miletwo::network

A while back I read through Andy Stanley’s book Communicating for a Change and found it to be a profound look at the process of communicating truth from the pulpit. As a teaching pastor at miletwo::church I met regularly with the rest of the pastoral board discussing the thought processes presented in this book and how we could apply it in our messages; the goal being more effective communication of truth in a world where competition for the minds and thoughts of church members is so fierce. This has caused me to realize that there are many truths from Communicating for a Change to be applied to a church web project. After all, communicating online and communicating from a pulpit are both still communicating (forgive the gross oversimplification for a bit).

Many of the initial conversations with church leaders around a web project involve “what features do we want in our site” or “what should it look like.” Much time is spent discussing the design of the pages, and various features like online giving, sermon downloads and blogging. These are very important elements to effective communication but this has lead me to a stark realization that our primary mission or goal as church leaders don’t always translate well when we take our message online because our primary efforts are often counter-productive to our primary goals.

Let’s look for a moment at the primary points of Stanley’s book and answer the question: How would this translate to the process of building an “online church?”

Week 1: Determine your goal

If the first step is to determine our goal then it makes sense that we should know what our goal is. The best method to determine our goal is to ask the question “What action(s) do we want to encourage via our online church?” To draw a real world marketing corollary, let’s consider a book store. What is the primary goal of a brick-and-mortar book store? To sell BOOKS of course! If we apply this same matter of fact reasoning to our mission online then we might establish some simple goals for the web like:

• Introduce people to Jesus
• Encouraged believers in the word
• Get members involved in a small group
• Give members an opportunity to give online

Does this change the focus of our web project planning efforts if the goal of our site changes from “post information about xyz” to a more reasoned goal like “get involved in a small group?” That changes the focus from determining features to determining goals. The fundamental question that should drive the initial planning of any church web project should be “why do we want/need a web site?”

Another important step to determining your goals is knowing your audience. This might be easy if your church is 50 people where you can basically look around on a Sunday morning and say “hrmm… we have 7 married couples with about 2-3 children each, three quarters of those kids are under 12, the rest are mid to late teens. We also have about 6 college aged singles and one crazed lunatic old guy (probably the pastor). If your church is a few hundred this is going to be a little more difficult. You will probably want to engage in some type of demographic study, or you may have been gifted with enough foresight to build this information into your database of church members.

Why is this information important? This information helps to Determine Your Goal! If the primary makeup of your church is the “me generation” then you probably are going to have to address their selfishness in your online messaging in order drive calls to action (we’ll talk more about those later). If the primary demographic is baby-boomers, you might be wasting your time with a church web site altogether or you could possibly get away with a simple “business card” type of site where all you publish is your address and phone numbers, perhaps bios of pastoral staff.

So, we have a start here. Hopefully you’re thinking about the goals you want to accomplish online. Maybe you want to take become the premier faith destination in your city or county. Maybe you want to provide ministry tools for overseas missionaries. Perhaps you’re looking primarily to provide access to teaching, information, or small groups data to the busy parents. Whatever it is, defining your goals will help you to accomplish the next few steps in creating a successful online presence to match your fruitful ministry.

Stay tuned in the coming weeks for:

• Pick a Point - Success through targeted messaging

• Create a Map - Failing to plan is planning to fail

• Internalize the Message - Before you can preach it, you have to believe it

• Engage Your Audience - Getting them to your site requires telling them it’s there

• Find Your Voice - Consistency of voice and thoughtful messaging

• Start All Over - Return visits requires fresh content