Church websites have come a long way in the past decade. They've gone from being an ugly after thought in the church to something with some importance and style. You can plainly see this on Church Relevances list of the top 75 church websites. As community trends have grown the church has embraced them. MyChurch.org is an example of a service that brings this to the masses. These advances have been enabled by new technologies and a paradigm shift in how technology is used in society and the church. We are now in another technological and paradigm shift that is offering up an opportunity for us re-think our church websites. Over the next several posts here let's do just that. To start this off we need to take stock of where we are at with our church websites.
State Of The Church Website
The current model for church websites comes from the business world. Sure there are some modifications from this model to fit our needs. But, the base is a business world model that doesn't reflect our view on the user or the goal. Take a look at the example below.
When I look at the main navigation I see a listing of products and services that the church, as an organization, is producing. And the main navigation is setup to make it as easy as possible for a website visitor to get to these products and services. Doesn't this sound like a business setup to you?
Note: In choosing this site to critique I was not looking to pick on one particular site. Every church site I come across, including my own, has these issues. This is just one I chose at random.
How We Got Here
When we first started creating websites it was basically just a publishing system. The church embraced this technology and used it well. But, the technology and process were based around business models. The techniques, the design, and the structure all had their tones set by the business world. This lead to the implementations by churches and everyone else reflecting this tone.
Over the past several years content management systems like drupal and Joomla! have given churches more flexibility in what they can do with their websites. This has enabled church communities to form online communities and move their publishing away from the business publishing model.
But, because of our history in church websites coming from a business model and our members ties to business processes and tools that separation hasn't really happened yet.
Now Is The Time For Change
We are in another paradigm and technological shift that is practically screaming for us to re-think our church websites.
The technological shift is happening on multiple fronts. First, content management systems are falling to web frameworks. These frameworks give us the ability to rapidly develop sites but don't constrict us to the business methods.
The second front in technology is the revolution in web services. This is allowing websites to work together. For example, we don't have to create a map for our church website. We can tie into Google Maps and let them handle our map for us. Another example that directly applies to the church is bible websites providing integration between their sites and ours. With this integration we can have bible verses we type into our content turn into links right to the bible passages.
The paradigm shift has to do with how we are using technology. Websites aren't just viewed on computers anymore. They are viewed on cell phones, mp3 players, and even some TVs. Plus, the integration is no longer just between web browsers and the web sites. Someone can take a picture on their cell phone, text message it to flickr, have the picture show up on flickr, and someone view the picture in iphoto on their computer. Or, someone can update twitter from the website, their cell phone, a desktop application, or an instant messenger. And, they can recieve updates other people post to twitter in these different ways. Or, let's look at skype. Someone can see that someone is online with skype on a website, click a link, and call them on their computer. Or, someone on skype can make a phone call from their computer to any normal phone.
Clear lines between these technologies that were drawn in the past are quickly fading away.
Joining in this paradigm and technological shift will help us use technology, and specifically our church websites, for the mission better than we have in recent history. But, to become apart of this shift we need to re-think our church websites from the ground up. Next up, let's look at the mission of the church and some things from it that we can implemented better in our church websites.
Excellent series!
I'm actually in the process of creating a completely new website for our church, and I'm building a CMS from the ground up because I haven't been able to find one that isn't based around a business model.
Great observations so far! I hope to glean some good insight from the rest of the series, and I will definitely site this article when I present our site design to my elders next month.
Going To Be Several Days Of Info
This series is going to be a good 5 or 6 posts long. The more I write about this topic the more I find there is to write and the more opportunities I see for the church.
If you are looking for a CMS or framework to build your site I'd recommend against building your own. There are some that provide you the freedom you need to build what you want while giving you tools to do the job well with less maintenance and overhead work.
Writing my own framework was a really fun experience. But, it was a lot of work and I spent too much time working on it and not enough time using it to do good stuff. From my experience I know that drupal and the symfony frameworks will both be able to create anything I talk about here. I know there are others I'm just not as familiar with them.
Good luck creating your new church website.