ack of budget, time, knowledge are the excuse. It takes a different person that the Pastor who has 4 years in Bible College to keep great web ministry going. Now I will say that after working with over 300 churches around the country that there are some Pastors who are more equipped and web ministry minded than I am. But they are few and far between.

Let's face it, churches look to attract a younger crowd, and ones with children and teens. Without youth in our future we die. But that same church will put up a billboard, place newspaper ads, and place expensive ads in phone books. Problem is that many of the peo

Recently I was working with a church to develop a new church web presence. The process started over 3 years ago when a church member worked on the site and it was merely a page that could not be updated by anyone except him. Now this church is a very large church, with well over 2000 and another community from the school and various ministries that would exceed 4000 total.

There was a decision made to move the site in house make progressive plans to start to communicate through the Internet like never before. A young Pastor on staff was appointed to oversee the new direction and I volunteered to work with them to build the site. It went well, slow, but well for a few months. As soon as excitement caught on, I found myself meeting with meeting regularly with different department heads, and creating pages and content.

Soon the person who use to do the site was somehow always lurking in the background, and a tech at the church decided he wanted to be in charge of the site. After many weeks of updates being made without my knowledge, and "weird" things happening with my desktop being logged in a multiple locations at once, like I was being shadowed and monitored, I turned over the control of the site to the tech who obviously wanted it. The young Pastor was there for a time and the site grew a little, but eventually the young Pastor decided he wanted to move on a start his own church.

That's where the push stopped, and sadly when I returned 2 years later, the site was still at that level as it was 2 years prior. There were even some events dated 2 years earlier on the site and a Pastor listed on staff who had passed away prior. I was asked why I did not take over the site, and my response was that I would not ask, but would help if asked. Well after a few meetings and constant lack of indecision and lack of communication, the site ended up in the hands of you guessed it, another young Pastor who recently came to the staff to work with kids. So the cycles begins again.

Web Ministry is one of the newest ministries in the church today. Most don't understand it, or it's importance in the way people live today. The Internet has become a tool for most Americans that we often wonder how we lived without. Phone books are a thing of the past and we rarely make trips to the bank. If we want to know whats on TV, we go to the Internet to find out. Just the simple fact that you are reading this blog means that is one less article read in a magazine or readers digest. If we can't pay a bill online, it may not get paid on time.

Government agencies, businesses, and various organizations have recognized this, but much of the church world has not caught on, or they do not know how. Lack of budget, time, knowledge are the excuse. It takes a different person that the Pastor who has 4 years in Bible College to keep great web ministry going. Now I will say that after working with over 300 churches around the country that there are some Pastors who are more equipped and web ministry minded than I am. But they are few and far between.

Let's face it, churches look to attract a younger crowd, and ones with children and teens. Without youth in our future we die. But that same church will put up a billboard, place newspaper ads, and place expensive ads in phone books. Problem is that many of the peop

ths. As soon as excitement caught on, I found myself meeting with meeting regularly with different department heads, and creating pages and content.

Soon the person who use to do the site was somehow always lurking in the background, and a tech at the church decided he wanted to be in charge of the site. After many weeks of updates being made without my knowledge, and "weird" things happening with my desktop being logged in a multiple locations at once, like I was being shadowed and monitored, I turned over the control of the site to the tech who obviously wanted it. The young Pastor was there for a time and the site grew a little, but eventually the young Pastor decided he wanted to move on a start his own church.

That's where the push stopped, and sadly when I returned 2 years later, the site was still at that level as it was 2 years prior. There were even some events dated 2 years earlier on the site and a Pastor listed on staff who had passed away prior. I was asked why I did not take over the site, and my response was that I would not ask, but would help if asked. Well after a few meetings and constant lack of indecision and lack of communication, the site ended up in the hands of you guessed it, another young Pastor who recently came to the staff to work with kids. So the cycles begins again.

Web Ministry is one of the newest ministries in the church today. Most don't understand it, or it's importance in the way people live today. The Internet has become a tool for most Americans that we often wonder how we lived without. Phone books are a thing of the past and we rarely make trips to the bank. If we want to know whats on TV, we go to the Internet to find out. Just the simple fact that you are reading this blog means that is one less article read in a magazine or readers digest. If we can't pay a bill online, it may not get paid on time.

Government agencies, businesses, and various organizations have recognized this, but much of the church world has not caught on, or they do not know how. Lack of budget, time, knowledge are the excuse. It takes a different person that the Pastor who has 4 years in Bible College to keep great web ministry going. Now I will say that after working with over 300 churches around the country that there are some Pastors who are more equipped and web ministry minded than I am. But they are few and far between.

Let's face it, churches look to attract a younger crowd, and ones with children and teens. Without youth in our future we die. But that same church will put up a billboard, place newspaper ads, and place expensive ads in phone books. Problem is that many of the peo

he wanted to move on a start his own church.

That's where the push stopped, and sadly when I returned 2 years later, the site was still at that level as it was 2 years prior. There were even some events dated 2 years earlier on the site and a Pastor listed on staff who had passed away prior. I was asked why I did not take over the site, and my response was that I would not ask, but would help if asked. Well after a few meetings and constant lack of indecision and lack of communication, the site ended up in the hands of you guessed it, another young Pastor who recently came to the staff to work with kids. So the cycles begins again.

Web Ministry is one of the newest ministries in the church today. Most don't understand it, or it's importance in the way people live today. The Internet has become a tool for most Americans that we often wonder how we lived without. Phone books are a thing of the past and we rarely make trips to the bank. If we want to know whats on TV, we go to the Internet to find out. Just the simple fact that you are reading this blog means that is one less article read in a magazine or readers digest. If we can't pay a bill online, it may not get paid on time.

Government agencies, businesses, and various organizations have recognized this, but much of the church world has not caught on, or they do not know how. Lack of budget, time, knowledge are the excuse. It takes a different person that the Pastor who has 4 years in Bible College to keep great web ministry going. Now I will say that after working with over 300 churches around the country that there are some Pastors who are more equipped and web ministry minded than I am. But they are few and far between.

Let's face it, churches look to attract a younger crowd, and ones with children and teens. Without youth in our future we die. But that same church will put up a billboard, place newspaper ads, and place expensive ads in phone books. Problem is that many of the peo

t ministries in the church today. Most don't understand it, or it's importance in the way people live today. The Internet has become a tool for most Americans that we often wonder how we lived without. Phone books are a thing of the past and we rarely make trips to the bank. If we want to know whats on TV, we go to the Internet to find out. Just the simple fact that you are reading this blog means that is one less article read in a magazine or readers digest. If we can't pay a bill online, it may not get paid on time.

Government agencies, businesses, and various organizations have recognized this, but much of the church world has not caught on, or they do not know how. Lack of budget, time, knowledge are the excuse. It takes a different person that the Pastor who has 4 years in Bible College to keep great web ministry going. Now I will say that after working with over 300 churches around the country that there are some Pastors who are more equipped and web ministry minded than I am. But they are few and far between.

Let's face it, churches look to attract a younger crowd, and ones with children and teens. Without youth in our future we die. But that same church will put up a billboard, place newspaper ads, and place expensive ads in phone books. Problem is that many of the peo

ack of budget, time, knowledge are the excuse. It takes a different person that the Pastor who has 4 years in Bible College to keep great web ministry going. Now I will say that after working with over 300 churches around the country that there are some Pastors who are more equipped and web ministry minded than I am. But they are few and far between.

Let's face it, churches look to attract a younger crowd, and ones with children and teens. Without youth in our future we die. But that same church will put up a billboard, place newspaper ads, and place expensive ads in phone books. Problem is that many of the people who they look to attract are too busy on their Blackberry while driving down the highway, only use newspapers to pack with when they move, and have VOIP (Voice Over IP) phone service so they don't get a phone book.

It takes a new way of thinking. A new plan of attack. For those Pastors out there who can barley open an email, there is hope. Fortunately the Internet world is looking to solve your problem. There are many simple editor programs out there that require little or no experience to use, and only cost a few dollars per month with no setup fees. There are literally of thousands of prebuilt designs and templates available, and if you do some research you will find packages out there that give you a custom design and fit your budget.

Start to invest your resources on the Internet rather than useless ads in the phone book. Just starting there would pay for a full-time person in some medium size churches. And for the larger churches who can afford to do this right, open your eyes around you. Look at some websites of some mega churches and ask yourself what is so different about them than you. The message is the same, but the delivery method needs to be adjusted to the ever changing world. Thank God that we no longer need some of the message delivery methods that were used in the ancient days. But some of the current ones are not that far off.