According to Church Executive magazine article, "What's your e-strategy?": While most churches now have a Web presence, very few are taking full advantage of the Web's great capabilities, and even fewer have an integrated Web marketing strategy." Read the full article to see the four areas to consider incorporate together into a Web-based ministry strategy: inreach, outreach, people connection, and money connection.

This BP News article, New reality TV show promotes virtues of traditional marriage, talks about an upcoming reality TV show called "An American Wedding", set to air in Fall 2004 and early Spring 2005. The couple being married met through a website called ChristianCafe.com, an online Christian singles website with more than 750,000 members. What a tremendous synergy between web and tv and real life!

Liquid, a college ministry in Austin, Texas, undergoes an extreme web redesign every year, or to use Liquid-speak, every season. This go-around, they've gone to using a blogging tool called MovableType to keep their website content fresh and up-to-date. This enables their information flow to be shared by multiple number of people, staff and volunteers. No long does a website update or change have to go through a programmer -- it can be done by anyone and everyone who has a role in communicating to people who are part of the ministry as well as potentially new participants.

One of the most important things about web-based communications (or any communication, for that matter) is keeping it up-to-date, and online technologies like blogging and content management systems, are making it possible, quick and efficient.
[a special Sunday blog entry]

Sites Unseen is one of the biggest indexes to Christian websites personally managed by a small team of editors, somewhat like a hand-crafted product. Unlike indexes or search engines that are automated, Mike Morrell and Philip Scriber have been linking to websites, and their collection have become known as the "Library of the Alternative Christian Web" or "the best Jesus-infused sites you never knew about". With over 2,700 sites linked, this is one very big web page! Site divisions help to organize these links, including: Exploring God, The Best Online Bibles, Pax Christi, Arts and Culture, Magazines and Journals, Churches, Church History, Church Communities. I wonder if they'll one day splurge and get a custom domain name. :)

BlogPulse tracks prominently mentioned phrases and people across the blogosphere daily. Judging by three of the top four key phrases yesterday, it almost appears that the country was undergoing some sort of national spiritual revival: "do you believe in original sin", "religion definition", and "holy book." Read the article about yesterday's highlights and see the top key phrases. [a special second eQuip blog entry for today]

Starting up and running an online ministry takes considerable effort to provide content and to facilitate conversations. None Like Him Anywhere (www.nonelikehimanywhere.org) is an online ministry with articles, news, devotionals, links and Bible readings to serve people's spiritual needs. NoneLikeHimAnywhere.org runs on the ForMinistry WebBuilder toolkit, a web-based template-driven toolkit that makes it easier to update a website from anywhere and also enables a team of volunteers to share the work of any online ministry.

From this news report, Church group heads south to help hurricane victims, we read:

Teens from Hampton Roads were headed south Saturday to help the victims recover from Hurricane Charley, right in one of the hardest hit areas.

Jill Davis is among a group of Oceanview Baptist Church members headed to Florida to do relief work in the wake of Hurricane Charley. ...

Once they get on the road, you can check out daily journal entries and photos through a link on the church’s website at oceanviewbaptist.org.

Ocean View Baptist Church is using their website to keep their congregation and community up-to-date about their Florida Mission Project for disaster relief, even during the trip. How are you using your website today?

While this is not exactly online ministry, it is certainly a creative use of technology for ministry. This Wired article, Sermon on the Mobile, describes a church that uses text messaging to mobile phones for short sermons! And also mentioned in the article is a little something for our Catholic friends: The Pope's Thought of the Day. Also see an older article, Cell Phone Users Are Finding God. May their creativity spark the creative juices in you!

Church Business Magazine recently recognized quite a number of forward-thinking churches with its Innovative Church Awards 2004. The list of award-winning churches were (with links to their websites):

Ada Bible Church (Ada, MI)
Cascade Hills Church (Columbus, GA)
Central United Methodist Church (Albuquerque, NM)
The Champions Centre (Tacoma, WA)
Christ Church (Montclair, NJ)
Christ Fellowship (Palm Beach Gardens, FL)
Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church (Philadelphia, PA)
Fellowship Church (Grapevine, TX)
First Assembly of God (Muleshoe, TX)
First Assembly King’s Cathedral and Chapels (Kahului, HI)
First Baptist Church at the Mall (Lakeland, FL)
First Baptist Church of Raytown (Raytown, MO)
First Christian Church (Lawrence, KS) [was www.fcclawrence.org]
First Community Church (Newport News, VA)
First Presbyterian Church (Colorado Springs, CO)
Gateway Community Church (Merced, CA)
Germantown Baptist Church (Germantown, TN)
Harvest Baptist Church (Barrigada, Guam)
Kingdom Life Christian Church (Milford, CT)
Life Church (Murrieta, CA)
New Life Evangelistic Center (Jacksonville, FL)
New Hope Christian Fellowship (Honolulu, HI)
New Spring Community Church (Anderson, SC)
Point of Grace Church (West Des Moines, IA)
Right Direction Christian Center (Columbia, SC)
Sharp Street Memorial United Methodist Church (Baltimore, MD)
Spreen Green Church of Christ (Plymouth, NC)
St. John Missionary Baptist Church (Oklahoma City, OK)
Sugarcreek Free Methodist Church (Sugarcreek, OH)
Summit Evangelical Free Church (Alta, IA)
Tree of Life Church (New Braunfels, TX)
Trietsch Memorial United Methodist Church (Flower Mound, TX)
Trinity Reformed Church (Grand Rapids, MI)
University United Methodist Church (Austin, TX)
Westplex Community Church (St. Louis, MO)
Westminster United Methodist Church (Westminster, MD)

I was curious to see how much of their innovation showed through their websites. I was surprised to see that innovation in outreach (for which these churches were awarded) did not always involve their websites.

Some websites were indeed excellent. Those churches with Web innovation were easy to find using major search engines like Google, Yahoo, or MSN. When one enters a church's name and its city into a search engine, the church's website should be listed on the front page of the search results. I strongly recommend getting your church website submitted with major search engines.

Some churches do not yet have websites. With more affordable and even free donor-supported web-based menu-driven template-driven Web site building tools, like ForMinistry WebBuilder, every church can get its Web presence established in minutes and easily maintained up-to-date!

Internet Church a Hit - Six months after an Afrikaans e-church opened its virtual doors, cyber visitors are flocking there in increasing numbers. Over 91,000 hits have been recorded at the e-church website (www.ekerk.co.za) in July 2004. The e-church sends out an e-mail sermon twice a week that is being read by at least 18,000 people. Read the full article.

What is notably challenging is measuring and interpreting websites statistics. Since the Internet is a distributed data network, the statistics measured at the Web server may not accurately capture a website's activity, due to caching by regional or local Internet service providers, an individual user's browser cache, and other factors.

Where statistics can be helpful is to see relative trends of growing or decling numbers of website visitors, to see which pages or items are most popular, and to check referring links and keywords by which users are finding the website.

I've started using 2 free statistics services that have "invisible" trackers that can be placed onto any Web page: www.statcounter.com and www.christianstats.com. While it is difficult to know the precise meaning of statistics, having statistics is better than none at all.

The Bartlett Hess Church Vitality Award is given annually to an Evangelical Presbyterian Church that has demonstrated the most innovative approach to church growth or revitalization. The 2004 winner is Hope Presbyterian Church (Cordova, TN) and the 2003 winner was The City of Refuge (Houston, TX). Their church Web sites gives us a closer look at their church's vitality and programs. Read the full article.

Here is some ForMinistry WebBuilder trivia for you. These are the top 5 most visited ForMinistry-powered Web sites (in the past 45 days; without integrated domain names):

1. Church of the Nazarene, Philadelphia District
2. Northside Baptist Church (Eden, NC)
3. Changed By Grace Community Church (Jacksonville, FL)
4. St Matthew's Parish (Jamestown, RI)
5. East Liberty Presbyterian Church (Vanderbilt, PA)

Can you spot the things they're doing that invites Web visitors to return? Add your comment here.

web.umc.org (United Methodist Communications) provides a great list of resources and an online tutorial to help United Methodist churches in developing their Web ministry. The articles and live seminars provided mostly use Methodist examples, but the principles and tips are applicable to anyone doing online ministry. Articles include: Web as Ministry: Discipleship, Web Site Fundamentals: What Every Church Website Must Have, Making Church Web Sites Easy to Use.

Here's a hot find : HOTorNOTChurchSites.com, a fun place where church Web sites are being rated randomly by visitors. Churches can submit their sites for ratings, and be able to view overall ratings. The short article there titled "Tips for Improving Your Site" is notably more helpful than just a high or low rating alone. Plus, they're also offering free professional evaluation of a church Web site; I'm not sure how to feel about that! :)

This YouthWorker article titled, "E-Mail Etiquette", offers a number of great tips for using e-mail more effectively. On the one hand, e-mail is fast, cheap, convenient, and full of potential , for communication, but on the other hand, also fraught with and management hazards. The average white-collar worker gets over 100 e-mails a week -- and that was over 4 years ago.

TheosLogic Productions has archived an oldie-but-goodie set of articles, collectively titled: "How to build a good website". Originally published on a Web site at Hosea.co.uk in England, these articles are now placed into public domain.

Excellent articles for beginning and intermediate Web editors, providing a well-rounded set of topics, including: Church Website Design Tips, Targeting your site to your audience, Common church website mistakes, Putting sermons online, Explanations of the Christian Faith, Website Promotion, Maps & Directions, and there's more.

Read this new interview with David Gillaspey, in the ForMinistry eQuip channel, where he talks about Great Church Websites, an online ministry to inspire excellence in church Web site design and effective. This behind-the-scenes look at a fascinating project can make a significant contribution towards better looking and more effective church Web sites in the months ahead. He also shares practical tips about how 87% of church Web sites can be instantly improved.

"Effecting Life Change Through Technology" was the topic of discussion at a recent online chat (hosted at fellowshipconnection.com) with Terry Storch, the Technology Pastor & COO/CIO at Fellowship Church. As a member of the Executive Team, he is responsible for the technology and business operations of the church. He shares great insights about using technology to enhance church life. Read the full chat transcript.

One sound bite for ya:

Question: How important do you think it is to have a web presence?

Terry: Having a web presence is critical for all churches. More and more of your audience look to the web first to get a feel for a church. Your site must be an accurate reflection of your church's style, creativity and vitality. It must quickly give you an overview of the church, answer basic questions, give a sample of the service, and get you plugged in as quickly as possible.

A hearty welcome back to Andrew Careaga's e-vangelism.com blog, a regularly updated web log with news and views on technology, spirituality, and Christianity. Andrew is the author of 3 notable books related to online ministry: E-vangelism: Sharing the Gospel in Cyberspace, eMinistry: Connection with the Net Generation, and Hooked on the 'Net.

In conversations with many people, the sense I get is that people sincerely want to do something on the Internet to reach out to people but don't exactly know how. An online course would help a bunch. Online Training for Online Evangelists is a tremendously valuable online course with 7 sessions that you can take at your own pace to learn how to do online evangelism! Practice doing the work of an evangelist and pass the word along!

According to this YouthWorker article, Hanging Out on IM: Using Instant Messaging In Your Ministry : "Kids have always had places to kill time together. Earlier generations might've chosen a baseball field or the local Dairy Queen or someone's yard. According to Pew Internet and American Life, the place where this generation goes to kill time is on IM (instant messaging)." With 74% of online teens use instant messaging, and 69% of teen users IM at least several times a week, IM is a quick technology to connect with your teens (and adults). Read the full article.

The opening screen of this online prayer "portal" at SacredGateway.org begins with:

"We invite you to find a Sacred Gateway into the presence of God today, to spend ten minutes, praying here and now, as you sit at your computer, with the help of on-screen guidance and scripture chosen specially every day."

Through guided excercises, meditation, and reflection upon God and Scriptures, this is an innovative way to incorporate a basic spiritual discipline like prayer with online technology. Visit SacredGateway.org now, and add your comment here on how it affected your prayer time. [Its content is provided by www.sacredspace.ie (Daily Prayer Online, produced by Irish Jesuits).]

According to a recent article in Time Magazine, there are nearly 20,000 discussion groups on the Internet altogether and the number will surely be growing. This provides numerous opportunities for all Netizens to discuss various aspects of Christianity. Read the full article.