12 Ideas for Your Church Website
Provided by the Good News Web Designers Association.

Are You Successful?: What to Measure Online
Where do people come from? Do you really know what is driving people to your site? What should you measure on your website?

The Church-Internet (Dis)connection
We in the church must change our way of thinking about the Internet. If we don't, we'll end up with our own subculture online, just as we have in "real life."

Church Websites—Now a Luxury? Perhaps a Necessary Outreach in Near Future
According to a study just released, the size of a church—and even the age of its pastor—factor into how much that church is using the power of the Internet to enhance its ministry efforts. barely half of all the pastors surveyed say their church maintains a website.

Churches No Strangers to Internet
More churches are putting web pages on the Internet than ever before. While that may increase the possibility of drawing the unchurched, some experts caution that a poorly designed site may do more harm than good.

Computer Standards for the Parish: Do You Need a Technology Specialist?
Computers are supposed to save time. Telecommunication is supposed to make work easier, right? But anyone who has ever stared at incomprehensible symbols on a screen, pushed Ctrl/Alt/Delete, caught an e-mail virus, or tried to help a friend write or print a report knows that often computers take up time and can make work more difficult. We need to find ways to fix that.

Computers and the Information Revolution
What has been the impact of the information revolution, and how should Christians respond? Those are the questions we will consider in this essay.

Connected Congregations
Many churches benefit from the Internet and e-mail. But according to a study, having a church website designed chiefly to attract newcomers might be worse than having no Internet presence at all.

Content is King
The absolute best way to get people to return to your web site time and again is to include the best content possible, and to update that content often and regularly. There literally is no better lure than new articles, graphics, photos or downloads.

Create a Church Website
homespun advice for beginning webmasters by Bobbie Lee Pugh, webservant at Wrightsboro Baptist Church, Wilmington, North Carolina.

Cyberspace and Religious Life: Conceptualizing the Concerns and Consequences
In this essay, Lorne L. Dawson surveys the presence of religion on the Internet, discussing the diversity of its forms and functioning. Then he dwells on two of the many research problems that are emerging from this new field of study: the potential impact of the Internet on the formation of personal identity, and the emergence of new kinds of communities.

Dancing on the Web
Resources and an online tutorial to help you create your church's website.

Designing Congregational Websites
Hartford Institute for Religion Research offers these extensive thoughts about creating a congregational website and the process by which a congregation makes decisions regarding the content and character of its site.

Doing Religion in Cyberspace: The Promise and the Perils
In this essay, Lorne L. Dawson briefly surveys some of the issues at hand, discussing five supposed advantages of religious life on the Internet and then five criticisms of the same.

Dotcom Churches: Ministry or Marketing?
Across the country, churches are using the latest technology to try to attract new parishioners and stay relevant in an age when "portal" is as much a part of the lexicon as the prodigal son. Its proponents tout web-based religion as a way to reach larger, more diverse audiences and create a high-tech image.

Effective Church Websites for Emerging Generations
This white paper is designed to provide local churches with a thought-provoking resource to help them make decisions regarding Internet strategy in their local area. The paper is viewable in Adobe Acrobat.

Eight Things Every Senior Pastor Needs to Know About E-Ministry
Terrell Sanders offers eight important points to consider when deciding how important a website is for your church. Read how younger people find information about churches and how many people spend time researching churches online before ever visiting a church. He also points out why you should invest in a well-maintained, dynamic website.

The Electronic Church
If Moses were alive today would he use stone tablets or a PDA? Bradley Mason looks at how technology can help or hinder your church ministry.

Faith Online
According to this recent Pew study, 64 percent of wired Americans have used the Internet for spiritual or religious purposes.

Four Barriers to eMinistry Success
Web expert Terrell Sanders identifies four major barriers to eMinistry success. Interestingly, they are not dependent on church size, website budget, or whether the site was built by volunteers or professionals.

Getting Started Questions
Asking the right questions is an essential step in developing a strong web ministry presence. Here are a few to get you started.

How and Why to Build a Church Website
This article is fairly nontechnical, which should help any church considering running (or revamping) a website assess their options. We believe that all churches that want to impact their surrounding area should have a website. But if you are going to have a website you must resolve to have a good one!

Internet Ministry: A Maturing Medium
Robby Richardson of GospelCom offers his thoughts about how Internet ministry has changed as the medium has grown from a novelty to a well-established means of communication.

Let There Be Websites
Places of worship typically aspire to architectural greatness. Stained glass windows, cathedral ceilings, magnificent domes, and other visually commanding touches traditionally grace churches, synagogues, mosques, and other holy spots. But these days, many churches are building structures considerably more commonplace in today's world: websites.

Making Your Website a Powerful Tool
While many churches are rushing in to make sure they have a website, the real question should be “How can our website create a vital connection to unchurched families in the community?”

New Study Offers Fresh Details About Church Internet Use
A recent study by Ellison Research turned up a lot of interesting (if not always surprising) facts about the ways and extent that different churches use technology.

OneThessalonians.com: If Paul Had Been Online
What might Paul have done if he had e-mail and a Web site to communicate to his beloved in the Lord around the world? Are there practical insights we can glean from Paul’s pastoral writing that help us use today’s digital communications tools to build up our brothers and sisters when we can’t be with each other in person?

Online Strategies for Church Growth
Many organizations are tapping into the great potential the internet offers churches. Nationwide churches are using the Internet for outreach, education and even assimilation. So what separates the successful sites from the rest?

Religion on the ‘Net’: Best Practices in Online Ministries
Churches, ministries, and denominations are increasingly using the Internet in an effort to serve their present congregations and attract new members. Which websites are doing a good job? What can we learn from them for our own work? The Best Practices in Online Ministry report explores this issue.

The Starting Point in Creating Your Church Website
The starting point in creating your own church web site must be to think about your possible audience. The question to ask is why new people might come to the church and then design your site to encourage this to happen.

Virtuous Living in the Virtual World
In his book Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age Quentin Schultze critiques the 21st century citizen’s tendency to fall into what he calls “informationism.” Schultze defines this as “a quasireligious faith in the power of information to improve our lives,” the belief that information offers us “social progress and personal happiness.”

What is the Purpose of Digital Technology?
This article takes a step back and considers why Christians should be using technology in the first place with reflections and insights from the Scriptures. A good thing to occasionally pause from the constant flow of technological innovations and to reconnect with a biblical perspective.

What Makes a Good Church Website
Someone in the newsgroup uk.religion.christian once asked Gareth McCaughan, "What do you look for in a church website"? Here’s his response.

Who is Visiting Your Church’s Website?
"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," writes Pastor Neil McQueen, who shares what he's learned about website traffic and church websites.

The Wi-Fi Enabled Church
Is your church connected? Many churches are now experimenting with wi-fi (wireless computer networks) to offer online access to sermon notes and service notes LIVE. Here's how it works, according to Andrew Jones of TallSkinnyKiwi.com.