There are many good sources to help you with launching an Internet ministry. Check out the resources page for some recommendations. Below is a list of questions that must be answered and decisions that must be made in order to start an Internet ministry. Once you have worked through the items on this page, you may want to consider also reviewing the page on enhancing Internet ministry.
Planning for Internet Ministry
To get started with your Internet ministry, you will want begin by planning well. The following questions will need to be answered:
- What are you trying to accomplish through your Internet ministry? You should write a statement of your mission and goals. A well-written mission statement will help to focus you as you move forward. See this post from my blog for more information on this topic.
- Who are your target users? Are you trying to reach members or your church, kids on the street, or seniors? Understanding this will direct you toward the types of technologies you should include on your site. For example, if you are trying to reach college-age students, you will want to have a way to integrate social networking sites and media into your online ministry. Working with seniors, however, may require other technologies. It may be necessary to research your target users in order to best understand how you can reach them. See this post from the blog for more insight into how research can help your ministry.
- Do you have one or more people available to you who are skilled with web technologies? Are they on your staff? You may want to inventory what skills these folks have and determine what skills you still need. If you are using volunteers for the development of the site, how are you going to manage them to ensure that the project stays on track?
- What financial resources do you have to apply to this project? Is there money to pay for an outside consultant to help out with the project? Is there money to pay a monthly fee for web hosting? The answer to these questions will determine what range of choices are available to you.
- What is the culture of your organization like? Is everyone excited about using the Internet? Or are you the only one leading the charge and everyone else is just humoring you? The extent of your online ministry will be impacted by how supportive your organization is. It will be impossible to full integrate your Internet presence with your ministry if your organization has not "bought in" to the need for the site.
Selecting Technology
Once you have answered the questions above, you will be better prepared to determine the actual technology used to run your Internet ministry. Though there are a myriad of different ways to implement an Internet ministry, below are listed three of the standard choices along with the technical expertise and financial resource requirements:
Technology Choice | Technical Expertise Required | Cost | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
Use existing web sites to implement ministry: blogs, podcasts, pictures, etc. | Little | Low | If you have no money and little or no technical expertise, this may be a good way to get started. See this series of blog posts to discuss how "web 2.0" tools can be used to create an Internet ministry for free on existing web sites. |
Pay for an outside service to create and host our site. | Little | High | If you have the financial resources and your goal is to get up and running quickly, then working with an outside company that can create and host your site is a great choice. The vendor can maintain and host the site for you, requiring only that you update the content. |
Build the site yourself using a content management system. | High | Low to Medium | A content management system (CMS) will give you the ability to host a variety of technologies on your site. If you do not have experience with these, you may need to hire someone to help you get it implemented. You will pay a small monthly fee to get this hosted on a web server and will have to maintain it yourself. |
Maintaining Over the Long Term
During the implementation of an Internet ministry, it is often easy to overlook the long term support required. Before launching the online ministry, some tough questions will be need to be answered.
- Who will be responsible for your web site? It is imperative to identify one individual who is the "point person" for the web site. This person, ideally, should be on the staff of the organization. He or she does not have to be extremely technical, but if they are not they should have the ability to work directly with the people who are. This person will also be responsible to ensure that the parts of the site that require updating in a timely manner (such as a calendar or a podcast) are in fact getting updated. Note that this person does not necessarily have to be the one doing the updating!
- How will updates be managed? When updates need to be made to the site, what is the procedure for getting it done? Is there one central person that must always do it, or can each part of the ministry update their own? A process should be put in place to manage this and then enforced.
- Who will set the direction for your site? It is advisable that a team of people be put together to meet regularly and set the direction for the site. This group should also be aware of the latest directions in technology so that as the Internet evolves, so does the ministry.
Best Practices
Many of the questions and decisions listed above are very difficult. Here at genesys11, I have begun to work through these questions through a research project called "Best Practices in Internet Ministry". This research project, conducted from late 2007 through 2008, surveyed over 300 different ministries to try to understand how they answered these questions and how successful they were. Click here to go to the research page to find out more about this project.
All organizations are different, however, and not all of them can implement these best practices. If your organization would like help with these decisions, I am available to consult with you for a reasonable fee. Please see the Consulting page for more details about utilizing this service.