Every day there are millions of people who search the Internet looking for answers to their spirituality questions and questions about God. At the same time, there are millions of people talking to their friends about God who end up in situations where they don't know how to talk about something God related. They leave the conversation with unanswered questions and no resource to help them or their unchurched friends find the answer they are seeking. What we end up with is an incredible opportunity for us to use our church websites to help people find the answers they seek in a very open and accessible way.
The Unchurched Persons Experience
Have you ever done a search on the Internet for one of those fundamental God questions? I'm not talking about a search for the nuances of baptism. I'm talking about something simpler and more fundamental like a search on how the books of the bible came together.
When I did this search I found sites like Yahoo Answers that had a historically inaccurate answer, The American Bible Societies answer that left me with more questions than I started, and a time line that talks about councils but leaves out a lot of detail like, the old testament.
Imagine someone unchurched seeking to answer this question. Imagine someone in the church trying to direct someone unchurched to the answer to this question. Where are our easy to access answers? Where are we trying to make disciples by teaching?
The Golden Opportunity
Teaching on our websites is a golden opportunity to put something out there to help someone searching the web find answers and provide a resource for the people of our churches who are trying to help others find answers. Imagine if a section of your churches website answered the question of how the bible was put together. This would be out there for search engines and curious people. It would, also, be a resource that members of the church could use in their own lives and when they reach out to others who have questions around them.
Organic Growth
A section of a site seeking to help people seek the truth should not be a static or stagnant part of the site. It should start out with some initial teachings and then grow. There should be a place to ask questions and those questions should be used to grow the teaching on this part of the site.
For example, say we start out with an explanation of how the bible came together as we have it today and we used something similar to what The American Bible Society has. Someone asks how we can trust something that was handed down via word of mouth, like certain ancient things were. So, we add on to this section and explain that.
The Tough Stuff
There will be topics that some will be searching for that aren't right to address via a website. One that I recently discovered was when a friend asked me why the people of the old testament had to slaughter animals. This is something deeply personal to a lot of people. When someone asks a question like this we have an opportunity to address this personal issue in a very personal way.
No Substitute
There is no substitute for people talking to people. For friends and neighbors reaching out to each other. A danger in doing this is that we can say we have something teaching people about God. This should not be used that way. This reaches out to people who aren't connecting with others. It's a way to make an opportunity where we don't have one now. At the same time, this is a resource for people of the church to use when they reach out to and have conversations with people who are not part of the church.
Beyond Teaching
When we move into something beyond this initial teaching we get into what I call a visitor. A visitor can be someone churched or unchurched that's looking for information about the church and what is going on around the church community. I'll address this in an upcoming post.
Work Cut Out For Us
When I first approached this idea I thought a lot of churches would have their work cut out for them. This looks like a project too big for a small church and one that could easily become a low priority. Many of these topics are ones that require a little research, even for the most seasoned experts.
In the next post I'm going to talk about a way to ease the load through collaboration. We need a solution that helps the smallest of house churches and the largest of mega churches.
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