Having a Web site is essential and a great start. To follow through, people have to be able to get to your Web site through other marketing means, like a search engine. You can get a complimentary (free) e-book about search engine optimization (SEO) to help! Excerpt from the eMediaWire article:

"Aaron Wall has made his recently revised best selling SEO Book available to charities free of charge. Hiring a quality search engine optimization firm can often cost thousands and thousands of dollars, which is well beyond the budget of many charities. Without proper placement in search engines people who want to help your charity may not be able to find you.

If you are the webmaster of a charity, church, educational institution, or open source software site feel free to inquire about acquiring your complimentary copy of The SEO Book today at http://www.seobook.com/charities ."

The Press Release about the recently launched Orthodox Web Builder, a customized version of ForMinistry WebBuilder toolkit available to all churches and ministries, has great words describing the toolkit's capabilities:

• makes site creation easy through point and click simplicity
• non-technical users can add and update content visually from any web browser
• features a unique Content Sharing component that allows articles from one web site to be shared with another
• "This is exactly the tool we have been looking for" states Fr. Michael Eaccarino

Read the press release in its entirety.

Web-based message boards (also known as discussion forums) facilitate conversations and dialogues between people across the country and around the world. People are able to exchange ideas or debate, as well as to pray and to minister to one another through Bible studies and exhortation. It can be made into a civil place for discourse and engagement with non-Christians in a way that a typical church cannot. Some online message boards include: www.DebatingChristianity.com, www.baptistboard.com, www.theologyforums.com, www.faithforum.org, and www.bible-discussion.com.

God does not have an Internet address, at least not yet, but many of his early disciples do. One leading interfaith site, Beliefnet.com, has about 4 million subscribers. Read full article at Insight on the News: Logging On to Find God.

ForMinistry staff members are present at the 37th Biennial Clergy-Laity Congress of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America in New York City, July 25th to 29th. At that event, ForMinistry will unveil its new service, Orthodox Web Builder, which is a specially-customized version of the ForMinistry WebBuilder toolkit. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America has been recognized for its Internet accomplishment, winning the prestigious Webby Award as the best spirituality Website in 2003.

Metron Press (an outreach of American Bible Society) is presenting the Biblical narrative with fresh artistic style through graphic novels (aka comic book format) that portrays vibrant stories of the human experience. Their work has been recently featured in Sojourners, Christianity Today, and Silver Bulletins. Their Web site integrates a preview of their titles and an online store to more easily share their ministry with the public -- a great example of how to present your online ministry to share your resources!

Godspy is a visually attractive e-zine (online magazine), with a progressive, slightly irreverent look at faith and life from a Catholic perspective. The graphic design and layout of their content is an excellent example of usability and organization, that can inform and inspire how you can present your content (articles, stories, testimonies, news) for your online ministry!

LiveWire workshop on August 11, 2004 -- Here's an excellent workshop, well worth the trip to Granger, Indiana: For writers, communicators, Web specialists, techies and those who want to improve general communication and flow of church information beyond the platform and auditorium. Find out how communications, technology and Web services fuel the change required to compete in today's culture. Gain understanding of the need for competitive communication and technology and eliminating redundancy of efforts. You will learn to:

• Adopt competitive communication and technology principles -- and understand why doing so is important
• Prioritize your efforts based on purpose, not on "cool" factors or "hot" fires
• Make the path to the gospel message clear through office infrastructure, information architecture (online and off) and promotional tools
• Provide multiple entry points for the same information and reduce "barriers to entry"
  

You can register online at www.wiredchurches.com/cgi-local/events_display.pl?1065185210. Cost is $79 until July 25 ... after that it is $99.

99 percent of public schools in the United States have access to the Internet, according to a Fall 2002 report from the National Center for Education Statistics. The Baptist Standard article, Franklin Graham's vision: a student evangelist in every public school class, seems to fit the opportunity described by the above statistic. While developing online ministry for school-age children is a tremendous opportunity, abiding by laws like the Child Online Protection Act, is an important consideration.

Getting the word out is next door to evangelizing and is next door to marketing and promoting. There are many similarities to how all of these things are done; some differences in purpose, intent, and motivation noted. Recently I received an email newsletter with this excerpt -- something you can use to get word out about your online ministry:

Why do some Web pages have questions and answers? The Question-and-Answer format is a popular way to present information in a more readable and interactive format. Instead of having to read over non-descript paragraphs of text, questions draw the readers attention to items of immediate interest.

What's a good example of how that's done? Bible Resource Center (an online ministry of American Bible Society), offers many digital resources related to the Bible. The section, Letters From Our Mailbox, lists questions at the top and links them to answers further down the page using hyperlinks. Think about questions you can answer for your Web ministry's audience, and invite their questions too!

I'm thrilled to find this recently: Great church websites! It's truly a labor of love, a ministry (and non-profit organization) founded by David Gillaspey, to promote excellence in church website design. Apparently he is systematically browsing thousands of websites around the country (4,950 to date), state by state, looking for unique and creative website designs, capturing the beautiful ones as a thumbnail image into his online database. Browsing his database reminds me of walking through an art gallery: church-websites-as-art! Many of you will particularly appreciate his upbeat and positive tone of voice as well.

As mentioned in yesterday's article reference, Richard Thieme's thoughtful reflection and anticipation about the future of digital scripture engagement is now online: Entering Sacred Digital Space: Seeking to Distinguish the Dreamer and the Dream -- Defining the Challenge: The 'Study' of 'Sacred Texts' in the Digital Era. It's described as a bold exploration of spirituality in an era of technological transformation, genetic engineering, and transplanetary culture.

This Kansas City Star article, Meet your avatars online: Electronic church is an experiment in high-tech religion, spotlights the recent developments of a cyber-church called the Church of Fools. Thousands of daily visitors stop by this virtual online space, complete with three-dimensional cartoon avatars representing individuals who are logged in. Right now it is a most curious experiment, and depending on people's responses, it may be a foreshadowing of future realities.

The Computer Tutor at Youthworker (a journal of youth ministry) has been posting 2 monthly columns since 1999 about using computer technology for youth ministry, which can easily be applied to any ministry: the Computer Tutor column shares practical tips about using technology (both computer and Internet) and the Q & A column shares answers to technical questions. Over the years it's become a rich knowledge base - bookmark this in your favorites!

Learn and collaborate about online ministry live and in person at the Internet Evangelism Coalition annual meeting -- it's being held on September 14-15 in Chicago. Plan ahead to be there; registration is available online or by mail. Speakers include: Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, will speak on "Spiritual Life Online: How Americans use the Internet for Religious Purposes," Andrew Careaga, author of three books and numerous articles about the convergence of spirituality and Internet technology, and many others.

Recent political news was first distributed over email, and then to other news and media channels. This is a very efficient and effective way to communicate with a group of people in your congregation and your community. Use a mailing list (also known as Listserv) to make announcements for upcoming events, to share news, to send a reminder, to make an invitation, and more! A mailing list module is built into the ForMinistry WebBuilder tool. Other popular free mailing list services include: ChristianEmailService.com , Google Groups 2 (beta), Yahoo Groups, and Topica.

It recently dawned on me that Web ministry is largely about written communication. While there are images and videos and audios that can be made available on a Web site, what holds it all together is text. One can learn to write better by writing more often, and a good way to do that is to schedule it into your weekly or daily routine to write to others on your Web site.

eMinistry: Connecting with the Net Generation by Andrew Careaga -- this easy-to-read book offers solid foundational material on the importance of the Internet for the coming generations. It is a solid approach to understanding both the mind of the Net Generation as well as many of the possibilities for ministry on the Internet. Read a synopsis of the book and buy it online!

Is your church using technology as efficiently as it can? If you think that technology can’t be an important aspect of church growth and development, the Dallas Fellowship church is here to prove otherwise—it’s the fifth-largest church in the United States, and much of the responsibility for its rapid growth lies with the way it’s used technology—video, multimedia, computers, and others—to bring people into the fold. Read full Scobleizer article: Ten evangelism and IT lessons from one of America's biggest churches. Link courtesy of IFC.

Internet for Christians (IFC) reviews and recommends Web sites, e-mail lists, news items, and other Internet points of interest to Christians. You can keep up with the stories as they're posted at http://ifc.gospelcom.net or subscribe to their weekly e-mail digest. This is a great way to keep up with things happening on the Internet that may inspire you to try something for your church's or ministry's online outreach.