Creating Your Church Website - Part 2

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Building Community

“A true Web site is a gathering place – a watering hole that people
will go to so that they can meet other people who go there.”
- Leonard Sweet.

The internet is becoming a larger part of our culture. More than 50% of teenagers use the internet every day, with average usage for this age group at 1.5 hours per day. Gen X-ers, who are now well into their 30s and 40s, are also huge internet users, and even older generations are catching on.

My wife's grandfather bought a computer last year and in his mid 70s now browses the internet and uses email several times a week.

With more people spending more time online, it's no wonder that online communities are becoming popular.

Ebay is a good example. One of the largest internet companies, its user base covers all age groups, and part of its success is attributed not only to its buying and selling model but to the way it builds community. Through leaving feedback for others, posting in the forums or chatting in the “Ebay Cafe”, users interact with each other informally, sharing interests and building relationships.

As our culture teaches people to spend more time in front of the screen, online community flourishes. The church, which has always been about community, can be a part of this. In some places it already is, like the fantastic Ship of Fools website where Christians from the UK and across the world laugh and learn together.

Individual churches can also use the internet to help build their own community.

A church community website has participation from many members of the church regarding different aspects of church life. It will have news and upcoming events, areas where different leaders write about their ministries, questions and answers, forums, maybe even blogs. It could include podcast audio downloads of the sermons, or even vidcasts if the church tech is up for it. Every ministry within your church can have its own section on the site. Anything is possible.

How does a Web Community work?

The key with a site like this is to let the members control the content of the site. That is what community is after all: people communicating with each other. Not people reading only what the webmaster has written.

This control can sometimes be hard for a webmaster or pastor to relinquish, but doing it has two advantages.

Firstly as I already said, community can only really be created when people have control over what they are doing. Users want to participate, not just read.

Secondly, it takes the updating work off you. If each team leader is responsible for updating the section of the website related to their ministry then the site is constantly new and interesting.

So how is this accomplished?

The easiest way is by using a Content Management System, or CMS. A CMS allows easy management of what content is shown on the site.

Usually a framework is set up to allow different users to have different levels of management access, for instance to different sections of the site relating. When they are logged in to a relevant section they can edit or add pages, upload photos, add menu items and links – all the things that a website needs.

There are two great CMS packages that I'm going to mention.

WordPress

The first is WordPress.

WordPress is fantastic, a really well-built, simple, excellent web application that is free to use. It is designed to enable easy blogging, but can be used as a simple CMS if you're only wanting one or two people to have control over the website. If you want to put the church secretary to put the notices online every week, WordPress is the tool.

It's also incredibly easy to install, although you do have to have your own host already sorted out. The WordPress website walks you through the procedure step-by-step – and even then there's only three steps. It really is very easy, and they've thought of everything.

Once it's online you can theme it to use your church logo and colour scheme etc, then you're ready to go, publishing your latest news and thoughts. Every time you add a post it gets automatically added to the front page, so you end up with a list of entries that people can view.

This is mphatso.org – I created this site for the Mphatso Children's Foundation for a friend of ours, it is simply a themed WordPress install.

The site administrator can add updates every week or two to the front page, telling the latest news from Africa and sharing photos of the kids. She doesn't need any technical skill at all. Once it's up and running, editing it and adding pages is as easy as using Word.

WordPress is great, but because it is designed for blogging it is sometimes a little too simple for a church website. There are more complex CMS applications that allow for any sort of site to be created.

For more complex CMS applications you need to understand more about how the web works and installing things on your server. Even then there's a range of systems that might work for you, from the relatively simple to the complex.

Drupal

I have tried out and successfully used a few of the CMS options available, but the one I settled on for our church youth website is Drupal.

Drupal is free and Open Source, as are many of the other CMS apps available, but there are commercial programs as well that you can buy to do the same thing.

Drupal allows our youth website to be updated with events and news the same as a WordPress site would. However Drupal also lets every user have their own blog if they want to, it runs forums, picture galleries, calendars, polls, and has a huge plugin system that means techy people can write extra functions for it if it doesn't already do what they want.

Again, Drupal can be themed relatively easily so that you can make it look like whatever you want.

Please note that while you can install these CMS web applications yourself if you've got a bit of patience and basic computer knowledge, you can also ask a professional to do this for you. Mention the magic words “Content Management System” and your web person will probably have his or her own favourite package that they will be willing to install and help you use.

In today's online culture, enhancing your church community online is important. By using CMS, a church can enable users to participate and build relationships using the web medium. Some CMS applications are free, so this level of online presence does not have to be expensive.

Part 3 - Evangelism