The church web site Just read an interesting blog here on the use of volunteers vs. paid professionals to create/maintain church web sites. This is a great rant, and the firestorm of comments that follow show how hot a topic this is.

This is an area that interests me greatly: how can we, as Christians, use the Internet to effectively serve the Lord? I worked with one of my MIS students, Dawna Sanders, in January 2004 on a small research project on exactly this. A telling summary from the report:

One thing that might hold churches back from their full potential in using Internet technology is the apparent lack of plan or structure across the board. 45% of churches had no strategy regarding it, and 50% stated that they had no specific Internet technology budget. 45% of churches have volunteers managing technology, as opposed to 35% with paid staff and 20% with a mixture of both. The majority (69%) of church websites were created by volunteers, and while 68% update the website frequently, over half have no policy on updates. Several churches mentioned that they just began paying someone, getting professional services, or forming a specific ministry team for Internet technology.

You can see the full report here. I am thinking about doing a more intensive research project in this area next year to see if anything has changed and to focus more directly on the use of the web and adding a focus on church/pastor blogging.  ¶ 12:32 PM 1 comments