I have begun reviewing the results of my survey on Internet ministry this week - over 300 churches and ministries responded and I am finding the results quite fascinating. As part of the survey, I gave respondents the chance to make themselves available to me for further, in-depth research. Many, many respondents gave me the OK to do this and I am now reviewing the web sites of those ministries in order to select a few for follow-up.

One of the most interesting trends I have found in reviewing these sites is that many of the sites who rated their Internet implementations as very successful are NOT those who have the coolest, most modern looking sites. In fact, many of these successful sites are very “web 1.0″ looking: Frontpage-style templates, simple coloring, and not a bit of flash animation! So what makes these sites so successful?  I will find out the details when I contact the organization, but from the sites themselves I can see one key theme: quality content that is updated frequently. These sites had blogs, calendars, and pages that were full of recent, relevant information about the ministry.

This reinforces my ideas about what really makes Internet ministry successful: it is not the technology, it is the people and the processes.  My research into these organizations is going to seek to answer questions about how this gets done: How do organizations keep their content fresh and updated? How much time does it take? Stay tuned…