Cody Thomas

For many churches, a church website is viewed by pastors and church leadership as an afterthought or something insignificant to their ministry. Many churches don’t even have a website. Of the churches that do have a website, most of those are ineffective websites. Why are they ineffective? Here are just a few reasons:

• Poorly designed. Either the design is a free template design that looks bad or someone (who is not really a web designer) tried to design a site. Either way, it ended up looking bad or looking like websites from 1992.
• Lack of relevant information. Many church websites are out-of-date in their info. Their front web page is still advertising their Christmas musical from 2 years ago. Do you think a visitor will stick around on the site? No.
• Static information. Many churches see a website as just a digital billboard. It’s a place to advertise their service times and pastor’s family picture. A website should have more than just static information that never changes. If the information never changes, no one will continue to go to the site.

So, why should web design matter to churches? What’s the big deal?

I believe that the web is one of the greatest tools of our day for the advancement of the Kingdom and the Gospel. However, it is not being utilized by a large majority of churches. Web sites are not just for advertising your church service times. It can also exist for connecting people to each other in community, allowing people to be the body of Christ for each other throughout the week through interactive web tools, allowing visitors to see enough of your church so they will feel comfortable enough to come visit your services, keeping in touch with your church throughout the week, connecting people into discipleship programs, praying for each other’s needs, allowing people who would never set foot into a church building to experience church in their comfort zone in hopes that they might begin to trust the Church again, and more. That list could continue for a long time and that list continues to grow as churches advance into the web frontier.

To help you understand the importance of web design and strategy for churches, here’s an article by Terrell Sanders (featured on Rick Warren’s Ministry Toolbox):

1.  Your target audience for church growth is Internet-savvy.

Most church growth comes from what we call the 18-to-18 range – people from 18 years old to families with 18-year-old children. This also happens to be the group with the highest Internet usage. According to research by the U.S. government, teenagers and families with children at home are the most frequent Internet users of any demographic group. Using the Internet to communicate with families and young adults is a natural fit.

2.  Your Web site will be your “first impression” for many people.

Most people under the age of 40 grew up with technology, and they automatically go to the Internet for information. We have found that many families relocating to a new city will research both where to live and where to worship over the Internet.  They will often make their “first cut” shopping list before they ever come to town.

3.  If you’re not on the Web, you don’t exist to many people.

As a corollary to the previous item, people who use the Internet as their primary research tool will not know you exist if you don’t have a Web site.

A 20- or 30-something person is much more likely to use the Internet to find church service times than to look in the yellow pages or newspaper. Our informal surveys have shown that many young college graduates don’t even have yellow pages in their homes. My teenage daughter didn’t know theaters listed movie times in the newspaper – she gets them off the Web.

4.  Seekers will visit your Web site before attending your services.

The Internet provides a perfect tool for people wanting information anonymously.  Seekers who are not ready to “come to the building” will visit your Web site to see what you believe and why. Savvy organizations are using the Web to educate visitors and encourage them to take the next step. Online sermons and photos of services and events go a long way toward making a seeker feel secure enough to make a first-time visit.

5.  A whole generation exists that will seek “religion” online.

In his book Boiling Point, George Barna projects that 10 to 20 percent of the population will rely on the Internet for all of their spiritual input and output by 2010. Whether you like it or not, the prediction seems to be right on track. When these people go to the Internet with spiritual questions, who will be providing the answers? What will they be taught?

6.  The Web site is too critical to be run by a volunteer.

I can tell you stories of churches from New York to California who were disappointed or burned by volunteers who built their Web sites. What happens if your volunteer Web developer gets transferred out of state or leaves the church angry?

How do you gracefully fire a volunteer when the church’s need exceeds his or her abilities?

Church leaders frequently ask me to help them justify why they should pay large amounts of money to develop a professional site when they have a volunteer who will do it for free. I ask them if they use free volunteers to install and maintain their roof and plumbing. In three years, no large church has ever admitted it used volunteers for their roof or plumbing – it’s just too critical to depend on volunteer help.

7.  You can’t afford a cheap site.

With a high percentage of your potential visitors viewing your Web site before they visit your congregation, you can’t afford a poor quality site. All the time and money you have spent building your congregation’s resources and reputation are worthless if people won’t visit the first time. Visitors are judging the values and programs of your church from your Web site. Are your key programs properly represented? Can a Web visitor see how active your youth group is from your site?

8.  People are viewing your current Web site right now.

I can almost guarantee you that people are viewing your current site every month.  People moving into your city are researching churches before they move. People interested in changing congregations are viewing your site. Seekers who have been made aware of your church are looking for more information on your site. You may not be providing the information, but people are looking for it.

Start asking your visitors how they found out about your church. You’ll be surprised how many young families found you on the Internet. Good or bad, your Web site is generating impressions every week. The big question is – are you satisfied with the impression they are getting?

—————————————————————————

Terrell Sanders is the president of Main Street Enterprises, an Internet consulting and development company for churches and non-profit organizations. ©Copyright 2005. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

This is a new era for the Church. The mission is the same. The message is the same. But the methods must be evaluated and revamped. The strategy for reaching your community with the Gospel must be modified to reach an increasingly web-based culture. Generally speaking, the most effective churches of the next several years will be those who put more of their resources, time and money into developing and expanding their web strategy.

Church leaders, it is up to you. I would be more than happy to talk with you further about web strategy for your church and possibly see how I can consult, strategize, design and even partner with you as you pursue with reckless abandon to advance the Kingdom in your community.

Back in the day, more specifically antebellum America days (late 1700s-early 1800s), church denominations utilized a system of pastoring called “circuit riding”. Here’s how it worked. In that time period, much of frontier America was made up of small towns, or barely even that. Most of the frontier was very sparsely populated. Most areas barely had enough people to create a decent sized congregation and especially couldn’t pay for a full-time pastor to stay there. So, these “circuit riders” would be appointed a circuit of rural villages and unorganized settlements. They would travel this circuit of settlements, ministering to each town’s congregation as they were passing through.

This form of pastoring, although probably not the most ideal, seemed to work well for these small settlements. There was no way to pay a pastor to stay there full time, so it only made sense that each congregation in an area covering five or six towns could provide some financial support, which, when put together, could support a pastor for all of them.

Well, these are different times and we certainly live in a different America. Yes, lots of America is fairly rural, but nothing like the frontier. So I don’t think the need of circuit riding senior pastors is quite necessary so much. However, I want to propose something else.

With the emergence of so many “megachurches” in America over the past decade, I think we have seen the extreme benefit of having a large church support staff with people working in very specific skilled areas. I mean, think about it. How much better would ministry be if the youth pastor wasn’t also the “Weekend Service Production Director”, “Worship Leader”, “Web Designer”, “Graphic Designer”, “Tech Guru”, and “Video Editor”? Instead of the youth pastor (who should be freed to actually spend his/her week on reaching students) designing the church’s website just because he/she knows what a blog is, how much better would ministry be if you had people who are actually gifted and skilled in those areas doing those things?

I know much of what I mentioned is technology-based skill sets. However, with the exponential rise of the use of the web and technology in general as a means of advancing the Kingdom and sharing the Gospel, I think that those skills are vital to a growing church. In today’s age and society, the web is the largest new frontier for advancing the Gospel and creating community. Also, the use of graphic design, sermon series branding, video media, etc. is becoming more and more a vital source for marketing and using art/design to tell the redemptive story of the Gospel. Graphic design and video media are the stained glass windows of today.

So here’s my point. Back in the 1700s, these frontier congregations couldn’t afford to hire a pastor for their church. However, denominations knew that they had to advance the Gospel into the frontier that was open to be won, so they banned together to be able support a “circuit rider” for their area. Today, most churches certainly can NOT afford to hire tech or design people. They don’t have a budget for a video editor or a web strategist. I believe that today’s churches need to realize that their is a new frontier (web/tech/media) to be won for the Kingdom, and they can do so by banning together to support what I would call today’s circuit riders.

What if five, six, or maybe a dozen or more churches in one area or one denomination banned together to each pay a “circuit riding” web designer/strategist who did work for each church dividing up his/her days or weeks between those churches? Or what about a “circuit riding” graphic designer who designed all the sermon series brandings, bulletins, flyers, and more for all the churches in a denominational district or area? Or maybe a “circuit riding” designer who did both web and graphic design? Many churches couldn’t afford a good full time designer, but they might be able to afford a good designer a few hours a week. And if just a few churches did that, we would have a modern circuit rider…or maybe “circuit designer”.

I truly think, if taken seriously and done strategically, this concept of “circuit riding” ministers of design and ministers of technology has the possibility of creating better equipped churches for reaching more people with the Gospel and advancing the Kingdom.

Alright people. Bring your thoughts.

In my previous post, I talked about some new perspectives on my understanding of a “call to full-time ministry” and, more specifically, my own call to ministry. (For context, you should definitely read that post before diving into this one.)

So, where does this leave me now? Where am I at and where am I going?

So far, this refocusing journey has culminated in me making a few big decisions/goals.

1. Launching my own freelance design company. Actually, I have already been doing freelance design work for about a year now as a self-employment job. It is my goal this year to launch a media/design studio as an official LLC. I’m open to do graphic design and web design/strategy work for any business, but I really want to focus on partnering with churches in order to help them advance the Gospel wherever they are. Pastors, if you are interested in hearing more about me partnering with your church to do design work (sermon series branding, print media, etc.) and/or web design and strategy, just shoot me a quick email to get the conversation started.
2. Getting a legit degree in web design & new media. I’ve been doing graphic design for some time now, and learning web design quickly. However, I want to continue that learning process in the right way. In February, I will begin a Master of Fine Arts degree in Web Design and New Media at the Academy of Art University. (If you don’t know what “new media” means, click here.) The school is in San Francisco, but I will be doing my entire degree through their online school. I will be doing the degree part-time (only 2-3 courses per semester) and I should finish the degree in about four years.
3. Hoping to work on a church staff someday. Although this isn’t a decision in my life right now, it is still something that I hope could be on the horizon someday. I still have a strong passion for the local church and I feel that God has called me to serve in a church staff capacity. I see myself serving in a hybrid position, somewhere between a “Pastor of Technology & Media” and a “Church Communications Director (CCD)”. The first is more focused on the technical side of media and communications (the person doing all the graphic/web/video design) while the second is more of a strategist position, overseeing all communications from the church (overseeing a team that does graphic/print/web/video design) while exploring better communications methods and strategies for the church. Every comm. director position is different depending on the needs of the church and the skills of that particular person. It’s hard to find one person that excels at all forms of design/communications (graphic, web and video) while also being a great leader of volunteers and a strategist/idea generator. I definitely have more thoughts and ideas about all of that. I’ll have to save them for other posts.

So that’s where I’m at. And that’s where I’m heading. I can’t wait!

I know I have been absent from here for awhile now. I haven’t posted in almost four months. But I’m back and I hope to get back to some more frequent writing on here. First off, I want to tell you guys about some new paths in my life. However, for you to know where I’m going, you have to know where I’ve been.

Let’s go back to my teenage years. Before I was 15 years old, I had my path planned out. I was a computer nerd. I wanted to go to college to get a degree in some field of computer science. I enjoyed learning about computers, software, and web design. Just to date myself, I was designing personal web sites on Geocities, Tripod and Angelfire back in those days. Some of you reading this aren’t even old enough to know what those hosting sites are. I used to spend my spare time with Netscape Composer and Microsoft Frontpage Express 2.0. Seriously, does anyone still use Netscape software?

I loved being a nerd. I planned to make a career being a nerd. But then it happened. I had an experience that I felt was a call from God, a call to stop living nominally for Him. A call to learn to live a life for Him. This event led me into a journey of trying to figure out what that call meant for me. Over those next few months, through what I knew, what I was learning and through my mentors, I felt that God was calling me into full-time vocational ministry.

But here’s the dilemma. The church (in general) has an extremely small scope of what full-time ministry means. In general, there are two or three basic tracks: preacher, youth pastor, or maybe music minister (and most churches don’t even consider their music minister as a “pastor”). So, not knowing any other way, I was put on the “preacher” track because “that is what you do if you are called to the ministry”.

No one thought to consider that maybe God wanted me to use the gifts and passions I already had. No one considered that maybe God wanted to use me to equip the local church and grow His kingdom in ways that didn’t involve a Sunday morning pulpit. No one realized that you don’t have to stand in a pulpit or lead a youth group to advance the Kingdom and the name of Jesus.

So, I began a journey that led me to college to get a degree in Christian Ministry. I’ll cut out some details, but this journey led me through some amazing experiences and leadership positions. After college, I went to seminary (thinking that was the next step for me) only to realize it wasn’t what God had in store for me. What followed after my year at seminary was a journey of searching, losing, frustration, and a forced destruction of the pride that I had been slowly building for years. I knew leaving seminary for an unknown adventure with God was going to be hard, and I knew He had some humbling in mind for my journey.

Here’s the light at the end of the tunnel (for those who have made it reading this far). Through this journey, I feel that God has expanded my perspective on the “call to ministry”. I don’t want to dive deep into that here (maybe a blog post in the near future). I feel that God calls many into the ministry and never intends them to step a foot behind a pulpit or ever lead a youth group (despite what every small church staff looks like). I feel that many are given skills and passions, but if they feel a call into ministry, we make them drop those skills and teach them to be a preacher.

And that is exactly what I feel has happened to me (and countless others who get pushed through the exact same “preacher track” at small, Christian universities). I could blame my mentors back then, but they didn’t know any better. To them, “call to ministry” meant you were going to preach. Period. They only did what they thought best to prepare me.

However, when I look back, I wish someone would have told me that God had already been preparing me for His vision for my life. All that time being a nerd, designing websites when I was 14 because I thought it was fun, was really preparation, not a distraction. I was told I had to pursue a pulpit to serve God, when, in fact, 10 years later, I’m beginning to realize that someone should have told me to pursue a computer to serve God and advance His Kingdom.

I’m beginning to realize that a call to full-time ministry doesn’t always mean a change in vocation. Instead, I feel that a call to full-time ministry just changes your vocation to become an avenue for the advancement of the Gospel, His Kingdom, and the local church.

Sometimes you don’t have to stop being a web or graphic designer to serve God and His Church. You just become a different kind of designer. A designer with a purpose bigger than himself.