Archive for category Church Websites
Passionates by Joshua Porter
Posted by John in Church 2.0, Church Websites, Churches, Web 2.0 on August 19, 2008
As a technology pastor, I am constantly working to make the mission of the church compatible with the technology that is used in the church. One of the blogs that I read regularly posted this article and I’m just buzzing about how to use these concepts in reaching the lost! Here’s the link to the article – I’d recommend reading it! I’ll probably work through this a bit later and try to make it relevant to to the work that I do.
A couple of quotes from the article that I want to remember for later!
The reality is that people are passionate about some things, and not at all about others. They love some activities and don’t care about others. The activity is what they’re passionate about (not the technology) and when they’re passionate enough they’ll learn the necessary technology as they find appropriate. Passion depends upon the activity in question.
It simply means that technology came along to help them practice their passion better, and so they adopted it because the value proposition made sense to them.
The activity is the thing to focus on, not the technology. Technology enables the activity, and people will get excited about the technology if they’re excited about the activity first and the benefits of the technology has been explained to them. But you don’t make passionate photographers by showing them lenses, you make passionate photographers by showing them pictures that rip your heart out.
A much larger population (although much more fractured) are those people who are already passionate about some activity or other, and can become passionate about new technology as it relates to that activity, but they just haven’t been introduced properly.
In other words, the task is not always to make people passionate about something, it’s to show them how technology (or your product, etc) can make them even better at what they’re passionate about.
Technology is merely the enabler of that activity.
So while yes, you should take advantage of early adopters, learning from them and focusing some of your effort on them, you can’t assume that just because people aren’t early adopters they’re not passionate. Passion is more about doing an activity well than it is about using the latest technology to do it.
I hope Joshua won’t mind me posting these quotes – they are just way too good to not share and I don’t want to miss them later!
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Churches that do Websites well
Posted by John in Church Websites, Website Development on April 14, 2007
So, with working with church websites for the past 6 1/2 years, I thought that I might share some of the things that I think about when it comes to website development and how it can be used in the church. I have compiled an initial list of sites and ideas that I believe would be beneficial to to begin thinking about. I am going to break it up into the following posts and I’ll try to post each night:
Churches that do websites well
Social Networking sites
Blogs and Podcasts
Web 2.0 vs. Web 1.0 Websites
AJAX websites (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)
Churches that do not do websites well
So, with that said, here we go!
http://www.takethejourney.org/home.htm
- Note that they are incorporating Flickr in their website for their photos.
http://www.vintagechurch.org/
- Note the ease of navigation – They do the BLACK theme well, the colors work well.
http://www.the-river.org/
- Please note two things:
1. The use of a community portal (http://the-reef.org) for the members of the church to be a part of
2. The use of Google’s calendar program on their front page with all of their events on it.
http://www.lifechurch.tv/
- Couple of things:
1. FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH – this is maybe the coolest and fastest Flash, How do they do that?
2. Locations: click on a location and each location shows what’s going on at that location.
3. Does the Black theme on the secondary pages as opposed to the primary page – interesting concept
4. Online Store (http://www.lifechurch.tv/store/) uses an Open Source program called OSCommerce (http://www.oscomerce.com/)
5. OVERALL: What you don’t see is a complete other website behind this that is part of the church community portal
FYI, I THINK ALL OF THE SITES LISTED ABOVE USE A CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM CALLED DRUPAL
(http://www.drupal.org)
http://www.skylinechurch.org/ (the obligatory Wesleyan Church)
- Couple of things:
1. Style is CLEAN and CRISP. This is a very popular concept, using white as a primary part of the website
2. Ability to build community online (Classified section and Community Involvement on front page)
3. PODCAST OF SERMONS – Essential if we want are “in it to win it” (Thank you Hillary Clinton).
4. PDF of Weekly bulletin – NOTE: The pastors sermon outline is NOT shown
5. ALSO about the Bulletin – The Bulletin MATCHES the website which MATCHES the church – this is called Branding
http://www.yorktownbaptist.org/
- Please note some things:
1. FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH – Constant but very suddle flash throughout the site. Watch the front page.
2. Ability to give online
3. The site is fully integrated with a software package called Fellowship One – (http://www.fellowshipone.com) Might be worth checking out and seeing what their software does and thinking about how you can adapt it or incorporate it into your site.
That’s it for now, have a great night!
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