WCRD - Church Web Site Resources

Barbara Laufersweiler has started a very useful email newsletter. She writes, "I just started publishing an email newsletter 'A Church Voice' is a biweekly newsletter full of great tips, ideas, and resources for church websites and newsletters. Church staff members, clergy, volunteers, professionals - anyone working with a church-related newsletter or website will love it!"

Barbara Laufersweiler - cveditor@laufers.com
A Church Voice - tips for church Web sites & newsletters

A new UK page Hosea.co.uk aims to encourage and facilitate church website design. "We are keen to promote the idea that a good church website is an evangelistic (or at least a pre-evangelistic) site," says James. http://www.hosea.co.uk

http://churchsite.gatheringspot.com (It's designed to help people who are building a church web site. The resource section is the best part now, and if any of you run --or know of-- a site that would help someone building a church web site, It would be great if you would add it. Some of you might be surprised to find your sites are already included.)

TESTIMONIES
'People are interested in people'. Testimonies (written in a style accessible to non-Christians) are a great addition to any church site.

A very welcoming church site in Texas has incorporated a photo of members on their front page, as an image map to click on to find a testimony - a very effective idea:

More outreach ideas for church pages
Writing testimonies for non-believers - and don't call them 'testimonies'!

Church pages can have an influence in and beyond their communities. John C Lewis shares on their own experience:

"It is interesting how the Lord uses our church web-site in ways that we had not thought. The site's primary purpose was informational - an elaborate, dynamic electronic yellow page ad. It can be used for our members to check the church calendar, for the local media to get that bio they need on a pastor, for those moving to our city to find out we exist, and for those that pass our church every day to find out what we believe.

The original intent was not evangelism, but advertising and information. The longer we work with the site, the more we realize that it needs to have aspects of all of these. We have always had links to "God's Simple Plan of Salvation" in multiple languages, but we are working on more ways to draw people to the site and the Gospel.

One unforeseen ministry is answering moral, theological and historical questions. We are surprised by the number of questions weekly. These range from students studying Baptists, people contemplating suicide, those who disagree with our stated Biblical beliefs (sometimes violently with much vulgarity), to those who are confused about most any topic you can think of. It seems people equate a good-looking site with good information. That is obviously not true, but seems to be a popular belief among web surfers.

We have had many families visit our services because they found us on the web. Some are now members of our church. We have also had the occasion to lead some to Christ as a result of contact made through the web site. (Item above.)

It is now standard practice at our church to ensure that all e-mail and Guestbook responses are answered in a timely manner, with the goal of reaching out to those that need Christ."

Visitors since May 17, 2001

World Christian Resources Directory -
Church Web Site Resources