Does your church website serve two masters?

There are two primary audiences church websites must serve equally well: visitors and members. The problem is all too often we find ourselves ignoring Peter to serve Paul. Let's explore this puzzling paradox for a few minutes to see if a solution doesn't shake out.

Defining the Masters

The Bible provides excellent life instruction, specifically about serving God and money, but also in general by warning us the pitfalls of serving two masters. In Matthew 6:24 Jesus addresses this issue, warning that:

"No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other..."

This however isn't so easily done as said when there is more than one audience (master) whom needs to be served when it comes to church websites.

First, we have the Visitors. These are the people that found your URL next to your listing in the phone book (you have it there, right?), on the side of your bus as it drives around town (it’s there too, right?), or perhaps just through searching the Web (Google’s local search will play a big part in this). These folks are perhaps looking for a church home, and have come to your site as part of their search.

On the other side, we have the Members. These are people who already belong to the church and/or are regularly active in various activities and groups. And for the sake of argument, I'll use the term “Member” loosely, implying not just members on your church rolls, but also those whom attend various church functions and/or services regularly and are somewhat involved in the operations and activities of the church.

Needless to say, these two groups have vastly differing needs and expectations for your Web site.

1. Serving Visitors (Paul)

Most church websites I review are very conscious of those seeking a new church and/or a church experience. As a result, you'll find most church websites succeed at providing relatively superficial information about the church. The better sites provide immediate answers to questions such as:

• How do I get there?
• What time are the services?
• What denomination does the church represent?
• Are the people watching my kid safe and reliable?
• Is the pastor teaching some wild-n-wacky, cult-like heresy?
• Who are the people that I’ll be seeing up front on Sunday morning?
• If I decide to make this my church home, what types of activities could I become involved?

In a lot of ways, such sites sell the church to Visitors in the same way  a company sells its product — by carefully asking and then answering the question, "what information would I be looking for if I was in the same position?"

As I noted before, this aspect of a church's internet operations are generally well-addressed.

2. Ignoring Members (Peter)

Perhaps the biggest stumbling block to serving members is understanding their needs - and to understand that, we first need to discover the root cause of their needs - and that is "success."

The mark of a successful church program is increased membership and community participation. Which is also why the mark of a successful church program are problems similar to those found in fast-growing companies: arguments over facility use, increased operational costs, long-term capital spending programs, etc ...

Yet, just as a successful company doesn’t display its maintenance work-order system and/or internal operational memos on its front page to potential customers, neither is it advisable that a church print the notes to budgetary committee meeting minutes nor whom it contracts to fix the leaky toilet in the "Augustine Wing" of your building complex.

So how does a church webmaster get around the complications serving the needs driven by success - without sacrificing the needs of the visitor?

Defining the Approach

Members need an Intranet, or at least Intra-net like functionality. Assuming that the Internet needs of visitors are masterfully managed by you church's massive IT staff, what's left is providing a solution that is often the province of corporations to securely share organizational and/or operational information  with its employees.

"Corporations?! My church isn't a corporation!!!!" Yes, I can hear some of you shouting that at your computer screens - please don't ask me how. That said, when it comes to serving the needs of those involved in getting the work done, quite often they are similar enough to share the same solution.For instance:

• Members need schedules. They don’t need superficial information about the events and ministries available — they need to know when the preschool playground cleanup project will begin on Saturday morning, how they should be dressed for it, and what side dish they need to bring for the potluck afterwards.
• Members need contact information. They know that Pastor Bob went to seminary in Cleveland and did his dissertation on the Gospels, but right now they just need every phone number and email address at which they might be able to contact him because Mary’s cousin was in a serious car accident and the family needs someone to lean on.
• Members need news. Let's say they spend their summers in Saskatoon, so they don’t know that the air-conditioning system went on the fritz and there’s a goodwill offering to get it fixed.
• Members need records. The new sanctuary project is on schedule, but they like to review the Building Committee meeting minutes anyway because they were in contracting for 20 years and they can spot a construction problem ten miles away.
• Members need collaboration. Yes, it is a great visitor attraction to have sermons online, but the Window XP-based 11th grade Sunday School teacher wants to work remotely on a slide-show and  document series with the 10th & 12th grade teachers - the former whom is a Mac-o-bite, the latter Linuxian.

Defining some Solutions

Given that these two masters are so different, how do you meet both their needs with the same Web site? It’s a tricky question, but here are some ideas:

1. Enlist an online office suite - Google Apps and ZOHO come to mind, but there are also others out there that will help manage the multi-member collaboration and calendar issues. You'll also enjoy the added cost benefit of avoiding some of the exorbitant costs of licensing applications and operating systems across your church/membership enterprise.
2. Subdomain your intranet - I see some church websites that have a "members only" link. To me, this can come across a bit cliquish and worse - may invite neer-do-wells. Instead, just include in your Sunday bulletin a simple link such as "members.university-of-edgestow.org" (versus visitors whom simply see "www.university-of-edgestow.org).
3. Employ alternate channels of communications - leave your entire Web site for the Visitors, and use another Net-based means to communicate with the Members.  A listserv can go a long way, and it works well because you usually have email addresses for your core members. If you have some Net savvy folks, perhaps issue the core news via RSS.
4. Establish 2 units of operation - have two groups of individuals, one whose task it is to serve visitors, the other members. Obviously there will need to be collaboration and perhaps a liaison between the two, but such an approach is not unusual in other online service operations.

I'm sure there are a multitude of other solutions out  there - but the point of this post was just to generate some thought on how to handle the unique needs of a church Web site - and its two masters. If nothing else, simply acknowledging the problem exists while working on your church's  web presence can a world of difference in your overall, long-term approach.

by Dean Peters - HealYourChurchWebsite.com

Comments

[mike miller]

Your post on church websites is go true. Just wanted to give a big amen! It is the 21st century and church's and ministry business need to take your suggestions to heart!
mike miller www.navpress.com

[mike miller]

Your post on church websites is go true. Just wanted to give a big amen! It is the 21st century and church's and ministry business need to take your suggestions to heart!
mike miller www.navpress.com

[mike miller]

I agree with your comments on websites but the business world could learn from your suggestions not just the church
mike miller www.navpress.com

[Kevin McCord]

Still trying to decide how far to go with a church member site or even just when to start one. I see very large churches provide both, but it is hard to tell how successful they are. I also don't want to create a holy huddle that competes with social networking sites that I hope our people will engage.

One approach I tried and did not like was trying to manage a single roles-based CMS driven website with content that required authentication.

One theory that has worked to some extent is building a website under the assumption that guests only have a limited number of special needs and that they would appreciate getting some fresh and real insight into what is happening with the church so long as they could still get their questions answered.

I'm hoping to acheive critical mass with a member/attender site by incorporating actual ministry process and tasks (sign up for an event, visit someone in the hosptial, call and invite someone to your group, email your small group).

[Jeremy Denlinger]

Thanks for this post. This has been something that I have been trying to create a stance on for a long time. I agree with most everything that you said but when we have sat down and talked with new people to the church and have talked with the church body as a whole the visitors need the information like service times, core beliefs, and directions to the church but they also don't want to feel like an outsider. They also don't like to be labeled guest or first timer. They will most likely never park in the guest spot etc. Most visitors that we run into want to blend in.

Even though guests/visitors come to church and try and sneak in and sneak out...my research says that they still have a desire to know what is going on around the church. They want to know that Pastor Bob is going to be available for them and they want to know about schedules, they want to know about the church wide news so that they are not completely out of touch the moment they walk in the door and see the poster for the latest fundraising idea or the latest message series.

Often times a guest or first time visitor website is so static. I have found people are more likely to come and check something out if they see an alive and active community which is something that is often difficult to display on a static visitor only website.

The line of members and visitors are blurred on our website. Sure we use google docs to collaborate but that is on a team by team basis. Usually this is something that even all the church members aren't interested in anyway. For example our worship ministry really doesn't have time to be checking in on how the young adult team ministry is collaborating on the next big event or vice versa.

I am continuing to be challenged on this topic...lets keep the discussion going and my challenge would be for each of us to get to know our church people and get to know the visitors that are walking in the door. Every community in the world and United States is different...don't get on the ban wagon of "well it works for them". Innovate a new idea, find out what works for your church and your community!

[Steve K]

Hi, Dean - great conversation-starter (or a continuation of one we have all had, at one time or another)

Wow, this is a fast-changing arena! Not so long ago, there was static HTML and static web brochures. Then, along came scripting languages and dynamic web sites. Forums and bulletin boards became de riguer and content management systems came into being. With both of those eras, sites really needed to commit to a group of visitors, or suffer poor results trying to 'serve 2 masters'. A CMS with a strong users/groups management can closely approach being more than just 1 site.

Now we have the social web and all that brings with it. Boundaries are blurred and content is placed in the hands of the community, not as a proclamation from the powers that be.

I always council people their sites should be an extension of who they are offline and reflect reality - churches are no exception. So, to the original theme of this article and putting this in terms of a Sunday morning experience - how many churches have separate worship services for 'members only' and for 'visitors'? I would wager there are very few.

For me, I find the mission of the church and the purpose of a web site to be quite similar - build connections and relationships. Draw people together and share a message (The Word). Continue the work of Jesus Christ, online and offline.

[dissertation]

Blogs are good for every one where we get lots of information for any topics nice job keep it up !!!
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