In the Beginning
May 12th, 2009
These days, it seems, most every congregation wants a website. Whether they pay thousands of dollars for a professional design firm or look for the free options offered specifically for churches, congregations are funneling resources to the Internet to proclaim the Word in a digital age and give themselves a small piece of virtual realty.
theWord:typed represents my attempt to expand the usefulness of the Internet for congregations and people of faith. In phase one, this blog, I hope to give some theological and technical guidance to congregations that are seeking to build a site for the first time or reconstructing an old site into something more functional and appealing. I will mostly focus on web design as a theological endeavor.
For most long-established congregations, the first entree into the world of the Internet was a simple page with text and pictures pressed close together, the digital re-creation of the church bulletin board, crowded with program advertisements, calendars, and announcements. I have not found many churches that have progressed far beyond this point, other than to organize, simplify, and beautify the material. Now multiple pages separate staff from history and Sunday school from worship times, all done with more pictures, fancier text, and appealing colors. However, the essence of the bulletin board remains. This is not altogether bad; most people visit a website because they are searching for basic information, such as what time they should be in their pew. However, if the site is no more than the bulletin board, it will forever be used as such. Occasionally glanced at, more often forgotten. With the advent of Web 2.0, with user-created, user-driven, and user-selected content, a crowded bulletin board is a relic of little value.
I have been thinking of my own vision for the intersection of Web and Church. Here is my first attempt to put it in writing: Perhaps the elements of the faith can be summed up as worship, teaching, community, and mission, and these all will be enhanced by the online tools as they unfold and develop. Our worship will be enhanced with new spiritual practices, our teaching with new resources, our community with new connections, and our mission with new understandings of where the Spirit is moving in the world. We are called not to fear new technology, but to use it in a way that proclaims the love of God in new and various ways. As the Reformation did with the printing press, so must the whole church find a holy use for the new digital media.
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