The church I attend has two websites.
One a full blown ecommerce site which has been up and running for the past year or more to support the christian book import business we run and the second which is nearing completion, is for the church itself.
Last night I had the pleasure to introduce the backend of the new site (it’s WordPress) to two of our church members who will be doing the updates, postings, etc for the site. It was a humbling experience as one easily forgets just how much one knows, or how much what I do day to day is a core part of me until two keen but relatively unskilled IT peeps sit down for some training.
I personally don’t see WordPress as being a tough product to utilise and had even restricted the users via the capabilities plugin so that they only see the bits they need to see. Still, the proverbial “rabbit in headlights” springs to mind!
However the really interesting aspect of the evening was when one of them questioned why the site looks so plain. I didn’t try to defend that view (as I agree) but simply said that this is what the pastor wanted. Then a little later the reality behind that comment came out. This lady said ‘when I was project manager for my company’s website we just told the developers to do this or that and that was it” … she then mentioned that they’d paid £30,000 for their site.
Ding! Well that’s what you can do with 30K, here’s what you get for £200.
But as another reality check I then went to one of the big US church websites (no names, no pack drill) and said we could do this type of thing if we had the money (and other factors but won’t go into that) but then I clicked through to the internals of the site and the other lady there spotted it straight away – how similar that is to ours!
Ultimately, there are only so many ways you can present data and throwing money at a project isn’t always the best stewardship of our resources. Nuff said.
Great post.
I too volunteer for a small church with no "web" budget. We do the best we can with the tools we have and I augment the functionality where I can with free tools (Google Forms, Survey Monkey, Mail Chimp, etc).
I still surf other church sites for ideas on new functionality, etc. Because of our limited tool set, a lot of the WOW items are not possible right now. But the same information is being presented. Ours is definitely not as flashy or whizz-bang, but we're striving for functionality. Although I am working on a strategy to make major changes to increase our tool set over the next year or so.
Especially during these tough economic times, churches, ministries…even individuals need to be reviewing their stewardship of their time and resources.
Perhaps even ask the question, "We know what we WANT, but what is ESSENTIAL to accomplish the mission we've been given."
My recent post The “Is that contestant on American Idol a Christian Scorecard”
The key to me in your response is "I still surf other church sites" – that tells me you still want to learn, still want to expand, still seeking the best and most important (within a church setting) you are still looking to expand the vision, capability, reach, etc of said church.
That is uber cool.
That's exactly right. Just because we can't do it today, doesn't mean we can't put the idea on the shelf for future implementation. Plus there may be ways we can accomplish similar functionality with different tool sets.
Ustream vs. a full web campus
Google Forms vs. custom coded forms
Although, it would be nice to devote more than just volunteer time to expanding the functionality. I now see why larger organizations have web TEAMS.
My recent post The “Is that contestant on American Idol a Christian Scorecard”
kdenlive v Final Cut Pro … and so on.
But I agree – having time to do more would be great but there has to be an equal matching of willingness (and possibly monetary committment) from the leadership for some things to happen.