Getting Your Church on the Web

In this day and age it is very important for churches and other ministries to have a presence on the Internet.  It is a great way to communicate with your congregation as well as to display your ministries to potential visitors.  But many pastors feel very intimidated when it comes to setting up a web page.  What happens if you don’t know html or don’t own expensive web page software?

One of the best resources that I have found is a web site called www.advancedministry.com.   Advanced Ministry has a wide variety of web site options , from very expensive sites with all the bells and whistles to free web sites that have enough features to satisfy most small churches.  I have developed web sites for both my churches (Woodford Baptist Church and First Baptist Church).  It is extremely easy to use and you can literally have a professional looking web site in twenty minutes, even without any previous experience.  The free option is good, but it does include advertisements, although they are tasteful and not obtrusive.

Now when you set up a web site, you do have a rather long address.  For example, the address for Woodford is technically is http://sites.advancedministry.com/woodford.  But you can purchase web domains elsewhere on the web for a reasonable cost.  In that way we now have www.woodfordbaptist.ca and www.meafordbaptist.ca.

Now is it really worth doing this?  Will anyone actually go to these web pages?  Advanced Ministry provides a helpful summary of how many people have been to your web site.  For example, at First Baptist Church we have had: 67 views in the last 5 days, 357 in the last 15 days and 555 in the last 30 days.  I have asked around and only a small percent are from our congregation.  The majority are others who are checking out our church.  I highly recommend Advanced Ministry and I would be happy to help anyone use this resource to set up their church web page.

~ by Stephen Bedard on July 23, 2008.