The Church Website: Old School

At one time in this world -- not so long ago, mind you -- there wasn't a creation known as the Internet. Now I know it's hard to fathom, but when I first entered college in the fall of 1992 the Internet wasn't even that popular yet.

Networks were starting to take off. For universities, we relied on a 'net called Gopher, which was kinda like the Internet for Moses. But, within the first couple of years there, the Internet started to make some ground.

I still remember self-learning HTML -- all of it -- well, almost all of it. At the time, to know HTML was to be king. You could design websites. Let's rephrase...you could design BASIC websites. I say that only because the web you know today is nothing like the web I was introduced to in college.

Taking that a step further, the web sites designed today are nothing like the first one I put together 15 years ago. Yet, when I visit many church websites today, I get the old school feeling -- and not for good reasons.

Many sites are barely functional. They may only tell the basic information about the church. If they contain messages, they're not that easy to listen to. If you're lucky, you might find a link to a web map so you can get directions. And, more times than not, you're out of luck as to any information on what to expect when you visit.

A lot of times, churches look at their Internet presence like many businesses did 15 years ago -- as something they HAVE to do, because others are doing it; and not something they SHOULD do, because it can have an impact.

With 15 years of designing under my belt, I can verify that owning and building a web presence today has never been easier. In many places, you can easily get a site that uses a content management system. That's fancy talk for just saying that it can look good without you doing much to it.

Taking this a step further, I'll go ahead and say it -- there's no excuse for a church to 1) not have a web site, and 2) not to have a good looking site.

Tomorrow, I'll talk about some of the things your site can and should have.