Technology
In Ministry
Should
Your Church Have a Website?
JUST A FEW YEARS AGO
the concepts of e-mail, being "online" and the
World Wide Web were foreign to most people. Those of us who
were involved in the Internet when the explosion of growth
began in the early 90s find ourselves having to explain
those terms less and less these days. It seems everyone
around has an e-mail address and an Internet account.
BUT FOR THOSE WHO
CAME IN LATE, here's an incredibly brief and simplistic
history of the Internet: The roots of the Internet go back
to 1969 and research work done in the area of computer
networking by a Department of Defense agency called the
Advanced Research Projects Agency. In the two decades that
followed, many different kinds of computer networks were
created, each with its own hardware and software. The
Internet came into being when a special protocol called
TCP/IP was developed thereby providing a link between
computer networks, regardless of the kinds of computers they
connect or the kind of network hardware and software they
used. Most of the time nowadays when you hear someone refer
to the Internet, they are actually referring to the World
Wide Web, the newest and most popular Internet service. The
Web is a network of interactive documents (called pages)
that contain text, pictures, sound, and animation written in
a language called HyperText Markup Language or HTML. The
connections between documents on the World Wide Web are
provided by what is known as hyperlinks. To navigate on the
web, you simply "surf" from page to page by
clicking on hyperlinks. A group of pages published to the
World Wide Web and linked together via hyperlinks is known
as a Web Site. More and more companies and organizations
establish a presence on the World Wide Web every day. And in
church staff meetings all over the world, pastors are
telling their staff, "We need to be on the Web!"
So the question is "Should your church have a Web
Site?" The answer is not an automatic "yes."
A good quality web site can be both an outreach and an
inreach tool for your church. On the other hand, a badly
done web site can send out the wrong message about your
church. Here are few things to consider when pondering this
question-
WHO
will do the work involved in designing, preparing,
publishing and updating your church's site on the World
Wide Web? Don't kid yourself: there is a lot of work
involved in putting together and maintaing a quality web
site.
WHAT
do you hope to accomplish by having a web site? It always
pays to have an objective in mind before undertaking a
project, so know what you want to accomplish by having a
Web site before you make the decision to proceed.
Legitimate goals for a church web site are to advertise
your church and it's ministries, inform your membership of
current events, and to let new residents and potential new
residents know you are there. A good church web site is
like a newsletter and an advertisement all rolled into
one.
WHEN
will you update your site? Some people put up a site and
never change the content. That is like publishing the
exact same newsletter for a months on end! Don't publish a
site unless you are going to do frequent updates to it.
WHERE
will you house your site? Having your own Internet server
is beyond the financial and technical means of virtually
every church, so you will need to find a hosting service.
A good host service will also guide you through the
process of choosing and registering of a domain name for
your site.
And the most
important question of all- WHY do you
want to have a web site? If you want to have a Web site
just so you can say "We're on the Web" don't
waste your time or God's money. The World Wide Web is hot,
it is trendy and all things considered it is not terribly
expensive. But as with all that we do, we should examine
our motivation carefully. If you have determined that your
church has the people, resources and/or expertise to
publish and maintain a high quality, professional looking
site on the World Wide Web, go for it! But on the other
hand, if you are in any way going to have to sacrifice the
quality of the site, or the frequency of updates/changes
to the site, don't go for it, or at least hold off on
going for it until you can do it right.
Let's say you have
determined that your church wants to have a high quality web
site. Where do you begin and what do you need? First, you
need a computer with a Pentium 133 or higher processor and a
modem (at least 28.8), and Internet access from an Internet
Service Provider. Then you need someone who will design your
church's web site. If this is done by a person outside the
church, you will need a staff person to be the liaison with
the web designer who can provide him or her with content,
text, pictures, etc. If you have someone in house who can do
this job, give them a big raise (just kidding!) To be
honest, it is going to be a very, very rare church staff
member who has both the computer knowledge and the eye for
aesthetics to be able to design your church's page, but many
churches may have web professionals attending there who will
assist their church in getting a quality presence on the
web.
Assuming someone from
outside the church does the design work on your site, you
will need to have a someone serve as your webmaster- a staff
member responsible for the maintaining and updating of the
web site on a daily basis. This will probably but not always
be the same person who served as the liaison with the
designer during the construction of the site. Finally, you
will need to secure a web hosting service. Your web host
provider will work with you in selecting a domain name and
getting it registered with Internic, and will work with you
on the technical aspects of publishing your site.
Obviously, there may
be overlap in some of these areas. You may find a local
service that will provide you a "turnkey" job of
providing your Internet Access, designing the site,
registering your domain name, hosting your site and changing
the oil on the church van, too! The main thing is to make
sure you are getting your money's worth, and not being
overcharnged. So, how much is this going to cost us, anyway?
With the caveat that prices in technology areas vary widely
and are in constant flux, here's a guideline to some typical
price ranges for starting a church web site-
I think it is
wonderful that churches of all sizes are constructing,
publishing and maintaining high quality, creative,
attractive web sites. I see them every day, and they are a
joy to behold. On the other hand (you knew that was coming,
didn't you?) I think it is a shame that churches of all
sizes are throwing up (literally) ugly, ill-conceived, tacky
sites onto the World Wide Web and seem to be proud of these
monuments to mediocrity and poor taste. Unfortunately, I
also see those every day, and they are NOT a joy to behold!
If your church decides to venture onto the Information
Superhighway, resolve to do all in your power to make sure
that your church's site is in the former group, not in the
latter!
GOD BLESS !!
. See you in
Cyberspace!
