Public Sample of the
Online Ministries Community Blog
This is a public sample of a regular blog published for church webmasters and all those involved in building and operating effective online ministries.
The blog discusses current issues for building better, more effective Internet presences that can rise to the level of being true ministries.
Below are public samples of the blog. The full blog and other tutorials and forums are in the password-protected Online Ministries Special-Interest Community. To comment and participate in all of the content within the community, register for this FREE community.
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Recent Blog Postings
Evangelism by Search Engine – Part 3 - Getting Your Pages Found
From: 5/6/2013
I’ve written about viewing your church’s website, not in simple tactical terms but, instead, about using your website asset as a missional tool for evangelism; harnessing the Internet culture and addressing it on its terms. I have also written about the very basic steps of having a website and making sure that all of your content can be found and can be searched by the search engines’ crawlers. The next step in today’s blog posting is almost as equally basic; getting you pages found once they are in the search engines’ indexes. You want your pages shown on the search engines’ results pages AND clicked on by users, so they actually visit your site.
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Evangelism by Search Engine – Part 2 - Basic Requirements
From: 5/1/2013
In order to do Evangelism by Search Engine, we first have to have web pages that can be found, crawled and entered into the search engines’ indexes that are used for searching. If we don’t, our web pages and even whole websites are “non-entities” in any search; our pages and sites can’t be presented to users because they are missing from the indexes. Today’s blog posting will address the most basic of requirements for doing Evangelism by Search Engine: having a website and making its pages “crawlable” in order to feed the indexes of the search engines.
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Evangelism by Search Engine – Part 1 - The Mission
From: 4/30/2013
Search engines match up people seeking something about faith with the information that is stored on the Internet. In other words, we have a really big bunch of people proactively search for something about faith among a really big bunch of information that search engines can sift through, accurately, in milliseconds. Plus, we are compelled in numerous places in the New Testament to tell the good news whenever an opportunity to do so presents itself. It seems like the scripture and technology presents a pretty compelling case to use search engines for telling an evangelical message; to use the Internet culture to share the gospel with people who are already searching for something related to faith. Evangelism by search engine!
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What Are Online Ministries: Classifications and Continuums
From: 4/26/2013
We tend to refer to most of the activities undertaken by churches as “ministries.” The term becomes a catchall term for many efforts that churches embark upon.
Even in the title of this community, I use the term “online ministry” but what does that actually mean?
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The Team Role In Online Ministry Projects
From: 4/24/2013
For the last week, I have been writing this series of blog postings that builds upon an earlier three-part series titled, “Beware of Geeks Bearing Gifts.” In the current series, I am writing about how online projects can be set up and managed in order to illustrate to beginners a few well-established best practices that remove risk for online projects and help insure that online projects meet the expectations of heir sponsoring churches and ministries. One critical component of my posting of April 22, “Common Characteristics of Successful Online Ministries” was the role of the “Team,” the people who develop and operate the church’s website, Internet presence or online ministry. Today, I am going to expand on my writing of about the Team.
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New Projects; Times of Beginnings
From: 4/23/2013
The very beginning on an online ministry project is the time for taking delicate care that the balances between what you wish to build and the realities of what you can build are correct. Having written that lead, I am compelled to also write that, absolutely, one’s reach should exceed one’s grasp. Challenging yourself and your whole ministry is a good thing. However, don’t aspire to something so grand that you are setting yourself up to fail, particularly if you are new to these technologies and processes. Like I said, it is a balance that requires delicate care!
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Common Characteristics of Successful Online Ministries
From: 4/22/2013
There are some basic requirements that must be met whether you build only a simple website, a comprehensive website, a full Internet presence or are elevating a presence to an effective and meaningful online ministry. However, it is very hard to draw neat lines around only a few specific disciplines that are needed; we have to be broad generalists, wearing many hats. This can lead to what appears to be an uncrackable code to beginners. Beginners are often dropped into the deep end of the pool without a very broad range of skills. Obviously, as beginners, they simply lack the experience to be generalists. Herein is a classic Catch-22, how does a church just beginning an online project without the experience of a generalist BUT how does one gain the experience without beginning a project?
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Last Call For Our First Community Survey
From: 4/18/2013
When we launched the Online Ministries Community, one of the first thing we did after opening the community was to ask our initial members to participate in an online survey. To help guide our content development efforts, we are conducting our first community survey to learn something about the you, the members of our community. We need this guidance in order to match the content we develop to your needs and skill levels. We don't want to develop content either too simple or too complex for our audience. Also, we want to balance our content so their is a proper blend of both complex and entry-level materials to match the distribution of skills and experience in our member population.
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Development Frameworks: The Pillars Supporting an Online Ministry
From: 4/17/2013
There are a number of development frameworks. Some are very complex and detailed. Others are simpler and more streamlined. Which framework you use should be one that fits your team. However, it is important that you use one! Almost all of them will provide the important rigor and structure that your team needs. The development framework that I use is based on a well-known one that I modified for churches and online ministries. “Measure twice and cut once!” is good advice.
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Beware of Geeks Bearing Gifts - Part 3
From: 4/16/2013
In this three-part series, I have been writing about a common situation at a friend’s church that produced an unacceptable website. In the third part of this series, today, I would like to address structural improvements in how the church’s Internet committee works, its roles and how it should function. This committee is the logical and typical place to do the required strategic planning but I see a need to make some changes first to make the planning go better. Hopefully, these suggestions will yield a much better outcome.
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