from Cain’s city.
  • Jesus and the Cross – Jesus was a carpenter. From his job we get the word “technology.” The very tool He worked with was the tool He died on.
  • God and the new City – God recreates everything and redeems it.
  • God redeems human works.
  • We offer redemption through what we create but it can’t compare to what God will give us.

New Testament

  • Paul constantly expressed his desire to be with people.  (2 Tim 1:4)
  • John didn’t want to use technology, but he did! (2 John 1:12)
  • They used technology when they couldn’t be present with people.

Technology should help us stay connected when we can’t be face-to-face with people. Being face-to-face matters. Community sometimes sucks. Being face to face means you have to have a commitment to people you don’t decide to be with. Online community is a different kind of community.

Using Technology without Technology Using You

  1. Deny the premise. You can’t use technology without it affecting you.
  2. Experiment with Technology. Do something different. (Ill: Don’t take a Bible to church, just sit and listen… experience it differently.)
  3. What do I want to cultivate? What do you want to get? What does it require for me to be “good” at it? Is that something you want?
  4. Work both through and against technology. Jesus came as a Jew… he fully absorbed the culture to be with them. At the same time, He worked against them, He condemned things they do. We have to be incarnate like Jesus was… meaning we work through and against our technological culture.
  5. Use technology as a means, not an end. We use a car as a means to get to an end. Or, we get a crazy awesome car… and use it so owning it is the end, the goal.
  6. Create for a new world. All we create, all we do should be for eternity… for something that’s lasting.
  7. Become a tool. Influence others for the glory of God. Be a tool He can use.

Beyond the Web 2.0 Noise: How to use the Internet to Disciple & Create Real Community

by Tim Schraeder on 07/29/2009 in Church Communications, Echo 09, Notes, Social Media, Web & Email with 1 Comment

Drew Goodmanson serves as CEO of Monk Development and is co-founder/pastor at Kaleo Church. Monk is an internet strategy and development company. Drew often speaks at conferences about how churches can use the internet, his blog is recognized as one of the Top Church Blogs, he wrote a chapter in Voices of the Virtual World: Participative Technology and the Ecclesial Revolution and his company’s services are used by thousands of churches and ministries. Kaleo Church is a missional community, multi-site church planting movement in San Diego, CA. Drew spends much of his time thinking about church planting, web missiology and blogs about it at goodmanson.com.

—
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.

So What Else Has Been Going On?

by Tim Schraeder on 06/09/2009 in Chicago, Church Communications, Park, Personal with 1 Comment

Well besides my little Twabbatical, I’ve been busy the past month or so… here’s
a quick rundown on things I would have Twittered or blogged about…

A Month in 10 Points…

1 – Our website was stolen. Park’s website was stolen by another church. Like for real. It was a valuable experience in learning that imitation can be the most sincerest form of flattery.

2 – I joined an amazing gym. Already said that in my previous post but for real, it’s awesome. I love it… the staff… the vibe. I don’t feel like I’m going to gym, I feel like I’m going to a club. Me and the elliptical are BFF.

3 – Story was announced. So excited to be a part of it. You need to go. I think
this is going to be an incredible opportunity for all of us to learn to tell
our Story and to re-imagine how we do ministry.

4 – Cultivate registration went live. Thrilled to be hosting it at Park and so
excited about what God is going to do through that event. If you are in
communications, ministry, social media, whatever… you need to come. It’s the
day before Story and it will be phenom… you need to check it out.

5 – MinistryCOM Workshop. I’ll be doing a workshop at MinistryCOM called DIY Church Communications. It pulls some material from my future book and will focus on how to effectively do church communications with a staff of 1… yourself.

6 – The new Whole Foods. Ok, seriously. I already loved Whole Foods. Then they went and opened the third largest one in the WORLD within walking distance from me. I think I’m going to rename it “Whole Paycheck” because I’ve been there nearly everyday. I’m taking any out of town visitor there to check it out. It’s crazy.

7 – Park website 2.0 is in the works. We’re sticking with Ekklesia360 and partnering with CHANGEffect for the design. So excited about it. It’s going to be sick.

8 - Park was in Collide magazine. Park was featured in an article in the most recent issue of Collide on an article about texting in church. Check it.

9 – Hillsong United’s new CD is phenom. So it’s still in the top 100 charts on iTunes. If you haven’t yet, get a copy of it. Seriously.

10 – Resident Ragamuffin. Jason Widney, Park’s Media Arts Director made the cut and will be a part of Carlos Whittaker’s Creative Coaching, Round 1. So stoked for him!

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