Discover how to leverage technology in your church

Sociologists maintain that you can learn a lot about looking in people’s medicine cabinets. In the same vein, I believe a narthex tells a lot about a congregation. When I visit a congregation, I notice so many things:

Most people think that a website is an end goal for any online effort. But it’s not. The final goal is to let people know they will find Jesus in the Church, and we want them to come and meet Him there.

There are other reasons why the website isn’t the final goal when trying to draw people to your church.

More and more, church offices are utilizing web-based email marketing services for communicating with their congregations. Why are they doing this?

What happens after someone visits your congregation?

At my church, the visitors sign a guest book and a day or two later, they receive a letter in the mail from the pastor—which is an excellent practice. It’s personal, especially in this detached, electronic world. In fact, it has repeatedly led to visitors wanting to meet with him and eventually join the congregation. Several people have mentioned how important that letter has been. People like to be acknowledged and the personal touch makes a huge difference.

But more can be done to help someone get to know the congregation.

Before computers became integrated with our lives, the big office complaint was about paper. A good deal of our communication and information storage involved paper. How to store that information, share that information, and avoid being buried in that information was a daily challenge.

I know—it still is.

While we might deal with less paper than previous generations, we’re bombarded with more information and communication than ever before. We have a completely different kind of clutter and the same need. How do we keep it all straight?

When you saw the title of this post, what went through your mind?

• I’m already too busy.
• What would I write about?
• Who would read it?
• I have no idea where to start.
• You’ve got to be kidding!

You’re not alone. Those are all common responses. Many of us have the experience of the forgotten blog somewhere in the internet, so some of us feel timid or even aghast at the idea of starting one for a church.

All the same, you should absolutely have a church blog.

Creating a church webpage should be easy, shouldn’t it?

Whether we’re talking about a home page, an about page, or a simple blog post—type it up and hit “publish,” right? But if you want your page to actually get read, it’s not that simple.

Don’t worry, it’s not that hard, either, but it is important to know how to structure your page so that readers want to read it.