This post is part 10 in the series 20 Ways to Share Your Faith Online leading up to Internet Evangelism Day on April 25. We encourage you to tweet, share, blog & discuss these ideas in your church & circle of influence.
The Great Commission. If you have been in church for any length of time, you have heard about it. It is a specific request from Christ for us to go and spread the Gospel. (Matt. 28:16-20) In the past, fulfilling the Great Commission was left to missionaries. Today missionaries, churches, and ministries are able to “go and tell” in new ways. Local churches and ministries can use their website and the internet to impact the world.
Most churches today have a website. The sad reality is that many churches do not use their website to their fullest potential.
I googled churches in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsa is considered by many to be a part of the “Bible Belt”. Even so, it has a good representation of churches large and small on the world wide web. While many of the sites kept their members informed, if you weren’t a member of that particular church, their content might not be of any interest to you. Many churches fail by not duplicating what is happening inside the “four walls of the church” on the internet.
A hard truth is that churches need to market themselves. People are searching and they are doing it in new ways. To make an impact, your website needs to be current and in search listings. One way to keep current is to blog frequently and consistently. If you repost your blog on Facebook and retweet on Twitter, it can impact your website ranking in search engines. Not only that, but you are impacting different people using the different social media outlets. Your “followers” on Twitter are not always your “fans” on Facebook.
Look at it this way: Your website should be a good representation of who you are and what you have to offer. You need to assume that those visiting your site know nothing about your church or ministry. You need to keep in mind that even though you are a church or ministry, your site needs to attract and keep the attention of those who may not believe. You need to use every resource available if you are serious about reaching people through the internet. We can carry out the Great Commission online.
Wendy Spoon is the website administrator for speakinggraceonline.com.
5 Comments
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Thanks, Wendy!
Good post, Wendy. I think people think about church websites as having two primary purposes 1) to help people looking for a church in their community to find their church, and 2) to keep members of their church informed about upcoming events & ministries. However, churches really do have a great opportunity to do more than that with their sites…
– By providing video and notes from sermon messages, they can help people who may be looking for answers to spiritual questions, people who may be local or anywhere in the world.
– By providing a "how to find God" page with an explanation of the gospel, they can share the good news with people locally or globally.
– By featuring ministries that serve the people in their community like counseling, a recovery group, or a food bank they can connect with people who may not even think to look to a church for help with the situation they're in.
– And of course a church can encourage people anywhere in the world to submit prayer requests.
Wow!!! Great post, I am excited to see someone who is really getting these concepts. I hope in your search you came acrosshttp://www.TulsaChurches.net. We started creating sites like this to make more churches easily accessible on searches across all search engines. Using the tools you are talking about is vital for churches today, no doubt. I hope you don't mind if I pass this article on to everyone I know!
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