In the first article in this series, I sort of started the idea of thinking of creative ways to use video on your website to promote programs within your church other than the obvious candidates for video (obvious candidates like sermons, music, dramatic productions, etc.). Last time, we talked about promoting your Sunday School department. This time I’d like to try to hit upon the men’s organization within your church. Our men’s group (which is actually the Baptist Men’s group within my church’s Brotherhood department) meets once a month and we’ve struggled over the past couple

OK, so I can’t absolutely guarantee that no one else in the world has done some of this stuff, but I can argue that it’s still pioneer territory ready for you to settle in. So what exactly are we talking about here? Well, obviously it’s video...which is not new to the discussion...but what is new (hopefully) are the ideas for the video content. When you think of church websites, there are clearly some given ideas when it comes to video topics. Sermons. Music. Dramatic productions. What I want to do in this article is give you five ideas for promoting your Sunday School department through

I was talking with a friend about this whole issue the other day and it still sounds like a pretty hot topic. We’ve covered it a little bit here-and-there already in reviewing various offerings, but I think we’re still a long way from really making a solid call on it. Let’s start by restating the quandary: on one hand, website providers can offer “ready-to-go” templates based on a library of pre-established designs; or they can offer custom, tailored designs built uniquely for a specific client. So which is better? That’s the whole question. What’s the difference? Well, that’s

Where can you go to find a sermon about anything? Sermon Cloud apparently. Right now they have just over 66,000 sermons available online. You can register and download sermons for free and you can post sermons for free — at least to a point. The “Free Plan” they offer allows you to post 52 sermons for free. Which isn’t bad. But if you want to post up to 110 sermons, you have to sign up for their “Core Plan” which is $9.99 per month. The “Plus Plan” gives you up to 250 sermons for $19.99 per month. (My question is why “52” and “110” though?) Both of the paid plans co

So, at the time of this writing the iPhone 4 has just come out and they’re reporting today that more than 1.7 million units were sold just in the first three days. The iPhone 3GS hit the 1 million mark in the same number of days when it first came out. It makes you wonder exactly how many iPhones total are currently in use around the world right now. (I think I remember seeing somewhere that iPhones are available in over 70 countries (?), but I don’t think I’ve seen a total estimate of all individual iPhone users.) And, of course, there are apps for all kinds of stuff. Including an app t

The official definition of Web analytics is, “the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage.” And this can apply in a number of different ways to websites in general. In this article, we’ll try to focus on at least a few key ways site analytics can benefit your church website and give you the information you need to better serve the members, visitors, and potential visitors of your church. How Do I Know If Anyone Is Really Accessing the Material I Post? This is an excellent question, and one that you should p

Not all solutions for your church website have to be church-specific from a church-specific provider. There are a number of “secular” solutions out there that are solid, easy to use, extremely effective and customizable enough to give you the look and feel you want for your site. Squarespace is an example of a Web publishing platform that is not specifically church-focused “out of the box,” but that can still be a great option for churches looking for the style and usability that Squarespace represents. A Template That’s Not a Template? “Templates that aren't templated.” That’

Sometimes when we’re dealing with technology we tend to focus on what can be done or how it can be done, and we forget to talk about why it should be done. I run into this from time to time within my church. I mention something we could offer on our church website but someone might hear that and say, yeah that sounds great but what would be the point? What would we use that for? Who in the congregation would take advantage of that? Or, there might be a connotation associated with the idea that prevents someone from seeing the ministry potential in what may otherwise sound like a secular or c

One of the comments I hear a lot at my church (and this is not meant to be negative in any way) is that folks don't always hear enough about what's going on within the church. To give you one current example, right now we have an interim pastor because our full-time pastor retired from the ministry about a year ago. So we've had a pastor search committee hard at work looking at candidates for the position, scheduling interviews, etc. People are always curious about where we are in that process. And there aren’t really a lot of official "announcements" made about it at the beginning of our se

From a church growth perspective, there are two priorities (as I see it) when it comes to outreach: get them there and keep them there. Have you ever tried compiling some basic statistics for your church on how many visitors only visit once, how many visit two to four times, five times or more, etc.? If you did, you'd probably see that a lot of potential church members slip away for whatever reason after just one or two visits. Some reasons are always going to be out of your control, but what about the ones that are within your control? But let's back up. How would you even know what those rea