3 theories on church websites

Written by

Adam McLane

in

It seems all my really good thoughts seem to come to me while pushing the lawn mower. As I sweated my lunch off this evening I started thinking about something.

Today, we had Dave take a look at a list of the 50 Most Influential Churches in America’s websites. Based solely on the websites,  the top 50 seem to fit into one of the following categories.

  1. The personality church– These are places where it’s all about the senior pastor, his books and messages, and everything else about him. He/She is prominently featured everywhere on the site. I’m sure his fingerprint continues throughout the organization… at least you are led to believe so.
  2. The McDonald’s church– These are churches that are infatuated with their organization or denomination. My guess is that they are anticipating people to come to their site to discover that they can trust X Church since it’s just like all the other X churches out there.
  3. The fearful church– These are places where the best thing they seem to have is that they are right and the rest of the Western world is wrong. Of course… being that they own all that is right, they will point you and your family in the right direction. Trust them…

Kind of weird eh? Go ahead… find them for yourself.

Comments

7 responses to “3 theories on church websites”

  1. Todd Porter Avatar
    Todd Porter

    i have only been to saddleback’s website and i never got any one of those three impression’s from their website.

    Reply
  2. adam Avatar
    adam

    They are a McDonald’s site. Um, the shear existence of “Purpose Driven” gear makes htem a classic McDonald’s.

    Reply
  3. Todd Porter Avatar
    Todd Porter

    but it is their philosophy of ministry. and how they “do church” so of course it would be there. but they don’t hawk their wares there.

    Reply
  4. CG Avatar
    CG

    Hmm. What about ours?

    Reply
  5. CG Avatar
    CG

    and that would be http://myucc.org

    Reply
  6. adam Avatar
    adam

    Definitely a McDonald’s website. It mentions the denominational name several times on the homepage. That said, tt’s very well done! Much better than most church websites.

    Of course… comparing your church to that wild list of the 50 most influential church’s websites is a bit hard because of scale as well. We face the same issue since I create a website for the church… and all of those, I would guess, have a paid graphic designer. Only the really big places have someone on staff who can do that. So… it’s tough to compare right?

    Reply
  7. adam Avatar
    adam

    CG, mad compliments for maintaining your church’s site! (Just caught that.. I’m an idiot) Most church sites seem to struggle to keep content fresh and you definitely have new stuff up there. Right there you’re in the top 10-15% of church websites in the country.

    Reply

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