Boyink! - Spring Forward on the Web

Three things we don’t know about church web sites; How Christians use the web, what a Church site should be, and how to measure the success of a Church site.

A recent discussion on the Churchsite Chat Yahoo! Group has been quite thought provoking.  It started when a webmaster for a small church noted that not much traffic was going past his home page, and asked how to get people to go deeper.  The resulting discussion tells me there are three basic things that we don’t know regarding church websites:

1. How Christians (and people interested in Christianity) Use the Web
Some of the thought-provoking comments from the discussion:

• “Remember most people who will come by your site are not local and will never attend your church. What do you have for them?”
• “Start to think like a web surfer. Ask yourself, if I came to a page like mine, what would make me go deeper into a web site? Put that on your front page. But remember nearly always more people will come by your front page than stay around. Surfers are notorious for being easily bored.”

I’m going to go out on a limb here - in light of any data to the contrary -  and say that Christians are no different from the average web user, and that 1997-esque web surfing is dead.  People are going to the web, and your church site, with a specific task to do, or question to answer—let’s forget about having to entertain easily-bored surfers.  But what content should your church site have then?  Aha - there’s the second thing we don’t know:

2.What a Church Web Site Should Be:
Comments from the Churchsite-chat discussion:

• “considering the time you need to spend developing and maintaining a church site, if it’s done SOLELY for advertising purposes, it probably isn’t worth the time involved.”
• “If I was looking for a church web site locally it would probably be because I had been invited to a meeting there and no one had given me the directions on how to get there. I would also be interested in seeing how that church fitted into its local community. So what groups met there and when would be useful information to include.”
• “more people check the weather daily than any other online info…making the addition of a weather module one of the best ways to attract return visitors.”
• “I think if you want your church website to have an evangelistic input to the local community, then a community-resource page(s) is very useful”
• “a good number of church sites create a “portal page” for their visitors…they can make that page their personal homepage so that every time they log onto the internet they can see church events, weather, community events, and more on a single page.”
• “if all one has on a church site is a picture of the church, names of the staff and a program of events, that you really have missed an opportunity and are doing a lot of work for a very limited purpose. If someone is looking for a church, the majority will turn to the Yellow Pages before they will the WWW”
• “I can see why we would put up community news, weather, sports, etc. While I haven’t heard a pastor give sports scores from the pulpit, I have heard many make reference to a big game as a peg for a sermon. The same with weather and news and entertainment. Besides, maybe some Christians would like to have their local church set up as their home page and get such dynamic content.”

Many interesting ideas.  The trouble is, for people involved with building church sites, there’s no existing research to authoritatively show what it is that people coming to a church site want, need, or expect, as exists for other audiences.  And lacking any direction, it’s easy to see why church site builders so often go for what Dean Peters at http://www.healyourchurchwebsite.com calls “Jesus Junk”.  But I’m starting to think that Jesus Junk is the symptom, and this church-site identity crisis is really the root problem.  Lacking any concrete data, though, discussions about church sites break down into “what I think” type arguments.

So here’s what I think.  Maybe I spend too much time on the business side of bulding web sites, but for me the first and primary thing a church web site should do is present what is unique about that church - and that really starts with the journalistic basics of “who, what, where, when, why, how”.  Getting this part done right is fundamental and your first priority. 

What this unique content doesn’t include is the local news, sports, and weather.  Given that to an individual web user the entire internet is the same distance away, and takes the same effort to get to, there is just no good reason to give up your church’s valuable home page space to this type of content.  Based on our knowledge of “direct driving” on the net, people wanting weather will go to weather.com - even if your feed is from weather.com.  Weather from a weather site will be perceived as being more up to date, and more trustworthy than that same weather presented in the context of a church site. The average user is confused by the function of the home page button, for goodness sake - what do they know about dynamic syndicated content?

And what’s it say, really, when someone comes to your church’s home page and the “best thing ya got” isn’t about the church?  Would you direct newcomers to your church building to TV’s showing local weather?  Would you ask your pastor to give high school football updates mid-sermon?  Sounds silly to even ask, no?

And once the basics are down?  Then what?  Your choices are either build to support the community within the church, or build to support the community outside the church.  I recommend the first.  Build tools that nurture and support the community already happening inside the church.  Put up discussion boards for small groups to use, or for digital small groups to form within the church.  Create email lists for prayer needs, or bible studies.  Build group blogs for volunteer groups that need a way to organize and administer their outreach. 

Why this inner focus rather than external?  Because the value will be more immediately apparent to the you, and the rest of the church.  You’ll hear people talk about connecting via these tools.  You’ll see reference to them in other publications the church does.  You’ll create a buzz within the attendees of your church.  You’ll be able to roughly measure the effectiveness of what you’ve built by how often you hear that buzz.  Which brings us to (and helps get around) the last thing we don’t really know about church web sites:

3.How To Measure the Success of a Church site
Snippets from the Churchsite-Chat group discussion:

• “Most of the hits come in..”
• ...church sites don’t get the traffic we would like, many who do get that traffic…
• ...regional search engines to drive the traffic to your site..
• ...gets over 500 hits a month…
• ...high search engine ranking for keywords relating…
• ...The test of course is the number of hits the page gets…

Here’s the problem: hits are meaningless.  Site traffic levels fail the “so what?” test.  Even in the business world, looking at traffic levels as a success metric has been questioned for a couple of years now.  If the bottom-line businesses struggle to connect traffic levels to web site value, how can the Church?  If the Church is about changed lives,  then what’s the metric we can use to measure the effect of all that web traffic?

This comment from the Churchsite chat discussion really caught my eye:

“Of course,traffic isn’t the point of having a church website…it’s creating more community to further the gospel”.

Amen.  But let’s do that by nailing the basics, then building community from the inside-out where the results are more immediately apparent.

And let’s think about how we can, collectively, somehow produce the professional level research that might help answer some of these things we don’t know about church web sites. 

I’m open to ideas.

Comments are closed, but you can read the comments other people left.

1. Dan Dombrowsky on January 29, 2007

   Gosh, no comments on this important topic?  Criminal.

   I’m currently in a big what should I do think about my own church web site.  Your post sparked that thinking again.  I agree with your take on the whole “turning your church site into a portal” idea.  It doesn’t make sense to do that. 

   Basically my thinking is running to the three groups I would like to reach:

   First, people within the church.  This is made simpler by the fact that the church I am with is very small, so we already have a very cohesive group.  My goal with them will be to provide timely information (events)  and to enrich the worship experience with some unique web content.

   Second,  people looking for a church in the area.  They will need directions definitely.  The Washington DC area is difficult to navigate, especially for people new to the area.  Also, I want to give them a feel for what is unique about our church and let them know if our church’s beliefs match their own.

   Third, “seekers” or people just looking around, should have something to look at.  I want to put together some testimonies for them to look at.

   So all three of these things will have to be addressed.  I think it’s doable, and no this isn’t really a scientific process.  I just came up with it by thinking about the sort of information each group would want. 

   But it’s a start.

2. George Leonard on January 29, 2007

   I have always felt that one of the biggest problems in a local church is that much of the membership is totally left out of the picture because they are not offered or cannot find a way to participate in the church activity or ministries.  In my opinion this is also true for church web sites.  If the church web site is only a static set of pages that the Internet user can only look at - and continually see the same pages day after day then you can imagine how interest in such a church web site will die out very quickly.  The same is true of most all people who walk into a church Sunday after Sunday and about the only thing they can do with their time there is watch the show up front which itself is oftentimes very static - week after week.  These people don’t last very long in that sort of church. 

   What church web site developers need to do is build community into their sites where the members can experience relationships and take part in the activity and ministry of the church through the site itself.  We should ask ourselves more, “What can I put up in this site to get others to participate in it (not look at it) and at the same time enrich their spiritual experience and grow in and with Jesus?”  Chat rooms are nice, but I don’t believe that they are all we can offer.  This site, boyink, is getting closer to the target by having giving me and others the opportunity to send in a comment (i.e. participate) - and who knows, maybe I will be back again and again because someone had the good idea of not isolating his site to all static stuff (just look at stuff - don’t touch stuff).  And then in the end I too (and others) may profit from this interactive environment both intellectually and spiritually.  What we need to do in our church web site development is to get dynamic (php, jsp, asp, sql database engines) and open the web pages up to participation and community.  Let people be people and share together in community.  I am not trying to make this sound easy - it is not.  But I do believe it is not impossible.

   My 2 cents worth.  God bless everyone.

3. michael boyink (Author) on January 29, 2007

   This site, boyink, is getting closer to the target by having giving me and others the opportunity to send in a comment (i.e. participate) - and who knows, maybe I will be back again and again because someone had the good idea of not isolating his site to all static stuff (just look at stuff - don’t touch stuff). And then in the end I too (and others) may profit from this interactive environment both intellectually and spiritually. What we need to do in our church web site development is to get dynamic (php, jsp, asp, sql database engines) and open the web pages up to participation and community. Let people be people and share together in community. I am not trying to make this sound easy - it is not. But I do believe it is not impossible.

   George - I think you’re spot-on, but just a word of warning:

   Many churches and church leadership are not ready for this type of interaction in the church body.  They are used to a “command and control”, top-down communication style where they spend time creating/crafting/writing/editing/revising and polishing up a message before letting it flow down the organiaztion. 

   The thoughts of letting everyone in the church have an equal voice, of being questioned, of conversations happening, of “what people might say” - scares them to death.

   I know this from experience, having launched a site for a church that, being based on a blogging tool, allowed exactly what you say - opportunities to send in comments on every chunk of content on the site.

   What I heard in response from the leadership was questions like “Why would we want to solicit comments on our Faith Statement”? 

   My response was “Why would you NOT”?  If if it’s not worth talking about / defending, then what is it truly worth?

   In the end the site I built was only live for a few months, before being replaced with a typical static site.

   In the end it’s the classic case - the technology is the easy part.  Getting people to move, grow, and try new things is the tough part.

   For a thought provoking read in this area, check out the Cluetrain Manifesto for Churches.

4. George Leonard on January 29, 2007

   Many churches and church leadership are not ready for this type of interaction in the church body. They are used to a “command and control”, top-down communication style where they spend time creating/crafting/writing/editing/revising and polishing up a message before letting it flow down the organization.

   This sounds a little like what the Pharisees must have been like during the time of Jesus.  They loved to lord over others and dictate the laws.  If we read the scriptures we will see that Jesus himself didn’t have too high of an opinion of the Pharisees.  If churches and church leadership are not ready for interaction in the church body – how long should we wait until they are ready?  Should we wait 1 year, 2 years, 10, 20 – 50 years?  If we are destined to only listening to the results of creating/crafting/writing/editing/revising and polishing – from a one sided leadership (autocracy) what kind of spiritual growth, what kind of ministry experience, what kind of Christ centered testimony will we on the other end develop by sitting in pews like bumps on a log without the ability to interact and put our hearts before our own brothers and sisters in Christ, where we might be able to cry out for help in prayer when we need it, where we might lift our voice to give a helping hand to a weaker brother or sister in need   We need to realize more, in the building of church web sites, that the “church”, which is the “called out ones” (eklesia), is a spiritual structure without walls that is made up of God’s children (believers in Christ Jesus) who are lead and directed by the Master himself and not by an autocratic clergy. 

   The thoughts of letting everyone in the church have an equal voice, of being questioned, of conversations happening, of “what people might say” - scares them to death.   = fear

   The Bible teaches us that, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. (1 John 4:18).  Yes, these guys have a problem.  We need to pray for them.

   Building church web sites is an exciting challenge and one of the most opportune vehicles available today for evangelising the rest of the world and thus hurrying the day that our dear Lord and God returns to this planet.  There are 100s of ways to get involved in this thing.  Give it a shot, try getting involved.

   Bless you all.

5. Michael Boyink (Author) on January 29, 2007

   George, you’re preaching to the choir…;)  I’m wondering if you’ve read Tim Bednars paper at http://www.e-church.com/Resources.asp?  Lots of good stuff along the same lines as you say.

   Really - I’m not trying to be negative and I certainly would not want my experiences to stop someone else from nudging along the Church by building better websites.

   But I did “get involved” -  to the tune of over at least 350 volunteer hours over the course of 2 years, only to have that time and gift to the church be relegated to the virtual dumpster and replaced with a site that was both visually and technically inferior. 

   So needless to say, we’re still smoking a bit from our attempt to get involved, and it left us wondering if the internet may force more of an evolution than a revolution when it comes to traditonal churches.

   But I’m still willing to help churches out…but will be much more careful next time, and will be looking for some of the institutional “Red flags” that I missed the first time around….;)

6. Dan Dombrowsky on January 29, 2007

   Mike, I read about the site switch over at your former church.  I was sorry to see your site go.  IMHO it was one of the best church sites I ever saw.

   It has inspired me to go the same direction with my church’s website, though your situation has put some caution in me.  Still, I have spoken with my pastor and he seems very supportive.  I may make a blogger out of him yet. ;-)

   In any case, my goal is to start a conversation.  Hopefully many conversations.  With the community especially, not only with the congregation and the community in our area but with the internet community at large.  Maybe I’m too idealistic, but your efforts Mike, as well as Dean over at HealYourChurchWebsite.com have put an idea in my head as to what a church site could be. 

   And I’m not letting go of it until they beat it out of me and pry it from my cold dead fingers. ;-)

7. Michael Boyink (Author) on January 29, 2007

   Good for you Dan!  I’m convinced more than ever that the type of site we built for RP can be a very powerful tool - it positively touched a number of people even during it’s short life-span.

   I’m glad to hear you’ve got the support of the Pastor.  Depending on your Church organizational structure, it might also be a good idea to get buy-in from other stakeholders early-on.

   I’ve never enjoyed or been very good at negotiating the polical realm, but I’m sure that what happened at RP was largely political in nature, and will be *much* more thorough in the political due dilligence in the future.

8. Kristen O'Brien on January 29, 2007

   Our tech team has discussed the issues surrounding having a bulletin board type of system on our site in the past. We opted instead for more of a small moderated approach so that we can have prayer requests on the site. Prayer requests can be private or public, and the ones that are public have to be approved first. Our reservations for a more open system is the possibility of gossip or personal information, and we do not have the resources to monitor a complete board.

   We also added three areas which are updated frequently; devotionals, bible trivia, and daily bible verse. We also have mailing lists to communicate with people.

   We are always looking for more ways to engage our church community through the website, but at the same time want it to be a safe environment for all. I don’t think that it’s about control, I think it’s about not letting destructive and divisive talk in. I would love to know your thoughts.

9. Dan Dombrowsky on January 29, 2007

   Kristen, I think you have a valid approach and a point…  but here’s the thing:

   Why is a free discussion on the web inherently destructive and divisive? I certainly don’t think it has to be.  With comment moderation, or even requiring registration for comments you can acheive a pretty good level of control.  I don’t see where this would be too much of a burden on the web team.  You could also seek volunteers for this sort of thing.

   The problem that I perceive with the standard devotional, trivia, mailing list approach is that it is one way communication.  It’s like the difference between sitting in a pew listening to a sermon, or having a lively discussion of biblical principles in a small group.  If you had the choice which would you choose?

   Whenever this discussion comes up I always think of the Jars of Clay song “Rose Colored Stained Glass Windows” (which was done by someone else originally I think, but anyways…):

   “Looking through rose colored stained glass windows
   Never allowing the world to come in
   Seeing no evil and feeling no pain
   Making the light as it comes from within, so dim…”

   Anyways, I think if you can reach the world with a website, it will have to bea conversation.  Static messages tend to bounce off people, they’ve become largely immune to static messages because of the massive amounts of advertising and marketing ploys they’re subjected to every day.  They can ignore them.  A conversation causes them to be drawn in, causes them to actually think about things.  I mean, as human beings we’re perfectly incapable of saving anyone or getting anyone saved.  All we can do is get people to consider.

   Anyways, sorry if that was a bit rantish.  Nothing against you or your church site of course Kristen.

10. Michael Boyink (Author) on January 29, 2007

    Sorry guys…I forgot to hookup the email account that alerts me to these comments (hardware crashes are so fun..;)

    I’ll be blunt, since I’m late….

    You don’t have the control you think you have.  People can, and will, and do, talk however they choose - if not on your site, then at the coffee shop, at the mall, at small group.

    We had the same issue and concern come up at Ridge Point, and the same request for moderated comments.  The request was by people unused to online conversations, and were strictly based on fear -(what if someone says something bad?)

    pMachine didn’t have this feature - so I got to blame the software, but was glad as I’m a firm beleiver that if you want to enable the people in your church to talk, communicate, get familiar with each other, and grow with each other, then you have to do it without restrictions. 

    After all - who is the church? ;)

    And my position was - what a gift if someone “says something bad” on the church website, rather than at the cofeeshop.  This way, you get to know about it and deal with it head on, rather than putting the “church clothes on” and pretending all is well.

    There are countless places online that your folks can communicate in an open fashion.  Heck, you can setup a new discussion board for peanuts if not free.  Put too many restrictions on, and your folks will simply go somewhere that is open or start their own place.

    Moreso the younger your church folks are.

    I’d suggest a quick read of the “Cluetrain M anifesto for Churches”:

11. Kristen O'Brien on January 29, 2007

    I understand where you are coming from. I too agree that healthy dialog should exist in churches online just as people should be allowed to discuss matters in a coffee shop. I think what we disagree on is the degree to which this should happen. Just as it would be unlikely to see a group of people discourse at the pulpit on sunday in front of the whole church, I think it should be just as unlikely to see that when you are looking at a church website.

    Just as you wouldn’t just give anyone the mike at a service, so too it should be on a website. When discussions are on a website people tend to think that the church endorses all of the talk (even if the technically-minded know otherwise). Why give people a medium to confuse so easily? Let the church talk, but don’t give everyone a stage. Small groups exist for this very reason, so people can talk about the issues in their life and dig deeper. You wouldn’t expect someone dealing with an addiction to go up to the pulpit and discuss it right there, why should it exist on a website?

    I very much agree that what we have in place right now is very static, and I might bring up the possibility of newsgroups, but finding people to lead those newsgroups with an already over-worked volunteer group is difficult. For right now I’m still interested in how to engage the community without giving people a pulpit. Suggestions are welcome.

12. Michael Boyink (Author) on January 29, 2007

    how to engage the community without giving people a pulpit.

    IMHO, this is fundamentally impossible. 

    For community (true community) to happen - online or off - everyone has to have an equal voice. 

    Forget about the pulpit.  Burn it “virtually”.  Seriously - for what it represents —“the church-approved voice”.  It doesn’t work online.  It’s not the same.

    Kristen - I’m sorry if this seems rude…I really dont mean to be - just realistic.  Your online community won’t happen with the number of constraints you’re proposing.  Think about it - as a person in need of community or help with an issue I have an unlimited number of choices when going online.  I can come to your church website, and post, and take the risk of being edited/moderated/whisked under the carpet/pulled from “the pulpit”, or I can go somewhere more open, without those constraints. 

    Either choice is just a click away.

    The Ridge Point forums are working - take a look:
    http://www.ridgepoint.org/forum/index.php

    These are open forums - viewable by the public.  You have to register to post, but can register under a psuedonym.  They are being “watched” by the church staff, but I’m aware of only one post that had to be removed.

    Now take a look at Manna - the group I’m currently with.  We decided to take the RP-style forum interaction - where “church” is really, honestly, happening much more than the formal “program” pages, and put it front and center.  It IS the site:

    http://www.mannais.org/

    Sure, Manna is a new group/church.  Little to risk.  Small group.  Still figuring it out.

    But something to learn there.

    Kristen - it’s entirely possible that an online community isn’t right for your church.  If it’s gonna take that many controls and restrictions to get it out there, I’d not even bother.  Getting an online community to take root is already a tough thing to do - think of it like gardening.  You can control the environment - the right soil, seeds, nutrients and care, but ultimately it takes a God-inspired spark to get something to grow.

    I’d suggest it sounds like your environment isn’t favorable.

    But I’m known as a cynic…;)

13. Kristen O'Brien on January 29, 2007

    I wholeheartedly agree with you on the point about restrictions and setting up a community. I’m not so sure that our church is really looking for that…at the moment.

    I’m thinking a small step in this direction may be a blog with moderated comments (kinda like the mannais site). In fact I’ve been thinking about that for several months, but I know it would have to be a nitch sub-section of the church community.

    I’m still not entirely sold on the concept that a church website has to embody all that the web is. Just as people are flocking from Yahoo to Google because it focuses on a few areas and does it well, tells me that sometimes it’s easy to loose focus of what the primary purpose of a church website is. Invariably this will be different for different churches, but it’s easy to get on the trend bandwagon - even if it’s the virtual kind.

    This is a topic that I think is worth discussing at our tech meeting coming up, thanks for the input.

14. Dan Dombrowsky on January 29, 2007

    Just a thought of a way to decrease confusion.

    In the comments you could possibly program some comment highlighting in and clearly mark comments from the pastor, church members, anonymous internet users, etc.

    Anyways, it may be a technological solution to some of the concern about open discussion.  Or it may not.

    I’ve also seen comment systems that allow any user to flag offensive posts.  Flagged posts are immediately removed and later moderated.  Thus there’s a sort of honor system, and offended people are empowered to do something.

    Anyways, just some thoughts.  Personally I think some of the objections of the church leadership can be overcome with a technological solution.

    To the larger issue:  I think there is a problem if christian leaders are so afraid of offending that they cannot allow any opportunities for members to share and discuss in a public forum.

    In my own frank opinion, the “leadership approved” message is no more likely to change someone’s life than than a corporate memo would.  What is the goal of the church website?  What is the goal of the church?  To train and empower christians for ministry, and to spread the message of Christ.  How are we to do this through a website?  We’ll muddle through somehow…

15. Drew Goodmanson on January 29, 2007

    Here is one thing our church did that worked well…

    This fall, six couples joined Kaleo Church’s eight week pre-marriage class. The remarkable thing is, only one of these couples had attended Kaleo for more than three-months prior to the class. The other couples sought out a church because they decided to get married. Marriage is one of those events that cause people to reflect on their life, and frequently, people want to find a church to help them in this season.  These people often bring (drag?) their non-Christian fiancé to church with them. It is in this moment, that a church has a great opportunity to communicate the gospel.  In our case, two of those who attended became Christians while in the class.

    This occured because several months ago, we created a page on our website about San Diego pre-marriage counseling. When couples in our area search for san diego pre-marriage counseling, Kaleo ranks #1 on Google [and who doesn’t use Google?]. It is through this that all five of the couples found us on the internet. (More couples contacted us but opted against our 8-week Pre-Marriage course).

16. Sandra Wyatt on January 29, 2007

    I agree that web surfers looking for a church would use the site for directions and for times of service.  A picture of the church would possibly intensive their interest in the church.  However, it is going to be the “Events” of the church that will spark a new-comer’s interest.  The church must have current events on the website on the first page.

    Secondly, the content must be current.  A church that keeps it’s website current will require a lot of maintenance and updating.  I know, because I currently webmaster a church website.  The information is updated every Thursday and is kept current on the church events.

17. Jeff Wilkinson on April 03, 2007

    Good points. We often think we know more than we really do. 

    Honestly I’ve always been all *too* aware that while our church site gets a lot of measurable traffic in hits, that means nothing, and certainly tells me nothing about how our members or visitors actually use it… or even if they do. 

    That’s one argument for community-interaction features on church sites, at least we might have some idea if anyone is using this thing we spend so much time building… ;-)

    So, where do we start discussing *how* to better find out more on these things we don’t know?  That’d be the next step…

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