Reach People Where They Are

Yes. Resounding yes.

Where to people turn when they have a question or are facing trouble? Google.

Churches who don’t recognize this and seek to engage people where they are are failing in their ministry responsibility. Kent Shaffer talks about this in his post Is SEO the Future of Evangelism?

You should check out Church Web Optimizer (http://www.churchweboptimizer.com/) from Monk Development. We’ve designed the service to help churches do ministry online.

Our goal is to get ministries to think beyond their own website in order to identify and engage people in their community where they are.

The service is currently being rolled out in a few churches. I’d be happy to send you more information if you want. Thanks for a great post.

there is a lot that can be said about this, and typically I think it can be negative towards the church.
Here is one thing I am discovering. After meeting with ministers or ministries that are trying to promote marriages or homeless ministries in the area and are looking for help with their web space I am seeing more and more that the people that set them up with stuff completely screwed them over.

I think the biggest thing here is churches have to be responsible with online presence. How about instead of having a volunteer in the church set things up you hire someone who knows what they are doing. That is the stuff that bugs me the most. But I really think a lot of churches see no value in online community.

Awesome that the phrase was searched to begin with….I had one a while back that was “freaking poverty.” Nice.

Another resounding yes from me, sir. I think (a lot of times) that “reaching them where they are” means spiking the hair higher, wearing a cooler shirt, and mentioning the words “Mac” or “iPod” as many times in a paragraph without losing the crowd.

As long as people need hope (which will be always) they will seek to find out who God is-aka your blog search example. There must be a legitimate online presence from the church.

Side note: I think this post reminds me of two things:
1. The church needs an online presence.
2. I need to remember that what I say on my blog matters if I speak of Christ.

Should we think about our web presence? Sure. But that won’t be the fix all to our problems. Hell, people use this idea as why we should have virtual churches, virtual campuses, etc. I have a real problem with that, as it detracts from the nature of community.

While we want to be thoughtful about how we use our web technology, we also need to be thoughtful about how the web technology is shaping us. I’m wary to offer tons of answers online, or to have answers to everyone’s questions, because that’s not what the church exists for.

The nuance, that’s generally lacking when we talk about web stuff is that it becomes either blindly accept all web /technology methods without thinking of the ramifications, or to reject it outright. To be honest over the last couple years, the church has been one of the quickest adopters of new technology. Pastors have been early adopters of twitter, people are being creative with things like facebook and making their own other interfaces. But the danger in all of this is that it can easily become disembodied. There’s something about Christianity that is a person to person relationality thing that happens in community and there’s a danger of losing that if we aren’t careful how we use technology.

So, should we be using technology to meet people where they’re at? Absolutely. But I’m totally sympathetic towards those who are wary of overly adopting tech.

Bryan- I agree with the points here. I don’t think that a church’s online presence is an end-all kind of thing. It’s easy to get carried away with that sort of thing. There will never be anything that will successfully substitute real community, IMO.

I agree with your basic point too Bryan. My problem is that too many churches use your basic point to say they don’t need to put any effort, money, or time into church ministry online.

Amen.

yeah, and I realize you do Tyler. I just wanted to offer up a healthy dose of wariness from the opposite side (which is why I am sympathetic to those who don’t have a web presence).

As an example, our community doesn’t have a website, or even a name. My response would be (because i know every person in our group very well) that our group is an embodied presence of the sort that’s welcoming to those big sorts of questions about Christianity.

I have to be very careful that I don’t limit my embodiment to a web sort of thing, because I know for me personally that is a temptation. Anyways. I’m appreciative of your point, just wanted to offer a little counter weight

Most churches just don’t have the savvy to even imagine what a strong web presence can be and do.

And, if they do, many don’t want to relinquish control of the conversation(s).

The other thing is, I don’t know if I’d even want many churches to have an online presence. I mean, if I don’t like what they’re saying and doing inside their church, I won’t like what they say and do outside.

Good point, Bryan. Any virtual community (call ‘em connections) should facilitate real-time, real life community.

I think you make a good point, Tyler. A church should choose carefully how they develop their online presence. I have very mixed feelings about the way my place of worship handles their (and I wish I could say our)online community. There are blogs and other resources that address best practices for non-profit internet activity and I wish more churches, including mine, paid attention to them.

My “favorite” example of this the profession on the church website that claims that building “authentic community” is a goal of the church. You can follow them on Twitter, but they will not follow you back. They follow only church leaders, pastor’s wives and published authors – less that 6% of the number of people following them. Not only are they failing to take advantage of a great way to interact with Portland (almost all my friends tweet and I have had great discussions about my checking in there on Foursquare), but they are making themselves look like that traditional Christian label thrown out whenever someone wants to criticize – the hypocrite. Nothing about ignoring people and playing the “Christian Celebrity” game says authentic community.

Imagine if they were actively engaging their followers? Suddenly a real opportunity to discuss the gospel in front of an audience that doesn’t go to church appears. “Reaching people where they are” might happen.
It is sad to me that they don’t just take the Twitter account down instead of talking about how cool they (we? – but I am not included) are. Again – a bunch of information and no effective outreach.

Anybody – Tyler? Ross? wanna write a book about the electric gospel with me? I honestly think that just as many corporations have community managers, churches will end up with “Pastors of online ministry” and if they have no one with the calling they shouldn’t be sending “missionaries” there. The days of static web pages with service times and statements of faith are winding to a close if they aren’t already over.