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Putting Your Church on the Web
Advice from a church secretary of twenty-two years |
My name is Joyce Kiely. I have been the secretary of Linden Street United Methodist
Church, in a small town in southern Indiana about an hour from Louisville, since 1977.
In that time I have typed some eleven hundred Sunday bulletins, worked for four pastors,
survived the change from a mimeograph to a copier that jams in more interesting ways,
and in the spring of 1998, at the age of sixty-two, built the church a page on the World
Wide Web.
I didn't want to. Our youth director thought we should have one, the Administrative
Council agreed, and when they looked around the table to see who would do it, everybody
was looking at me. I took a class at the public library, two evenings, and learned the
rest the way I learned the copier.
Our church's page lives on the computer of a little Internet company one of our members
runs out of his garage, which is a blessing and a different story. Since it went up I've
had calls and letters from the secretaries and pastors of eleven other churches, Methodist
and otherwise, all asking how we did it and what we'd do differently. I tell them all the
same things, so I've written them down here, and there's a
checklist you can print out and take to your committee.
†
What visitors want first
The people who look at a church's page are mostly people who have never been inside it.
They are new in town, or they've just had a baby, or they've just lost someone, or they're
coming to a funeral or a wedding and don't know where to park. Think about them, not about
us. In this order:
1. When are the services? At the very top, in big letters, before the history and
before the welcome. Ours says Worship 8:30 and 10:45 · Sunday School 9:45
right under the name of the church. If the times change in summer, say so, and say when.
Nothing on the page matters more, and nothing does more harm when it's wrong.
2. Where is it, and where do I park? The street and the town, plain directions
from the nearest highway, and a word about parking. Then the door. Every church has one
door everybody uses and a grand front door that's locked, and the stranger always goes to
the grand one. Tell them: Use the side entrance off the parking lot. It has the ramp.
3. What should I wear? People really do want to know, and they're embarrassed to
ask. Tell them the truth. We say: Whatever you'd wear to the grocery store will do.
You'll see everything from suits to overalls.
4. What about my children? If you have a nursery, say what ages, what hours, and
that it is staffed by two adults. Parents read that sentence twice. If children stay in
worship, say so kindly, and say there are crayons.
5. A welcome from the pastor. Short, warm, signed, with the pastor's name. Not a
sermon. One of the best I've seen is Pastor Dwight's
Page, from a country preacher with a small United Methodist church in Iowa. He says
right off that he won't preach at you there, and then he tells you that worship is at 9:30
and there's coffee after. That is very nearly the whole job of a church page, and he does
it in his first two paragraphs.
6. A calendar, kept current or not kept at all. A calendar that still lists the
Easter cantata in August tells a visitor that nobody is minding the store, and they'll
wonder what else nobody is minding. If you can't keep a calendar up to date every week, put
up the things that don't change (choir practice is Wednesday at 7) and leave it there.
†
What not to put up
The member directory. I'm asked about this more than anything. No. Our directory
lists every widow who lives alone, with her street and her telephone number, and I will
not hand that list to the whole world. If members want to find each other, they have the
printed one in the church office.
Children's full names with their pictures. A picture of the Vacation Bible School
crowd is a joy. A picture of one child with her first and last name under it is a map for
the wrong kind of person. Our rule: group pictures only, no names with faces, and a signed
permission slip from a parent before any child appears at all.
Prayer requests, without asking. A prayer request is told in trust, often in a hard
hour. Putting it on a web page is not the same as saying it in church, because the whole
world can read it, and the whole world includes the man's employer and his ex-wife. Ask the
person, in so many words, "May we put this on the Internet?" Most will say yes. Some will
say no, and they'll be grateful you asked. Take requests down after two weeks unless
they're renewed. And never, ever post something somebody told you at the copier.
Hymn and song words. This one surprises people. Most churches pay for a license
that lets them print the words of songs in the bulletin or put them up on the overhead
projector. That license does not necessarily cover putting those words on the Internet,
which is a different kind of publishing. Even an old hymn can have new words or a new
translation in your hymnal that somebody owns. Ask the license people before you post a
single verse. Until then, give the title and the hymnal number, which is all anyone needs
to sing along on Sunday.
†
Who should be in charge
One person, with a backup. Not a committee. A committee can decide what goes on the
page, but one person has to put it there, and one person has to be the one who gets the
call when it's wrong. In our church that's me, and my backup is Russell Sims, our lay
leader, who can do everything I can do on the page and promises not to touch it unless I'm
in the hospital or in Florida.
Write the member name and password on a card, seal it in an envelope, and put it in the
church safe with the deed and the communion silver. Secretaries retire and volunteers move
to Arizona, and a church page with nobody who can get into it is a sign out by the road
that nobody can change.
Let your pastor read anything with the pastor's name on it before it goes up. Ours,
the Reverend Nancy Hesser, came to us two summers ago and reads every word. She has caught
three of my mistakes and I have caught two of hers, and we are both keeping count.
†
Three things I learned the hard way
Snow. If you cancel services for weather, the page has to say so by six in the
morning, and so does the radio. Our page said nothing the first time, and four faithful
souls slid into the parking lot at 8:25 and sat in a cold car until somebody's husband
came to tell them.
Christmas Eve. Every year, the busiest night on our page. Check those times three
times, and have someone else check them a fourth.
E-mail. If the page has an e-mail address on it, somebody must read that mail. We
once had a letter from a young woman asking whether we would do a wedding for a couple who
weren't members, and it sat for three weeks because the address went to a computer nobody
had turned on since Advent. She was married somewhere else, I hope happily. Answer within a
day if you possibly can, and within a week no matter what.
†
Before you publish
I've made a printable checklist for church
committees, with everything above in the form of questions you can check off, and lines at
the bottom for the pastor and the person in charge to sign. Print it, bring it to your
council or your trustees, and go through it together. It takes about twenty minutes, which
is less time than it takes to argue about the color of the new hymnals.
And then put it up. A church on the Web is a light left on in the window. It's worth
doing, as long as somebody keeps the bulb changed.
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