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May 2012

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Brad Abrare, founder, Center for Church Communication, Los Angeles, CA  

With the Internet established as a key component in our daily lives, both individuals and organizations are evolving its application not only to advertise their presence, but also to promote interaction. No longer does a simple website—that “virtual storefront” sitting in cyberspace, waiting for visitors to arrive—suffice: today, an effective Internet-based endeavor involves a proactive strategy focused on reaching out across the ether to get your message across.

For churches, the Internet provides the potential to render outreach efforts much more powerful. Because online voice, video, and data streams know no borders, an organization’s outreach efforts can easily be expanded to include, well, the entire world. Take caution, however: while the possibilities are endless, without a well-constructed Internet strategy, churches risk throwing a lot at the wall without seeing much stick.

Brad Abrare, founder of the Los Angeles, California-based Center for Church Communication—a non-profit organization providing communications services to churches and secular clients, and host of the cheeky, hard-hitting blog ChurchMarketingSucks.com—underlines that an Internet outreach initiative stands little chance of succeeding if its organizers don’t start by outlining their goals. “It would be nice if they started with, ‘what are the objectives?’” he says. “Often, we don’t start there. We start with, ‘wow, they have a really cool website; I’d like to do that, too.’ There is not [truly] an objective in terms of what we are trying to accomplish.”

Church in Cyberspace
Some churches, such as LifeChurch.tv based in Edmond, Oklahoma, offer online ministry, which acts as a campus located in cyberspace. Others focus on providing those who may have yet to attend a service with as much information about the church as possible. In combination with this, they may also feature a special section for regular attendees that provides resources on upcoming events and a place for discussion.

To conduct Internet outreach properly, Abrare advises that churches examine whether they have both the human and financial resources to do it right. “If you are giving the church secretary something to update once a week, such as the bulletin, that’s not a real investment in online ministry presence,” he says. “Putting up articles that the pastor has written about prayer is not going to solve the prayer issues that people are having online.”

Online outreach must involves pastors, worship, community, resources, and a place where people can come to connect—all of the factors, he notes, that go into creating a physical church. How your online outreach program is constructed depends on the people you are targeting: will you be reaching people in the community that prefer to conduct worship online, as opposed to attending the bricks-and-mortar facility? Or is your public located across the country or even the globe, at a satellite church, for example, to which you have sent missionaries?

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Carolyn Heinze is a freelance writer/editor.

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