Head vs. Heart (or: How do I make my Internet presence relational?)

The Lord has been teaching me lately about how He uses relationships as the primary means for transforming lives. Many of us, myself included, grew up focusing on how to intellectually understand the gospel.  To mature in the faith meant understanding doctrine and reading C.S. Lewis.  Now, there’s nothing wrong with this – it is an integral part of growing in your faith. But God has been showing me that true faith includes relationships. How we interact with those around us is also an important part of our Christian walk. Maybe more important.

So how does this relate to web sites? Well, it seems to me that, for the most part, the web sites I see are directed at the head (intellect) and not the heart (relationships).  But yet, to have a real impact, we must be focusing on both. Our web site readers will not internalize our message if they do not feel a connection to it.

So, how can we do this?  We must make our web sites personal. When someone reads a web site, they shouldn’t be seeing a “church” web site or a “Christian ministry” web site – they should be seeing people.  This can be done in many ways: pictures, stories, testimonies, video, audio. Connections to more personal sites such as blogs or Facebook profiles could also do this.

How does your church or ministry web site do in this area? I will be writing and researching this further this summer, so stay tuned! And I will be presenting all my findings this fall at the Internet Ministry Conference, so if you’re thinking about going, get signed up now.

MacNation is happening…

As many of you know, I switched to a Mac laptop last year – see this post for my reasons.  Based on anecdotal evidence,  I have gotten the impression over the past few months that the Mac was making inroads into the corporate world.  An article on MSNBC today confirms these impressions.

If you are thinking about a new computer, think about a Mac. I have been using a Mac and living in Google mail, calendar, and documents for nine months now, and I don’t plan on switching back.

Not the latest, not the greatest…but successful

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…