• From: Sacramento
  • Registered: 2005-12-03

Topic: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

Is anyone else interested in exploring ways to develop community building (or social networking) via their church website?

The problem that I have observed in our (and a number of other contemporary Christian) churches is that it is difficult to get people to spend the time to get to know one another. We added a coffee shop to our church - which provided a place for people to linger between services and this has been quite sucessful. However, after seeing the "community" functionality built-into the Jacob's Well Website such as incorporating member Flickr photos, blogs, and church member profiles, AND seeing how many youth group members in our church use MySpace, I am wondering if a different approach ought to be considered.

One idea I am thinking of would be to structure a revised church website along the lines of a multi-person blog or wiki. Rather than the "web servant" being responsible for updating all of the pages for the various ministries, the steward of each ministry would update a blog for that ministry. I had imagined previously that church members would use "Contribute" to update content - but this has proven to be unrealistic for a number of technical (and monetary) reasons. Is it more realistic for me to expect people to update a blog rather than a website (via Contribute)?

The distinguishing feature of a church (as compared with a business) is its functionality as a family or a body - and I think church websites might be more "sucessful" if they were to reflect and reinforce this distinguishing characteristic. Again - I am imagining a sort of church member "Site Aggregator".  A site, or a section that would function somewhat like a "Bloglines" or RSS reader/aggregator for each members Flickr/Blogger/delicious feeds. Members would post (or request the posting) of these feeds.  The member would gain readers - as well as help others in the church body get to know more about each other. This is happening now in our church currently through individual Myspace accounts (read "not always edifying).

The majority of the sites I have developed to date have been "static" sites - not database driven. Can anybody suggest existing back-end software that would free me from needing to cobble together a means to: (1) Create user log-ons, (2) restrict user activities in various subdirectories, (3) read from/write to RSS feeds, (4) create blogs, allow comments, permalinks, etc.? I know that this could all be done with PHP, ROR, ColdFusion - but I am really not a hard-core coder.  I am leaning towards switching to a WordPress host as it appears that this application would provide much of the needed functionality. Comments, suggestions?

Last edited by Greg Balzer (2005-12-26 14:36:33)

Greg Balzer's Website

  • rePete
  • Rocket Surgeon
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2005-12-09

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

Greg,

This is the same issue I'm struggling with right now during my church website redesign. Of the hundreds of church sites I've seen Jacobs Well is the only one I know of with even some of the features I would like to see. The Web Empowered Church also has a couple of ideas like the prayer connector model which are very appealing.

The idea of church website as blogs or wikis may fit a current paradigm, one which I think would be lost on MOST of the members of my fellowship. And there is the dilemma ..... will the majority of users be turned off by the look, feel and function of a community driven site? Yes we still must have the information of an "online brochure" but with the content of the values of our own church fellowship if that's possible.

I'll be interested in any other responses you get.

Last edited by rePete (2005-12-26 17:16:53)

all generalizations are false .... Mark Twain
  • From: Sydney, Australia
  • Registered: 2005-12-13

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

The key thing here seems to be the ability to manage users and restrict/allow access.  My personal site uses TextPattern, which I think is similar to WordPress - and I think you could, although not easily, develop a complex membership site with TextPattern.

I would suggest having a look at Expression Engine Personal Edition (to be up-front, that's an affiliate link).  It's not free, but I think the $99.95 US is worth it.  I've just launched the new Toongabbie Anglican Church site built on Expression Engine.  Whilst it's not "socially networked" yet (apart from a multi-author blog with comments)... having Expression Engine run the site will allow for significant expansion and the easy introduction of new features.

Expression Engine meets your criteria:
1. It has a member management system, much like that of a discussion forum.
2. You can assign members to different groups (custom) and hence different priveleges.  EE uses templates to build pages, and the templates can each require certain priveleges/group membership to view.
3. A plugin like Magpie allows you to incorporate feeds into your templates.  It does not, however, create entries from the feed.  Creating RSS/Atom (and Podcast) feeds is easy, and because the feed is generated from a template, you can edit every detail if required.
4. EE is a full blown weblog system.  You can require membership to the site to leave comments.  You can allow members to write posts without access to the control panel.

So other features of EE that lean towards social networking:
EE comes with a photo gallery module.
For extra you can purchase a Discussion Forum module.  Both the gallery and discussion forum share the same membership system.
Of course, you can use existing plugins (e.g. a Flickr plugin) or create your own plugins, and the recently launched Extensions feature will allow for more complicated modifications.

Hope that helps and doesn't sound too much like a sales pitch.

Last edited by carrot (2005-12-26 17:43:28)

blog: http://simon.job.id.au ■ twitter: http://twitter.com/simonjob ■ church: http://www.toongabbieanglican.org.au ■ maths teaching: http://mathsclass.net

carrot's Website

  • Registered: 2005-12-21

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

Hi Greg,

My company is currently working on software that does exactly what you're describing. We're getting ready to release CrossConnector in just a few weeks.

We built CrossConnector precisely because it is so hard to get connected with other people doing ministry work. We wanted to build a place where churches and missionaries could easily update their own information and connect with people doing similar work.

CrossConnector is like a blog in the sense that you can post messages and articles, and anyone can post comments. It's a little like MySpace, but it's focused on ministry and missions, so you always know that content on a CrossConnector website is going to be edifying and ministry-oriented.

But CrossConnector has quite a bit more functionality that makes it ideal for managing ministry work. You can manage projects ranging from mission trips to small groups to new church plants. You can upload files, including photos, MP3s, and PDF documents. You can maintain an address book, and use CrossConnector to send and post newsletters and news items.

CrossConnector brings many ministries under the same roof, so to speak. My favorite part of CrossConnector is the search engine. You'll be able to search current and archived ministries and projects from anywhere in the world. My hope is that CrossConnector will empower people to form new relationships that they would not otherwise have the opportunity to form.

Another thing that you mentioned is the need to allow multiple people to log in to update their information. With CrossConnector you can give multiple people access to your control panel (we call it the Homebase). For example, if you have ten people responsible for ten different mission trips, they could each log in to update their own information.

Take a look at our splash page (which will hopefully be changing in the very near future) at www.crossconnector.com. You can also see my church's CrossConnector site at covinavineyard.crossconnector.com to get an idea of what the public area looks like.

CrossConnector is still in beta, so it's not yet available to the public. However, if you'd like to try it out, just send me an email, and  I'd be glad to let you try the beta.

Best regards,
Ryan Heneise

Last edited by ryenski (2005-12-26 23:52:24)

Ryan Heneise  |  Art of Mission  |  Now with extra-strong Donor Tools mojo

ryenski's Website

  • From: Minneapolis
  • Registered: 2005-11-10

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

I found this list of things your web site should be doing, on the Digital Web site,

    * Offering regularly updated information (blogs, CMSs, etc.)
    * Increased efficiency in news and information distribution (RSS, ATOM, etc.)
    * Alternative methods of information distribution (email newsletters, RSS, del.icio.us, etc.)
    * Enhanced notification and announcement systems (pings, email alerts, etc.)
    * A place for your site's users to offer feedback and input (blog comments, forums, etc.)
    * Improved performance and code optimization (CSS, XHTML, etc.)
    * Multiple ways to access information (multi-faceted navigation, folksonomies, etc.)
    * Intelligent system to system communication (XML, SOAP, etc.)
    * Collaborative communication and documentation (Wikis, blogs, etc.)
    * On-demand support feedback (user-driven FAQs, click-to-chat, etc.)

http://www.digital-web.com/news/2004/12 … _be_doing/

timbednar's Website

  • From: Minneapolis
  • Registered: 2005-11-10

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

One of the stumbling blocks to building your local community is this fact; that when most people go online for spiritual reasons they do not goto their local church web site. They go elsewhere.

This is either because the local church is disconnected to the conversation they are interested in having with other people or their local church web site is not involved with the online conversations about God. In my experience, I suspect both are true.

So, the real problem to building community is not in technology, but church cultures and attitudes regarding membership and information.

My opinion.

timbednar's Website

  • From: Sacramento
  • Registered: 2005-12-03

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

Timbednar - living in Sacramento (an evolving cow-town) I can relate to the cultural gap you describe. However, based upon the time local Jr High and High School youth currently spend on Flickr, MySpace (and GuildWars), I think it is only a matter of time before we will see significant changes in church member use of the web.

I really appreciate all of the feedback above regarding "ideal" church website content. It now seems pretty obvious now that the bulleted feature list timbednar noted above are a logical way to go. This idea requires more prayer and meditation - but "He" does make me lay down in green pastures!

BLOGGING SOFTWARE - NOT JUST FOR BLOGGING ANYMORE?
After doing some preliminary "Google" research (my eyes are bleeding), I think that I must be one of the last "webservants" on the planet to realize that Blogging/CMS software may be a better tool for quickly creating a "full featured" church website than trusty old Dreamweaver, a book on Web Standards, and some handy extensions.  I really can't believe how many "plugins" exist for the various blogging software packages. There seems to be a lot more innovation in the Open Source community than in the Dreamweaver world.

Here are some links that many of you have probably already seen, but I found very insightful as I Googled around:

(PS - the links below favor Word Press - but I think that each of these server-side applications (including EE) have their appropriate place)


http://www.healyourchurchwebsite.com/ar … 001518.php
WP Benefits Which Would Apply to Most CMSs
Good Comprehensive Blogging Software Comparison Table
A listing of Available Plugins

Last edited by Greg Balzer (2005-12-27 22:46:15)

Greg Balzer's Website

  • From: Minneapolis
  • Registered: 2005-11-10

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

I agree with Greg and young Internet users. However, I do think they are more unlikely to use a local church web site than any of us. The question will be how to integrate your content into the servics and web apps they use on a daily basis. I think Christian web sites should start thinking in terms of microcontent, rss syndication, etc rather than building a cool "destination" site for their church.

timbednar's Website

  • Registered: 2005-12-21

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

timbednar wrote:

I agree with Greg and young Internet users. However, I do think they are more unlikely to use a local church web site than any of us.

My opinion about why people don't use church websites is that they're mostly not useful. Most of the content on church websites is fluff and nonsense, and most of it is out of date, which makes it worse. Also, most church websites are so ugly that they repulse me (and people in my generation) before we can even read the first words.

Most churches see the web as an expense - some necessary drudgery that takes up valuable resources - like cleaning the bathroom. I think if a church has that mentality then even the greatest software won't help them have a better website. The church needs to see their website as an investment, rather than an expense. Churches need to invest in good content. One of the most popular pages on my church's website is the "Investigate the Faith" section. It would probably be even more interesting if we had a pastor's blog, but every week they post up Sunday's sermon in MP3 format, so there is always something fresh.

I think that you're right - it's important for churches to have software that enables them to provide better content. But I think that we have to take a step further - to help our churches change their mentality, and to think of the Internet as an investment in evangelism, where the church website becomes not just a medium for the transmittal of information, but a vehicle for evangelism and teaching.

Ryan Heneise  |  Art of Mission  |  Now with extra-strong Donor Tools mojo

ryenski's Website

  • From: Dallas, TX
  • Registered: 2005-10-29

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

I agree, fresh content is key. Imagine picking up a newspaper each day at the local magazine stand, only to read last year's news. Or worse yet, having the front page say "Coming Soon!" every single time. Worst case scenario: The person who managed the site has moved, and the old pastor's bio is plastered up there permanently. We really need to write a book entitled The Case for CMS.

Give me liturgy or give me death.

Nathan Smith's Website

  • From: Sacramento
  • Registered: 2005-12-03

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

Nathan,

Fresh content is key - otherwise the site is just an expanded phone book listing, right?

I like the observations by Nick Finck, over at Digital Web Magazine:

Things we are pretty much adopting:

    * Offering regularly updated information (blogs, CMSs, etc.)
    * Increased efficiency in news and information distribution (RSS, ATOM, etc.)
    * Improved performance and code optimization (CSS, XHTML, etc.)

Things we haven't really adopted yet:

    * Alternative methods of information distribution (email newsletters, RSS, del.icio.us, etc.)
    * Enhanced notification and announcement systems (pings, email alerts, etc.)
    * A place for your site's users to offer feedback and input (blog comments, forums, etc.)
    * Multiple ways to access information (multi-faceted navigation, folksonomies, etc.)
    * Intelligent system to system communication (XML, SOAP, etc.)
    * Collaborative communication and documentation (Wikis, blogs, etc.)
    * On-demand support feedback (user-driven FAQs, click-to-chat, etc.)

Full article available here: http://www.digital-web.com/news/2005/12 … _be_doing/

Greg Balzer's Website

  • Registered: 2006-02-09

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

Sorry that I am late to the discussion, just registered for GodBit, but I'd like to share about what we have learned about online community.

At Ginghamsburg Church (http://Ginghamsburg.org) we have had online communities (forums) since 1997 on our church website and have over 5000 registered users. There were thousands of posts and some awesome community. However, in the last few years, things changed. Posting to our communities is down to a trickle. But people did not stop posting to our website. They switched to other forms of posting. Blogs are part of that, but only a small part.

Online community has been around since before the Internet with bulletin boards we called into via modems. As I think about it, our Ginghamsburg communities are really the Internet version of the bulletin board. The thing about these systems is that you go there to communicate. Now online community has changed. It seems to me that people want to post where they are already instead of going to a special place to post. Or they want to post to a special place that is designed for just their kind of post. Here are some examples of people connections:

E-Candle – (http://ginghamsburg.org/candle) This is a place for serious posts and is our most posted to page.

Prayer Exchange – (http://ginghamsburg.org/prayer) This is a place to read other prayer requests and to post prayer requests.

Job Connection – (http://ginghamsburg.org/jobs) This is a place to look for jobs and to post available jobs.

Helping Hands – (http://ginghamsburg.org/hands) This is a place to go when you need some help on something.

Business Directory – (http://ginghamsburg.org/businessdirectory) This is a place you go to connect with someone else in the church who has a service for sale that you need.

Youth Leader Blog – (http://theavenue.org/matt/, http://theavenue.org/holly/) This is where you go to hear from the youth leaders and to comment.

Just Community – (http://theavenue.org/avecommunity/, http://ginghamsburg.org/community) We still have traditional forums. But they are not as busy.

Transformation Journal – (http://ginghamsburg.org/tj/) This is a free daily Bible study and devotional with MP3 audio, a personal journal, and a discussion forum. This is a very popular! Hundreds of people log in there every day. Seeing it requires a free account. See the video to get a hint of what it is about (http://ginghamsburg.org/tj06video) or just get an account.

So community is now everywhere and targeted and adjusted to the topic at hand. I think this is where the future of online church community is.

And the good news is that you can get ALL this functionality from the Web-Empowered Church (WEC) ministry (http://WebEmpoweredChurch.com) for FREE!

The current WEC Starter Package is for Linux/Unix and for Windows includes TYPO3 3.8.1, the WEC Templates, the WEC extensions, and several installed and configured extensions. A new initial page tree includes examples of a pastor's blog, forums, a prayer request board, a daily devotional, a class with MP3 audio and charts, a calendar, news, user login, and website search. All the examples above used WEC. WEC is also adding many more features. Under development now is a Servant Connector like http://www.ginghamsburg.org/serve and a really cool Sermons Management System that supports sermons in text, audio, and video and automatically does podcasts and RSS, and of course, online discussion about the sermon. Throughout WEC you will see that it is all about community and connection.

In Christ,
Mark

  • maspick
  • Servant to The King
  • Offline
  • From: Kewanee, IL
  • Registered: 2006-02-08

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

Mark -

WoW!  Quite a resource they're providing.  I'm impressed.

Greg et al -

The trouble with getting baby boomers (I are one) and older to embrace a website for community is an innate fear of the medium.  I've been involved with computers since the dark ages - a time when a fraction of the power of a current low-grade business desktop filled a cavernous, temperature-controlled room that required a variety of specialists to perform the simplest of computing functions.  I went to school to learn how to manage those beasts and paid on my student loan for a long time.  Today, kids grow up with computers in the home and see them as an extension of themselves - tools that readily serve their needs like their feet carry them across a room.  I know countless people older (& younger) than I who look at a computer and shudder if their job requires them to interact with it.  When the computer in our church office malfunctions in the smallest of ways, the church secretary throws up her hands and gives up with a whimper.  And don't even think about introducing her to a new way of producing the weekly newsletter!!!!!  I live in a community that's about 5 years behind the times in many ways and the concept of using the web has proven very problematic.  The small group I lead established a Yahoo group to "keep in touch during the week" and is rarely used now less than a year after its inception.

The second hurdle is monitoring.  As the site represents the church to the world of the Internet, flames, intruders, gossip, etc. must be removed before it's viewed, which requires people dedicated to the task of keeping on top of postings.  Finding those people among the 20% that do the 80% of the work in the church can be difficult at best.  We have a members-only area where we have our membership directory, including pictures, and the schedules of the various ministries.  For the most part, we can't get the ministry leaders to participate in keeping up their schedules and my wife and I end up handling 98% of the scheduling, which ends up being seen by maybe 5% of the church. hmm

All that being said, I'm still an advocate for slowly pushing my congregation towards the web and the usefullness it can provide.  It's my prayer to see a tenfold increase within 5 years - God can do anything! :^{>

Honored to Serve for Him - Tom ('Mas) Pickering <)><

maspick's Website

  • Registered: 2006-07-08

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

A church I just visited has created many mediums for Christians across the board.  I asked them how it was going, and they told me it was amazing how quickly it was growing!  There is a definate need.  The church was a Calvary Chapel in Maui.  They had created a Christian lyrics site, a Podcasting site, and their latest was a huge online Christian community (www.dittytalk.com). 

There is a need people.  Don't let fear keep you back.  As the technology increases, so will our interest in it as older folks.

  • From: houston, tx, usa
  • Registered: 2006-07-01

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

I think another valid question is "is the local church website a place where social networking is going to happen?" and i'm not convinced that it is, at least not in a way like myspace or other sites. places like GodBit or a variety of other sites bring believers together based on common interests, not on locale or denomination, and i think this expands the conversations that we'd otherwise have. the local church can sometimes get dangerously caught up in "their" way of doing things and i'm all for expanding that mindset. I can see a local church site as a portal for news, a calendar, contact information, and direction to other destinations, and maybe with some networking aspects like a message board for youth or young adult ministries.

something like CrossConnector is an interesting idea and i think one that could have some definite value. when it all comes down to it though, the church is what it is in person and not online, it's what happens when you walk in the front door for the first time that really counts. I see beautiful websites for places that i know firsthand don't make people their priority and...yeah.

chris (fig): i'm not random, i'm tangent oriented... : www.tangentoriented.com

chrisfig's Website

  • From: Minneapolis
  • Registered: 2005-11-10

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

I pretty much agree with chrisfig's question "is the local church website a place where social networking is going to happen?" In my experience, the answer is no. The strategy I'm helping one church pursue dovetails with their overall strategy.

They are a church who is running a for-profit coffee house where they will meet to have church. (If that makes sense). They will have a basic church web site -- but the coffeehouse web site will house the "social media" application.

I think the real place to be is developing widgets that suck in Flickr or RSS feeds and placing them on church sites. Instead of making tools and then begging church folk to come use them, I say have them use whatever they want Blogger, Flickr, Delicious -- but then build a technology that puts that content on a local site (with their permission of course).

It is just a different POV; content is no longer domain specific so lets not treat it as such. With XML and AJAX, we can do lots of sharing/mashing up of content.

timbednar's Website

  • From: Minneapolis
  • Registered: 2005-11-10

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

I guess I should experiment -- how would I build a local church web site using

Flickr
Delicious
Blogger
Upcoming
Google Maps

I mean just using their API or widgets only?

timbednar's Website

  • From: Minneapolis
  • Registered: 2005-11-10

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

Oh I think this is the facts that should inform us about social media and local churches -- basically you need a bigger group of people than your local congregation to power a social networked church site...

It's an emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will "interact" with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it.

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly … 59,00.html

timbednar's Website

  • revans
  • Entrepreneur && Programmer
  • Offline
  • From: San Diego, CA
  • Registered: 2005-10-29

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

timbednar wrote:

Oh I think this is the facts that should inform us about social media and local churches -- basically you need a bigger group of people than your local congregation to power a social networked church site...

It's an emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will "interact" with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it.

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly … 59,00.html

So, then the question needs to be asked, how do you get some of that 89 percent to be "involved"? I think the answer lies in getting that 89% to feel as if they are apart of it, without initially being involved; giving them some ownership of their Church's website.

I guess I would take the 37signals approach to a Church website, keep it simple and useful. Like Tim said, bring in the widgets such as Flickr to post images of people in the congregation - making them feel apart of the website, without being involved. Use RSS, for those who do just want to read, providing convience.

Once we start to build websites that have too many features, too many places to go, the users will either get frusterated and leave or get lost and leave.

That is one of the things I like about CrossConnector, it is specific, simple and straight forward. The problem also lies in just that - a niche market can only grow so much. If CrossConnector had (does it?) an API, it then allows itself to grow into other applications and still keeping its simplicity.

Personally, I think the future of web development lies in developing of simple applications that do one or several things very well and has an API for future applications to use so there services can be extended, if need be. Simplicity and Flexibility.

FACollective | Site Remark

revans's Website

  • From: London, UK
  • Registered: 2006-07-14

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

You have to look at the demographics. A congregation is a very mixed group of people. Who among them are online? Who are advanced web users? Who are occasional surfers? Who would want the kinds of services MySpace might provide?

I had a look at the dittytalk forum, and by far the most number of posts is in the teen section. I'm not saying that only teens are interested in sites like dittytalk, but those services do appeal to a certain demographic. What that demographic is could reasonably be guessed at, but whatever it is, it doesn't include everyone.

The danger is to assume that someone who uses an online forum also wants to be able to post pictures, a blog and videos as well. I don't think that assumption can (or should) be made. These social networking sites are brilliant, but I think there is still a place for sites which focus narrowly on providing services in one area, and then do that extremely well. A little company called Google started out doing exactly that. Perhaps the aim shouldn't just be to build online communities, but to build simple, useful tools that people can use. Link them together by all means if that's what people want, but don't assume that is what people want. Start small, then let users decide what they want themselves.

if (!god.exists) life.hopless = true;

wayne_d's Website

21 Reply by joe

  • joe
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2006-08-17

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

Good thoughts all around.  I've learned from this thread, and want to learn more.  I'm sorry to be shamelessly plugging our service, but I'm sincerely interested in the feedback we can get from folks who have thought about building online community.  Mychurch.org is launching in September. 

If you would like a reviewer's guide that outlines the objective, scope, and features, please shoot me a mail: joe@mychurch.org or give me a call: 408-972-9462.  I just wish I joined this conversation earlier! 

Just to address (and echo) some issues and concerns brought up in this thread...

1) We are very aware of the 1% rule of online participation.  I've seen many church forums become ghost towns after an initial flash in the pan.  How do we encourage participants to... participate?  To convince folks to come back regularly is the challenge.  I completely resonate with ChurchCyberGuy's experiences.

2) I agree with Tim Bednar that the key is to not build another platform that forces everyone to come on YOUR terms.  People want their own terms.  We provide outgoing RSS feeds as well as incoming RSS aggregators, but what else can we do?  I suppose we can extend reads of delicious and flickr.

3) We've built tools to encourage contribution from the congregation - anyone can add events to the church calendar, anyone can add their blog to the church blog, anyone can comment on an uploaded church mp3, etc.  But this touches on maspick's point - do church leaders really want to monitor and moderate?  Are they willing to relinquish control and offer a dynamic, authentic, transparent medium?  I think it will be a tough slow sell.

4) The Christian ghetto - we don't want to be known as myspace or facebook for Christians.  We want to see churches using their congregants' existing social networks (like myspace) to outreach.  How do we avoid this image?  Or do churches want a clean sanctified social network?

5) As rePete mentioned, Jacob's Well is an extraordinary site.  They are the true pioneers here.  We'd like to see every church have a web presence like this.  Yet we don't want to isolate churches into their own respective bubbles - much can be gained from network effects


Peace,
joe

  • From: Michigan
  • Registered: 2006-01-02

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

chrisfig wrote:

I think another valid question is "is the local church website a place where social networking is going to happen?" and i'm not convinced that it is, at least not in a way like myspace or other sites.

In Your Element is a youth site for the youth ministry at Champion Forest Baptist Church. They have a MySpace-ish community feature called Hello that I think is as good as it will probably get to incorporate the MySpace type community into a church/ministry site. By the way, does anyone know how that Hello site is done?

  • From: Las Vegas, NV
  • Registered: 2006-09-25

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

I am in process of developing a Church web application that allows churches to customize a site for their church.  It includes blogging, networking, discussions, etc.  The concept though is different then CrossConnector (hopefully I won't be direct competition b/c I highly respect Ryan), it is also not like a mySpace for churches which are doomed to fail.  I can't say too much about it, though I should have something to show by the end of next week (crosses fingers).  I will defiantly post something when it is online.  I will defiantly have some screens up and all, you know, hype stuff!

I guess this makes this the first official 'leak' :-P

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. [Gen. 1:1]

RayCMorgan's Website

24 Reply by aim

  • aim
  • Web Designer
  • Offline
  • From: Houston, TX
  • Registered: 2006-12-06

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

This is in regards to Hello at In Your Element. We originally wrote the software to be similar to Facebook...but quite frankly, we don't have the time or resources to keep up with MySpace or Facebook. For the second iteration of Hello, we transformed it as a method of keeping personal information up-to-date. Although the verdict is still out, our goal is to use the social networking aspect of the site to encourage more frequent visits and also to provide relevant event information for each user. Overall, it has been a good project to see how social networking will relate to church websites.

aim's Website

  • From: NC
  • Registered: 2005-12-10

Re: Community Building, Social Networking, and your Church Website?

It's been 2-2.5 years since this initial conversation and I'm curious what everyone thinks of the current state of community building/social networking within the local church.  How is the church doing and what should we be doing?

I'm working on a new local church site and trying to determine how we approach this.  At first I planned to go with Ning to develop an internal social network (primary for small groups coordination, events, blogging, forum). However, I am concerned about the ghetto-ization of drawing people into an exclusive network and also trying to get the groups to actually use it.  This is particularly challenging since at present there isn't significant usage of social networking among the church, especially leadership.

Instead of such a top-down approach, we want the site to be reflective of the existing community, while also providing opportunities for increased dialogue.  So the new plan thus far is:

- multiple "official" blogs updated at least weekly (weekly post-sermon Q/A, prayer needs, various ministries, etc)
- pull in feeds from member blogs, flickr, youtube and maybe twitter. (offer OPML for all feed groups)
- church flickr account & group - church photos / graphics
- church youtube account - all produced videos
- church del.icio.us account - links for anything we reference on the site or in the message.
- leadership will be trained on blogging, flickr, del.icio.us and twitter.

I'm still working on member directory/profile ideas due to privacy issues.  Also still trying to decide what to do, if anything, with myspace/facebook/linkedIn.  We cut out any kind of forum, due to 1) maintenance issues, 2) likely low usage, 3) we'd rather someone post on their own blog and invite conversation there.  We don't want to be the "middle man" for people having conversations, just perhaps a gateway by which they are introduced.

Last edited by church2 (2008-06-22 15:40:41)