Re-Thinking Church Websites - The Mission and Users | Innovating Tomorrow

When we talk about church websites it's good for us to go back to the root of what our mission is; both in what Jesus said and what he did. This can help us refocus on what's at the center of it all rather than look at how we can build on what we already have. Plus, as technology has developed over the last half decade enough has changed that should force us to rethink our old strategies. Things that were out of reach for churches just 5 years ago can now be implement at a price even a small church can afford. Let's revisit the mission and look at some of the ways we can use websites to help us do it better in this technological age.

The Mission of the Church

Most of us know the mission of the church. Matthew 28:19-20 simply puts it as, "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you."

Not to long ago I learned what this passage means. A friend of mine taught me that when we go back to the words in Greek this passage is telling us to go and make disciples by teaching and baptizing. The teaching element of this is something a website would be great for.

This gives us one of the purposes of our website as a teaching tool and has us viewing our website users as students. And, these students are not just to be people who are already Christians. This is a means of making new disciples.

More Detail On Our Users

Over the last half century the user base for for church stuff has drastically changed. In America, for example, there are a 100 million people that call themselves unchurched. How do we teach them? These people aren't just people who don't regularly attend church, they don't know the church words like justification and that salvation is by grace through faith.

Again, looking at the statistics for America we see that American Christians are biblically illiterate. While they believe there is truth in the bible they have not learned it.

Then we add into the mix that schools are teaching naturalism and we have an even more complex teaching problem. According to Lee Strobels website,

The belief in naturalism is extremely prevalent and strong today, taking root in public schools where naturalist theory is taught as the only explanation for the universe's origin.

This means that many students visiting our sites will have basic questions, like how did the bible come together and what are all these phrases that I hear Christians using.

Helping Others

Jesus did an amazing thing that's hard for many of us. He didn't just help people in need. He helped everyone in need no matter how they got into need. When the Apostles went out they helped people in need. This call to help people is one we still have today. In most churches it's part of our outreach ministries. We help out at food pantries, we go on mission trips to other countries, and we help out people in our local communities who are in need.

This is a place our websites can shine. Websites have been used for some time to coordinate efforts to help people. The church is already doing this. Bringing this to our websites would just be bringing in a tool to help us do it better.

This has us looking at our users as ministers. Not in the teaching sense but in the sense of ministering to others needs.

A Christian Community

When we look through the bible it has always been about a community. In the old testament that community started out as two people, was then about a small family, and was then about a nation. In the new testament Jesus has his Apostles and his disciples. The early church was a definite community. The trend we have is to be a Christian community.

This gives us the opportunity to use our websites to help build stronger communities. With the growing number of community sites and the tools used to do that becoming easier to use this should come as no surprise. But, these communities should be different than the ones we see on Myspace and Facebook. The community of Christ is about a purpose. So, the setup of our online communities needs to be around the purposes and mission of the church.

This has our websites visitors being members of a community with the goal of them being active members of a community.

Putting The Pieces Together

Our users aren't someone coming to our site to consume something the church puts out. When we look at what the church is and what technology can do we see our website visitors as students, ministers, and members of Gods community around his mission.

Living in the digital age where websites are a central point in our daily communication and open information sharing is more than a trend, our church websites need to be more than an advertisement for the products and services of the church. It is time for it to become an integral tool in our Christian living and growth in faith.

Next up, we look at user specific experiences on your site.