Church web site
Church Growth Consulting - Part 1
This Church Growth Consulting site exists to help Pastors and leaders grow the church. To that end we provide a wide variety of information. We believe that the Internet is an amazing tool for church growth. We work with our sister sites, Church Web Master and Web Ministry Online to cover all aspects of web ministry. If you are not yet utilizing the Internet in your ministry, we want to encourage you to read the articles on these three sites to see some of the ways you can put the Internet to work to advance the Kingdom of God. We write most of our Church Growth Software articles on our sister sites, but we thought we would touch on it here for our church growth consulting readers.
On all of our websites we have a software program (Statcounter) that allows us to see what keywords people used to find our websites. These keywords often lead to ideas we use to bring more people to the sites. We feel that one of the biggest impacts we can have for the Kingdom of God is to get as many people as we can involved in the process of growing the church. The more people that visit our websites, the better the opportunity to impact the Kingdom.
Recently we have had some people that came to the site by searching for the keywords “Church Outreach Consultant” and “Church Growth and Technology”. Both of these keywords will make excellent future topics for the website. We will begin writing articles about both these topics which should draw more people to the site. This same idea holds true for your web ministries. As you utilize the software available to tell you what is drawing people to your web ministry, you can beef that part of your ministry up to have even more impact.
Starting a Church Web Site - Part 5
I have been continuing the work on our example Church Web Site. To make the process a little more interesting I decided to take the new theme and start a Church Web Site called Florida Keys Vineyard Churches. One of the reasons for doing this is to get a better result for my own church in the search engines. When we started our website years ago I never thought about the importance of how people would find the site. Right now, the only people that ever find our main church website are people who are specifically looking for it. I want to be able to get people to the site who are searching in a more general way. The main site for the church I pastor is www.keysvineyard.com. This describes our church (Vineyard Community Church) somewhat, but never gets returned for a general search of churches in the area. If I knew then what I know now, the website would be more like the one I am starting, Florida Keys Vineyard Churches. This site will show up in searches for:
- Florida Keys Churches
- Churches in the Florida Keys
- Vineyard Churches
- Keys Churches, etc
You get the idea. Rather than change my existing site (there are some major benefits to having an established site), I am adding this site to direct traffic to my main site. I can also use it to act as a website for our video venue that is 30 miles away. It will serve as another example of how to set up a church web site, which is important to us at Church Growth Consulting.
Things to do to Start a Church Web Site
We have already discussed in previous articles the need for a web host and a domain name. I am going to assume you have dome that already. I will also assume you have read the other articles about installing plugins and the process of downloading and uploading files. It took me less than four hours to get the Florida Keys Vineyard Churches site running and looking half way decent. Here is the process.
1. With the theme installed the next thing to do is add some plugins. Plugins make the site look and function better. For this site I downloaded, uploaded and activated the following plugins:
- Akismet (spam blocker already loaded on WordPress)
- All in One SEO (makes your site more visible to the search engines)
- Contact Form 7 (used this for the contact and prayer request page)
- Easy Donation (puts a place for donations in the sidebar)
- Stat Counter (allows you to track how many people visit the site)
- WP-Upgrade (WordPress is always getting better, this plugin makes upgrading easy)
- WP-Backup (e-mails a back up of your site to you everyday, remember Jesus Saves)
- PayPal Donate (I used this on the Donate page)
- Verse of the Day (puts a new bible verse on the site everyday)
- Page Excluder (keeps certain pages off of the home page, it’s about appearance)
- Events Calendar (nice little calendar plugin for the sidebar)
- WordPress Video Plugin (allows you to show video from Youtube, Godtube, Veoh etc.)
2. The next thing you need to do is add some Pages. I added Contact, Prayer Request, Donate, Where We Are, and Media pages.
3. The theme I am using allows for the adding of some images on a timed scroll on the Home page. I used the Paint program to create images that were 530 x 260 pixels and then added them to the site. Creating the images took more than half of the four gours I needed to set up the site. I am using the images to direct traffic to the pages I want visitors to the site to go to. All the information you need to set up a church web site is available on this site, Church Growth Consulting, or on My Newbie Blog, or on the Church Web Site. If you have any questions use the Contact page and I will try and help you. A few hours of work can make all the difference in your Online Ministry.
Starting a Church Web Site - Part 4
As part of the overall web ministry package we are putting together here on the Church Growth site , I have been spending some time again working on the Church Web Site we are developing. I have found a nice theme that I think will work really well for most churches. It is a very attractive theme and will hold people’s attention. It’s also free! Here is what the site used to look like:
Here it is with the new “Massive News” theme:
To appreciate the theme you need to go and look at it. It has a scrolling feature which continuously changes the look of the site. We will use this feature to introduce the various parts of the Church Web Site we want people to visit.
The Problem with Many Church Web Sites
I have been visiting a lot of Church Web Sites lately. One of the questions you have to ask when you are thinking about your website is “Why would someone read this site”? I think that for a long time the church has often thought of a website as a place for information. Just put the times of the services, what we believe, when the picnic is, etc. Many sites that I visit haven’t been updated for a long, long time. The Church Web Site needs to looked at as an important part of the overall ministry of the church. It has potential that most churches aren’t even considering.
Starting a Web Ministry for Your Church
I received a call this week from a very nice Youth Pastor who wanted to talk with me about a web ministry program he was using and selling. He shared with me about the benefits of his system and even had me look at his church web site. It was very nice. He told me that his system allowed for social networking, sermon podcasting, and event registration, content management, bookstore and giving, bulk emails, and SEO (Search engine optimization). All good things for an online ministry. I asked the big question, “How much”? The answer, “For the basic system, $3000.00 (three-thousand-dollars)”, which includes 2 hours of training.
How Much?
That was my response. Now don’t get me wrong, that is probably a reasonable price and maybe there are a lot of churches who would pay it. If you are one of those churches, then by all means you should check it out. But, if you are like me and want to have the best web ministry you can have but need to find ways to do it for less money, then read on. I am always trying to find ways to do things for less money. I want quality, I just want to know what the money is actually for. So I did about 2 hours worth of research to see what I could do to put together the same features as the system offered and what it would cost. Are you ready?
Web Ministry System - (for less)
Social Networking for Churches - I found a nice social network for churches at www.mychurch.org. It allows for password protection so only people you want to have access can have access. It was easy to set up and use. It would be a nice thing for youth groups and a safe alternative to MySpace.
You can easily link to the network for your church web site. The cost for this part of the web ministry program ……………………………………………..Free!
Sermon Podcasting - There are several ways to tackle sermon podcasting. All of which are free. But I found a nice site to take care of this as well. It is called Sermon Cloud (www.sermoncloud.com).
Sermon Cloud will publish, podcast, syndicate and manage your sermons. The cost for this program …… Free!
Event Registration - I am not sure how often you will need this but I found a site that can handle this for you at Church Cloud (www.churchcloud.com)
The cost for this part of the program ……………………………………… Free!
Content Management - This would be where you set up your web site or blog. We have talked about this at length on this site. You can set up a free blog or web site but to have the functionality you need to integrate all the things you need for web ministry I suggest a domain name and web host. Although you could do it for FREE I would suggest paying the $80 - $90 dollars a year. For information on how to do this read an article I wrote called Create a Blog You can be Proud Of which will detail the process of how to create a blog.
SEO - Search Engine Optimization - You can learn about it here on Church Growth by reading the Getting Noticed (SEO) articles. This is available for ……. Free!
Book Store - You can set up a nice book store by becoming an affiliate with CBD or Amazon. With CBD you actually make 10 percent of whatever you sell. You just put a link to their site from your site. You can easily make back the $80 or $90 dollars you spent on the domain name and web hosting. Just by ordering the materials for our women’s, men’s, and recovery group we made $123 last quarter. Better than ….. Free!
Online Giving -You can set up an account with PayPal and then put a button on your site so people can donate online.
I put a working PayPal button so you can see what it looks like. You can have the button say Donate. I am just showing you how it works. You can read how to set up your PayPal account by reading “How to Start Monetizing Your Blog”. The cost of this part of the program ……………………………Free!
HTML Emails - You can send out HTML emails using several different programs. I would suggest that you use your blog and have people sign up who want to receive your emails. Then you can set up an RSS feed with Feedburner and whatever you post will be put in their email in boxes. You can read about this in an article I write called Making Progress on the Starting a Blog from Scratch List. You can do this for …..Free!
If you really want to have an HTML email program try Constant Contact. (www.constantcontact.com)
You can try Constant Contact for FREE for 60 days. If you still want to use it after that it will cost you about $ 126 dollars a year (it is normally $180 a year, but if you prepay and are a non-profit you get 30% off). Most of you will be better off with the RSS Feed which is Free. So this part of the Program I am going to call ….. Free!
Training - Most of you will be able to get your web ministry running by reading the articles on Church Growth Consulting and My Newbie Blog, which is …………. Free! (If you need a little extra help you can go to the Products Page and for $200 get (4) 30 minute training sessions on setting up your web ministry).
Let’s recap our Web Ministry System (for less)
Social Networking - Free
Sermon Podcasting - Free
Content Management - $90
SEO Search Engine Optimization - Free
Bookstore - Free (Actually will male you money)
Online Giving - Free (Actually will make you money)
Event Registration - Free
HTML Emails - Free
Training - Free (Phone consultation available for $200)
Our Web Ministry System (for less) can be had for free. Or you can spend $90 and get a more flexible setup. You could add some training for $200 and you would be at $290. Even if you chose this option you should easily make this back with your bookstore affiliate and online giving. There you go. A complete Web Ministry System for Free.
-
Sign up for Free RSS Feed
-
