Another perspective on Internet ministry

In my previous post, I summarized a discussion I had with several pastors in an all day session on Internet ministry. One of the points made by these pastors was that true ministry required physical presence: “the class agreed that effective Internet ministry should always encourage face-to-face fellowship and should never replace the physical gathering.” As a ministry develops an Internet presence, this philosophical point must be agreed upon beforehand. If you feel that your Internet ministry is a supplement to face-to-face ministry, then you will likely choose a different feature set for your web site than if you saw the Internet as the primary place for ministry.

I received this email from Brian Atkinson, Manager of Alliance Development for Gospel Communications Network, regarding his thoughts on the place of the Internet in ministry:

Hi David,

I read through your blog post, and I have some comments.

Our internet ministry is built on the notion that the internet can indeed be used for ministry. We value the face-to-face time and have an annual conference to facilitate the community better. But for us, the physical connection supplements the internet ministry and not the other-way around.

Time and time again, we’ve seen people touched – virtually – but nonetheless spiritually by internet ministry. We have a nearly 13 year track record of ministries with no physical component to their ministry make an enormous impact for Christ online; bringing people into relationship with Jesus and helping to develop that relationship. I’ve personally been involved in ministry over the internet for nearly 10 years. I’ve never met anyone I’ve counseled face-to-face and I don’t intend to. I believe that ministry can happen anywhere – even in cyberspace.

I hope that helps,

-brian

Where do you stand on this issue? Did your organization develop a philosophy on this before (or during) the development of your web presence?

Using eye-tracking studies to influence page design

Seth Godin is reporting in his blog about the results of eye-tracking studies done on web sites. These studies actually track the eye movements of users when they are using the computer – specifically in this case when they are using web sites. By watching the eye movements of users reading web pages and navigating through the site, designers can understand where users focus their attention and which things get ignored. As I read through these results, I noticed a couple of points keep getting repeated:

• the top left of the screen is by far the most important area of the page
• users are drawn to breaks in the text (bold, bullets, white space)

As we are working to understand effective Internet ministry, we must not forget that the design of the page is still important! These tips are a gold mine in helping us think through how to design our pages. How does your web page fare?