Before the month is out, I should mention that my short article titled "Land of Opportunity" made it into the November 2004 issue of the ForMinistry eJournal, briefly describing my observation that online ministry (and, similarly, internet evangelism) has yet to reach its full potential.

When the newsletter first went out, one astute reader provided great fact-checking, and helped me change the opening phrase to "The World Wide Web, as we know it, has been available for just over a decade now," from the imprecise "The Internet has been around for almost a decade now," showing the challenge of quickly and concisely describing how long the Internet has been around.

www.freegoodnews.com is a brand new ministry in the start-up stage. This website is providing free materials for spiritual growth. The website provides info about its local cable television show based in the Portland tri-county area (Oregon), an email newsletter, and will links to Internet resources.

Assemblies of God Theological Seminary indexed a bunch of churches and church websites on its resource page titled: What Some Churches Are Doing (Including Church Websites). Most of the recommended links come with a brief commentary about what these churches were doing back in 2001. I'd imagine these are still innovative churches, and are doing some great things online. Here's a few examples:

• North Coast Church - with intro on how to start a video cafe (for an alternative setting for a worship service)
• New Hope Christian Fellowship O'ahu
  
• Xenos Christian Fellowship - lots of charts and resources
  
• Mosaic (Los Angeles) - very creative church, often on the move, no fixed building or location
• Frontline (McLean, VA) - Flash-driven website for McLean Bible Church's young adults ministry
• Rock Harbor - energetic church in Costa Mesa, California

See the article for full list (note: some links in article are outdated; follow the main URL to find most church website linked there)

Pastor Ray Pritchard is apparently a very active communicator, as preachers are often known to be in the pulpit. Pastor Ray keeps a daily blog at www.keepbelieving.com, as well as one at Crosswalk.com titled Dr. Ray Pritchard's Weblog. Pastor Ray also shares via a free weekly sermon email list and web-based discussion board.

www.helpmewithbiblestudy.org is a very elegantly and simply presented website with a step-by-step guide to studying the Bible. It's excellent for beginners as well as seasoned students of the Bible, providing a clear framework for studying it, gives clear disclosure about theological biases, and for advanced students, provides a sizeable list of topical studies and additional tools & resources.

Christian Carnival XLIV is a recent edition of Christian Carnival, collecting Christian blog entries from around the blogosphere. It's published online weekly on different blogs. With 43 editions now, and 47 entries in the most recent edition, one might say it's a grassroots kind of thing. eQuip blog was featured in it too :)

The first Christian Carnival started on January 21, 2004 by Nick Queen of patriot-paradox.com, and it is now coordinated via the Christian Carnival mailing list. Bloggers are welcomed to join the mailing list to participate! Or start blogging now by using free blog tools like www.blogger.com, www.lifewithchrist.org, or www.e4God.com.

Web Evangelism Guide listed seven exceptional church sites that use seeker-friendly strategies, including virtual tour, accessible language, answers to problems, and humor.

• Pinecrest Church
• Elizabeth Church of Christ
• The Bridge Church
• Brandywine Community Church
• Bridge Atlanta
• NorthRidge Church
• Southside Church

Read the full article to read a description of each website's strategy, effectiveness, and analysis, and the full list of seeker-friendly strategies.

www.digitalword.org is a web zine (web-based electronic magazine) sharing about how Bible study might be done in the 21st century using various technology and software. It appears to have been unchanged in 2001, and the people behind the zine have had experiences in publishing print magazines on related topics in the past. This website keeps the hope alive that one day there may be more prominent readership for a magazine about Bible study and technology.

www.wearesorry.com is a new way to do apologetics - start with an apology! (a special Saturday eQuip blog entry)

Maurilio Amorim writes in this Church Report article titled Online Strategies for Church Growth: "Make your online strategy a part of your ministry focus. The web is not a fad that will be replaced. It is a cost-effective, multidimensional tool every growing church should take advantage of."

The article mentioned a campaign by Second Baptist Church in Houston, advertising on billboards all over the city for www.MyBadMarriage.com. The website was part of Dr. Ed Young's marriage sermon series and it got hundreds of thousands of hits from people!

www.InJesus.com is a free web-based service that provides email mailing lists (it calls them Groups), an online archive, and online directory, for churches and ministries and any group of individuals to communicate with one another. It's very useful for getting ministry communications out to your audience via email, and/or to get email-based discussion going quickly and easily!

www.bibledudes.com is a most creative website that teaches about the history and an overview of the Bible using cartoon characters who speak in common everyday language, like, dude! The genius(es) behind the scenes are two professors located many miles apart, with one in Louisiana and one in Massachusetts! (Can you imagine how they must've used Internet technology to work on this website?) Reminds me of the very popular book series for Dummies and Idiot's Guide, without the labels that make some people uncomfortable. [courtesy of AKMA]

Two of the most popular web-based discussion forums related to online technology and Christian ministry are www.osministry.com/forum/ and www.christian-web-masters.com/forums/. Collectively, there are hundreds of Christian webmasters and Christians interested in using technology, and they're generous to helping one another with advice, tips, and suggestions. Each respective website portal, osministry.com and christian-web-masters.com, also has helpful related resources.

According to the iPodder directory for religion, there are now four churches podcasting their Sunday sermons:

• Pitts Baptist Church (rss)
  
• Bluer: The Vineyard Church Minneapolis (rss)
  
• Bell Shoals Church of Christ (rss)
  
• Quail Lake Community Church (rss)
  

This Wired article titled, "Podcasts: New Twist on Net Audio," gives a good introduction to this new form of audio content aggregator.

www.bibleplayer.com lets you read and listen to the Bible on your iPod! The freeware version and the deluxe (pay) version gives you 3 different Bible versions, devotionals, Bible stories and more. While this isn't specifically "online ministry", it is a great example of using the latest technology for getting the Word out! Also read the news.com article titled "Playing God: BiblePlayer for iPod catches on". (courtesy of christdot.org)

Tim Bednar of www.e-church.com was recently quoted in Leadership Journal's article -- "Blogger Predicts Revival via Web: Is the next Great Awakening happening on the Internet? Personal weblogs are the new big tent." Tim's been an advocate of using blogging for spiritual formation groups and www.e-church.com plans to launch a Spiritual Growth Web Service in January 2005. He's also written a thought-provoking article about bloggers titled " We Know More Than Our Pastors".

www.theinterviewwithgod.com -- the popular and often forwarded link, which has broad appeal to spiritual people beyond just Christians, now has screensavers. And the group behind it have launched another Flash-powered movie (slideshow with soothing music) at www.pathways-to-peace.com

Who is Visiting Your Church's Website? is a big web page with tons of information from Pastor Neil MacQueen (a Presbyterian minister of a small church) about what he's learned about website traffic and church websites. About half way down the page, he makes this invitation:

"Imagine if I had a surefire way to get one visitor a day to visit and learn more about your church for less than 20 cents."

And then he shares some Church Website Building Tips, like:

• Make sure you have excellent server-provided web statistics
• Make sure your site appeals to teens and 18-45 year olds
• Put your church's website address on absolutely everything

And at bottom of the page, find Neil's Rule of Thumb for creating web addresses" -- visit the web page at www.sundaysoftware.com/webpage.htm

The Believer’s Weekly has been posting a new link to a great Christian website every week, with a brief review. It can also be received via email automatically. William T. Yates has been doing this since 1996! (William has his own personal website at www.billyates.com.) This archive of websites is like a walk down memory lane to see how Christian websites and online ministries have changed over the years.

Jesus Institute is a nice looking website -- a free online educational resource for people of all cultural and spiritual backgrounds to learn about the person of Jesus Christ. Study guides of different durations from 2 minutes to 60 minutes provide a "guided tour" to the different articles online, and a little quiz behind the "knowledge assessment" link checks to see how much you know about Jesus! Also available in Chinese. A great example of an online ministry presenting information in an easy-to-read classroom format.

Bill Easum's article, The Exponential Church: Learning From America’s Largest and Fastest-Growing Congregations lists ten of the fastest growing churches in the United States (according to a study by Church Growth Today and report from Outreach Magazine). Let's take a look and see what we can learn from their websites:

• Lakewood Church (Houston, TX) Lakewood.cc
• Without Walls International (Tampa, FL) withoutwalls.org
• The Potter’s House (Dallas, TX) thepottershouse.org
• North Point Community (Alpharetta, GA) northpoint.org
• Fellowship Church (Grapevine, TX) fellowshipchurch.com
• Mars Hill Bible (Grandville, MI) mhbcmi.org
• Second Baptist (Houston, TX) second.org
• Life Church (Edmond, OK) lifechurch.tv
• World Changers (College Park, GA) worldchangers.org
• The Church of the Resurrection (Leawood, KS) cor.org

All of these websites had information about their services and ministries (to varying degrees). Most had professional-looking custom website design.  Many of these websites had online streaming of messages (audio or video), online donations, and/or online store with resources (books, tapes, videos, study guides, etc.) A few had up-to-date information about events during the week. Great ingredients for your growing church's website, too!

The Web Marketing section of the Global Technology Office (of Campus Crusade for Christ) lists a handful of great articles about how to get the word out about your website, including Web Marketing Checklist for Ministry, Keeping Email Addresses Safe from Spam Harvesting, and Responding to Web Feedback.

While a big part of launching a website is building and maintaining it, there's a whole 'nother part in telling people about it. While "marketing" may be a term commonly used in the corporate business world, it is also applicable in the religious and spiritual realm. You may be more comfortable with the words "communicate", "tell", or "share".

We recently interviewed the Global Technology Office's Internet Marketing Director Rob Williams over instant messaging. Go to ForMinistry's eQuip channel to read the interview transcript.

In this Christianity Today interview, The Blogosphere's Favorite Real Live Preacher, the author of RealLivePreacher.com instant messages about the sudden success of his weblog. The previously anonymous author behind the weblog, Gordon Atkinson, really is a preacher ministering in Texas, and he writes with candor and refreshing honesty. He commented: "Bloggers tend to be very intelligent and they will smell the stink of marketing on you. Become a blogger if you wish to be a part of blogging, if you want to write and to share who you are."

His weblog has garnered a sizeable audience, catching the attention of many readers, and even a publisher. His book (also) titled RealLivePreacher.com was recently released, featuring some of the best essays from his weblog RealLivePreacher.com.

Happy birthday to ChristianityToday.com (and its predecessor Christianity Online), as they celebrate 10 years of being online, with its web-based dot-com version launched in October 2000.

And also, happy birthday to ForMinistry.com, which is celebrating its 5th birthday with a "5 Best" contest in 5 categories (for websites using the ForMinistry Web Builder toolkit). Wish ForMinistry a happy birthday by sending an e-card now!

The world's most watched movie has made its premiere in cyberspace. To celebrate 25 years since its theatrical release, the "JESUS" film was made available online in more than 200 separate language translations at www.jesusfilm.org last week. Read the full story about the premiere at Agape Press. (One blogger deftly noticed two news articles quoting that the JESUS Film is actually available in more than 300 languages, and the film had been already online prior to this "premiere.") My own fact-checking turned up a footnote citing Internet viewing of the film dates back at least to January 2002.