Church Site Emphasis Often Forgotten

This newsletter is a little shorter than usual. The move to our new house that I mentioned in the last letter took a significant left turn. Things appear to back on track, but everything is not back to normal around here to say the least. But I wanted to get out some type of newsletter. This is a clip from the “Web Evangelism Newsletter.” I think there are some valuable things to learn here and on this particular website. Check it out, I’d be interested to hear what you think about this site.

What are churches for? What are church sites for? Surprisingly, only a small minority of church sites have any link explaining the gospel. Even fewer explain it in accessible terms relevant to non-Christians. And a tiny percentage of sites carry any testimonies of members. So it is refreshing to see a church site that has been designed with a very clear evangelistic emphasis right from the front page. Rupert Line in Australia manages the Elizabeth Church of Christ site and writes:

"When I first started thinking about the site for our church, I looked around the web for ideas; my wife and I looked at a lot of church sites, to work out what made a good site good, and vice versa. The pastor of the

church and I always wanted the focus to be evangelistic, not inward-looking. Very early in my searching, I came across the Web Evangelism Guide. I gobbled it up, and there were many, many fantastic ideas. I then set out to do our site largely based on that. So, there is a church section (quite a large one), but it's very unobtrusive from the home page. There is no jargon on the site, except for a page devoted to explaining it! There is a page to explain the gospel as clearly as I could write it. There is an 'Answers' page, which is growing, and again, tries to give clear, honest answers to common questions. There is a testimony page, but it's called 'Changed Lives'. The testimonies are, as far as possible, written in the style set out in the Guide. There's a page called 'Spirituality' (again, note that it's not 'Religions', but the more catchy 'Spirituality') which compares and contrasts major religions. We tried to make the site as appealing and un-offputting as possible to the non-Christian surfer. The layout is as professional as we could come up, with considering that I am only an amateur web designer."

http://www.elizabethchurchofchrist.org

See ya,

Bill

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the fine print…

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It would be way cool if you could mention this resource somewhere on your webpage! You can link to “Help for Church Webmasters” at http://www.downeychurch.com/HelpForChurchWebmasters.html