Content

Your "Sign" On The Internet

Matthew 5:14
Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.

Your web site should be devoted to preaching the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. If you help people find your church, you should, in turn, be helping them to find God. Your web site is a lot like your church sign, or a business card, or your brochure.

Every church puts their name, worship times, and pastor's name on their church sign; so should not that information also go on your web page? Every business card has full contact information, and I heartily recommend adding that information as well to your web site. Why? So that if people want to contact you, they can (and make it easy). Therefore, here is a starting checklist:

• Name of church (including denomination)
• Worship times (including Sunday School time)
• Pastor's name
• Mailing address
• Phone number
• e-mail address

If you are concerned about receiving unsolicited commercial email (UCE/SPAM), I still recommend putting your email address for human eyes to see. Here are some ways you can stop a computer from "harvesting" your email address.

First, you can display your email address as a picture. Even in Windows' paint, you can type your email address and save the file as either a gif or jpg. Unfortunately, that makes it harder for people who want to contact you, as they have to type in your email address by hand!

Another way is to encrypt your email address. Click here for Jim Tucek's web site will do this for free and produce javascript code to insert into your web page! The advantage is that the javascript encrypts your email where computer "harvesters" cannot snatch up your email address, while the allowing the human eye to see your address and you even get a functioning "mailto" link, which automatically launches their email program! Pretty nifty, huh? Jim's home page.

Your Opportunity To Witness

2 Corinthians 4:5
For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake.

If all that your website does is promote your church and pastor, you are missing the big picture.

Acts 22:14-15
14 And he said, The God of our fathers hath chosen thee, that thou shouldest know his will, and see that Just One, and shouldest hear the voice of his mouth.
15 For thou shalt be his witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard.

As a church, you may have sponsored missionaries or witnessed in person. Your web site is your opportunity to share your love and faith to Jesus Christ on the Internet around the clock. The first link in our menu is How To Become A Christian (check it out!). You may notice that at the bottom of the page, I not only include our contact information (again), but I also include a link to the SBC web site (and ChurchAngel and WorshipHere), which allows people from around the country to find a local church. Not everyone who visits your web site will be from your community: some will be from across the country and some may be in other countries! Because sites like Google can translate your web site into other languages, you could help lead someone to Jesus who does not even speak your language!

Additionally, we have links to many Christian resources on the internet (check it out!), and a collection of sites offering software for your computer, including Bible study software (check it out!). Find new ways to share your love for Jesus Christ and let your web site offer visitors new options and ideas. Perhaps you could offer testimonies? Of course, the real resource you can add to website is...

The Bible

2 Timothy 3:16-17
16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
17 That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.

You preach from it. You teach from it. Why is it not part of your web site? I cannot believe how many church web sites overlook this opportunity to share the Gospel! We not only have the King James online (check it out!), We also have a copy ready for you to use on your web site (check it out!) which does not have all the "Colonial View" stuff on it. It's contained in a zip archive which extracts at just under 8 megabytes of space (well, it is the whole Bible!) We also have Bible tools (check it out!) on our site. These Bible tools are old (which puts them in the public domain), but they're still good resources.

The King James Bible is in the Public Domain. But what if you want a more modern text? Make sure it's Public Domain or else you may be violating someone's copyright!

The World English Bible is a Public Domain (no copyright) Modern English translation of the Holy Bible, based on the American Standard Version of the Holy Bible first published in 1901, the Biblia Hebraica Stutgartensa Old Testament, and the Greek Majority Text New Testament. Ebible.com has a copy marked up in html (Go to Ebible.com)

Another Bible that's Public Domain in America is The Bible In Basic English. It was published in 1963 without a copyright, so it immediately fell into the Public Domain (newer texts are automatically copyrighted even if no copyright is included). O-bible.com offers this in text format (not a web page, so it would take some work to ready it for the Internet) (Go to O-bible.com).

Follow this link to learn more about copyright laws on a page by Lolly Gasaway at the University of North Carolina (Go to the University of North Carolina's Public Domain Information Page)

A Moment For Prayer

We offer visitors to submit a prayer request from our home page. But should your prayer chain/list be publicly available? I have seen other sites that offer their prayer chain, but if you're going to offer it, the best way is to make people email you for your prayer chain. Some people may try to use your prayer chain to take advantage of people, but if they have to offer a valid email address, it will usually keep the unscrupulous people at bay. If you allow people to email you for your prayer chain, keep their email address in the strictest of confidence; do not make their information available to anyone other than those in charge of the prayer chain. The absolute best way to handle prayer is to follow Jesus' instruction:

Matthew 6:5-7
5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

If you do not solicit people's email addresses, you can never be accused of re-selling their private information. If you do take people's email addresses, then let people know what you're going to do with their information.

Where Are You At?

Matthew 7:8
For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

A map to your church is a handy way to help seeking people find you. There are internet sites that offer driving directions (mapquest and yahoo, for example.) On our map page, there is the mailing address and phone number; if someone does not use the driving directions, but prints our map page, they still have a phone number (and street address) in case someone gets lost on their way. Also, I include a picture from the road, a church close up and a sign close up to help people identify the building the from road. (You ever notice how easy it is to find McDonald's or Walmart in a strange city? That's because you know what the sign looks like and what the building looks like!) Why put so much emphasis on the look of your building or the look of your sign? So that people can readily identify your church! Check out our map page. Checklist for the map page:

• Name of church (including denomination)
• Mailing address
• Phone number
• Map image
• links to driving directions
• Pictures of the church from the road, the church itself, and the church sign.

Linking To Driving Directions

There's more than one way to do anything. Here's one way to accomplish this. Go to Google.com. Type in your mailing address (street number, road, city, state and zip) and perform a Google search. If you typed in Colonial View's address, Google would display a link saying "Map of 1426 West Cemetery Road Cookeville TN 38506. Yahoo! Maps - MapQuest". To obtain those urls (web addresses), you can either right click on Yahoo Maps! and select "copy shortcut" (and do the same with Mapquest). Or, you can visit each link (right clicking is hard for some people) and copy the address from your browser's address bar. You can then place these links in your web page. It's as simple as copying and pasting:

Find us at <a href="(Yahoo maps link)">Yahoo Maps!</a> or <a href="(MapQuest link)">MapQuest</a>, and then you can get driving directions (either web site)!

Just remember to replace the (Yahoo maps link) and (Mapquest link) with the links you copied above! For example, Colonial View's Yahoo Maps link looks like this:
<a href="http://maps.yahoo.com/maps_result?ed=iqwX_ep_0TqeOtpRz7dTAdpyAM23lxORIwC_0nWufDE-&csz=Cookeville+TN&country=us.">Yahoo Maps!</a>

Pictures Of Church Leaders?

First off, I know some people are already reciting

2 Corinthians 4:5
For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus...

Amen! So if we preach not ourselves, why put a picture of the pastor on the web site? But let me offer a different point of view: love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:9).

Have you ever entered a church you've never been to before and you did not know anyone? Was that a comfortable experience? Do you want to make visitors as comfortable as reasonably possible in your church?

If I came to your church and I did not know anyone, it sure would be nice to know what the preacher looked like. Then I would at least know him! I'm not saying you have to post your whole congregation in directory format. But maybe the pastor's picture would make people feel more at home?

If you're up for it, why not have pictures of the deacons, too? (you do not have to put full names, first names will give people a sense of having a name with a face).

Getting To Know You

1 John 3:1
Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.

People who attend church have an idea of what to expect. People who do not attend church may have no idea, and may not attend because they do not want to be shamed for their ignorance before a large crowd. Even if you only have 30 people in attendance, who wants to be humiliated in front of 30 people? Now, I know (and so do you) that people seeking salvation should never be embarrassed in church, but the Devil will play in their imagination.

Knowing something about your church service can make people feel more at home in your church. You could scan in a church bulletin and make it available on line a picture file (such as gif or jpg) or as a document (pdf or doc file). We offer mp3s (computer audio files) of our pastor's sermons (check them out!) so that you can actually hear how he preaches. This means someone who has never been in the church can know what our pastor looks like, know the sound of his voice and know his preaching style!

Additionally, we have links to our church covenant (check it out!), a picture gallery of construction (check it out!) and baptism (check it out!) as well as our community (check it out!).

Now, the community link may seem a bit silly if someone is driving across town; they know your community! But we have had visitors from Indiana (two states away) who saw our web site and decided to check out a church service! What if someone is moving into your area and is looking for a church?

A church calendar can help let people know about upcoming special events. There will always be some impromptu events, but many events (such as Vacation Bible School) are planned well enough in advance to get the word out.

Links

1 Corinthians 14:12
Even so ye, forasmuch as ye are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek that ye may excel to the edifying of the church.

How can you enlighten the church on the Internet? Link to other sites with good content! Honestly, it is not easy to find web sites with good Christian content as you might think. We should work together to create a network of faith, linking good web sites together.

Check out our links pages, and feel free to borrow as many as you'd like for your own page. Remember that many search engines, such as Google, give web sites that have other web sites linking to them better placement during web searches. However, if you just copy our links in their entirety, you'll likely be seen as a mirror, so your links won't count. Therefore, be sure to look for more sites and link them. And feel free to link to us!

Getting Those Links

If you only want one or two links from our links pages, you can right click a hyperlink and choose "copy shortcut" in Internet Explorer. If you want to borrow many of our links, view the source of our links page and copy the information. In Internet Explorer, you can either right click the page and choose "view source" or choose the "View" menu and then select "Source".

Design Concerns

Maybe now you have some ideas of what to say. Let's discuss how you say it.

People really dislike pop-up ads or anything else that feels like a nuissance. Don't put them on your page! Don't put banner ads for commercial sites on your webpage. Jesus overthrew the tables of the moneychangers...you get the point. A religious webring or links to other Christian Content is fine.

Macromemdia's Flash is great within a page, as long as all your visitors have it installed. Image formats that nearly every browser can handle are jpegs, gifs, and pngs. If you make your start page (default page/homepage/index page) a flash intro, then it's a glorified pop-up ad. Let people get to your content immediately; if your webpage loads slow, see if you can make it run faster.

Consider your audience, they're not all 13 (nor are they all 65) nor do they all use Internet Explorer. If nothing else, consider installing Netscape (or Mozilla or Opera) and see how your website looks to those visitors as well as your IE visitors.

Traffic Concerns

Search engines will unite visitors with your page by the content you have. Concise, well-written pages are ideal, but you can (and maybe should) alternate spellings. If you write "website" as one word everytime it appears on your webpages, then people searching for "web site" won't find you. Remember that most people can read a sentence even if it has typos as long as the initial and final letters are in the right place.

You tohught I woludn't use an exmpale?

Google's caching of web pages can be your friend. It can show you the text of a cached page -- and that shows you what the search engines see. Use text but not an overabundance of it. As an example, this page is probably too long for a search engine to index all the words. But I'm trying to be concise on a single page.

Summary

2 Corinthians 13:11
Finally, brethren, farewell. Be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace shall be with you.

Make your web site an expression of your church on the Internet. Let your pages have something to offer people who are interested in your church. Your web site is really a detailed brochure to showcase what you have. Enjoy it, and God bless you!