Here’s what’s on my mind today - and this is inspired by this thread over at Godbit which is around the issue of, on a church site, having a member blogroll - a list of links to the blogs published by members of the church.  The main issue is around the content of those blogs and how they might or might not reflect well on the church, and what the church might do to mitigate any potential damage through the use of link agreements, positioning statements, review committees, moderators, having the blogroll be located seperately from the main site, etc.

It’s distressing to me, and I think the overall terrible state of church websites can be - partially at least - traced to some of these issues.

It’s funny - I don’t consider myself a rebel, a revolutionary, or a renegade.  I’m just a guy in flip-flops, living in a small ranch house in a conservative community, driving a station wagon, and trying to keep the bills paid.  But this discussion, the ideas being proposed, and the out and out fear behind some of them really surprises me.  That it’s coming from a group of fellow tech and web-heads is also a surprise.  I’ve been involved in similar discussions with less-tech-savvy pastors and church staff and hearing these concerns from that group is no big surprise.  The web is completely and fundamentally changing how we connect and interact with each other and some of those changes are diametrically oppposed to how the church has traditionally functioned.

Here, in no particular order, are some of the fears I’m hearing and my reactions to them.  I apologize if they aren’t quite well-ordered or are repetitive.  This is one of those posts that I need to get out so I can move on to the work I really should be doing…

Your members are doing bad things while not in church (and even while in church).  It’s called sin, and we are all born sinners.  Since I didn’t see the notion of using blogs and comments to correct, uplift, or support each other I can only assume the real concern here is protecting and controlling the public image of the church.

There’s a subtle - yet persistent in all of this discussion - distinction between “the church” and “church members”.  “The church” has an image, “The church” can have official or unofficial support of something, etc.  I don’t see that distinction.  The church members ARE the church - even our kids know this because we teach it to them in Sunday School.  Any time a church building is destroyed by fire you read about the pastor and members saying it was “just a building” and “the church lives on because it’s people live on”. 

I see no way you could post a disclaimer on a church website blogroll saying “the views presented in these blogs may not represent that of the church” - because those bloggers are the church.  Their views may disagree with the views of other parts of the church - but that’s OK because it’s the truth.  I think we need to get over this notion of a church needing to always present a unified front on everything.  It’s just not always true, and trying to hide the fact that it isn’t always true makes us hypocrites.

The internet, blogs, and discussion forums aren’t allowing any new “bad things” to happen.  People are sinning, people are disagreeing with the church teaching and people are saying bad things about the church now.  Yes—right now at work, at a coffee shop, at a small group meeting, on the phone or in email.  Keeping it off the website doesn’t make it go away. In short - you have no control over your church image.  None.  You may think you do, but it’s a facade of control.

Along these lines, I don’t agree with the idea that a church shouldn’t set up a means for open conversation (and yes, disagreement) for it’s members. Disagreement with teaching by leadership should not be discouraged or hidden.  When we do so we are hypocrites - with our happy faces on, smiling for the visitors, pretending all is cool.  And - sometimes leaders are just flat-out wrong and need to be corrected.

Look - the conversation is happening anyway, it’s more of a decision to be part of it or not, and to be able to provide (on the part of a pastor) direct input, teaching, and correction to the conversation.  I think if more churches don’t start doing this they will quickly find themselves set aside, outmoded, and irrelevant (and isn’t that - being relevant - what so many churches are after these days?).

I just have to wonder - what’s the real fear here?  If the image of the church is tarnished (and is the the big C or little c church we’re concerned for) - then what?  Fewer people come, donations shrink, and staff members have to be let go?  We lose the church building?  Why is our primary concern for the church image rather than our effectiveness at the task the church was charged with?  Why do we what-if all the negatives but not what-if the positives?

What could (or would) your church do if it had nothing to lose?  No building, no staff, no “image”, no worldly possession of any sort?  If it’s different than what you’re doing now, should it be?

I think the church has to go down these paths.  We’ve got to get comfortable with providing places for open and public discussion.  We’ve got to realize that the internet is going to prevent the traditional heirarchies of power and knowledge from being the norm going forward.  We’ve got to get over the impulse to control, and spin, and hide our people.  We’ve got to realize that people will find a place to have their say - and the internet gives them an unlimited audience regardless if we like it or not. 

Recommended reading:
The Cluetrain Manifesto for Churches
Church Web Sites Are Easy
We Know More Than Our Pastors (PDF) by Tim Bednar

But today I clicked before thinking, went to the new church site, and immediately found myself groaning and shaking my head.  Why are we - as the “online church” still making the same mistakes that we were making 6, 7 or 8 years ago when building the very first websites for churches?

That mistake?  Making the most prominent element on the page a picture of the church building.  I just don’t get it.  Do we think people choose a church by architectural style?  By quality of paint job?  By the color of it’s shingles?  The fact that it has a star on top of it’s steeple?

I’d bet you a fiver if I went to that specific church, walked in the door and asked the pastor, a staff member, or any 5 year old in a Sunday School class to “tell me what the church is” they would say with reverence - “Oh, the church is really the people.  The people make it what it is.  Without the people it’s just a building.”

So where does that thinking go when it comes to designing what - arguably - represents the “most public face” of the church?  Why do we suddenly choose pictures of the building as our first impression?  It makes me wonder if we truly believe what we say about what the church is.

Your visitors may wonder the same thing....

In any case, today’s message is for churches to stop using the web simply as a online distribution channel for printed items like bulletins and newsletters.

I’ll say that again. In another way, just for the sake of entertainment.  If you think your church website is finally “up to date” because you just uploaded a PDF version of this month’s church newsletter, you are mistaken.

The issues around PDF web content have long been noted, so I don’t intend this post as a general comment around PDF usage - but more specifically for churches.

So why not keep a church website up to date by simply posting PDF versions of the bulletins and newsletters that you’re already producing?

Because overall it shows a misunderstanding of the web - just as in the early days of television most content was repurposed radio dramas because people just didn’t see how TV brought new capabilities to exploit. 

Specifically, by putting that newsletter and bulletin on your site as web content rather than PDF a church can gain:

• A more flexible and responsive publishing schedule
  Aren’t you tired of sounding the “deadline drumbeat”?  Or staying late on deadline day because *everything* comes in last minute?  Or making exceptions for people because of their position in the church?  Your website can be updated any time - no deadlines required.  Last minute news item?  No problem. Finally, a communications medium that can dance to the beat of the content, rather than the other way around.
• Readers on alternate devices
  I was at a holiday get-together with some other folks from my church this past week.  The discussion turned to some content on the church website, and one guy said “Oh I gotta go read that”.  He pulled out his wireless-enabled cell phone and within 15 seconds or so was reading the content - all possible because it was web content and not something captured in a PDF.  And take note, this was no 18 year old geek.  This was a police sergeant, a married father of 3 with one kid out of high school.
• Readers on slow connections
  As part of another church engagement last week I talked with a number of the church members.  A high percentage were still using dialup connections, and mentioned that they had issues trying to load PDF content.  Regardless of how you feel about PDF’s, the truth is they are another layer of technology, another application that has to load, and why? So the user can see text and images - just like in the browser.  What if that PDF content was the critical piece, the “last straw” for a visitor in making a decision to visit the church.  Or - to cross the line and come to Christ?  Why take the risk?
• More readers using assitive devices
  Yes, PDF’s can be made accessible (readable by people using assistive devices on their computer such as a screen reader, but frankly it takes more work so they are less likely to be.  Web content is much more likely to be readable by these devices.
• Better searchability
  Yes, Google can index PDF files - but what if you don’t use Google?
• Visitors
  Yeah, OK - maybe this is mostly me, but when I see the church website used mainly as a PDF repository I know this a church that’s behind the times and just doesn’t “get” the web.  And if they don’t get the web, they’re unlikely to see me darken their door.  What if it’s not just me?

The Cluetrain Manifesto seeks to tell traditional businesses how the internet is changing the markets they play in. 

In the midst of launching a website for a church that seems to be striking some of the same chords, I was curious to see how the Cluetrain’s 95 Thesis would read if I substituted “Church” (as in the “business” side of a Church, the staff, etc - not in the sense that the congregation is the Church) in place of “company”, and “congregation” for “market”.  It’s a thought-provoker - not a straight carryover in all cases but some of the translated thesis do give pause.

So with apologies to the creators of the original Cluetrain, here’s the “Church Cluetrain”:

Online Congregations...

Networked congregations are beginning to self-organize faster than the Churches that have traditionally served them. Thanks to the web, congregations are becoming better informed, smarter, and more demanding of qualities missing from most Churches.

95 Theses

1. Congregations are conversations.

2. Congregations consist of human beings, not butts in seats.

3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.

4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.

5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.

6. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.

7. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.

8. In both internetworked congregations and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.

9. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.

10. As a result, congregations are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked congregation changes people fundamentally.

11. People in networked congregations have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from church staff and leaders. So much for Church rhetoric about community.

12. There are no secrets. The networked congregation knows more than Churches do about their own communities. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.

13. What’s happening to congregations is also happening among employees. A metaphysical construct called “The Church” is the only thing standing between the two.

14. Churches do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, Churches sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.

15. In just a few more years, the current homogenized “voice” of church�the sound of mission statements and brochures�will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.

16. Already, Churches that speak in the language of the pitch, the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.

17. Churches that assume online congregations are the same congregations that used to sit in the pew on Sunday are kidding themselves.

18. Churches that don’t realize their congregations are now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are missing their best opportunity.

19. Churches can now communicate with their congregations directly. If they blow it, it could be their last chance.

20. Churches need to realize their congregations are often laughing. At them.

21. Churches need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.

22. Getting a sense of humor does not mean putting some jokes on the church web site. Rather, it requires big values, a little humility, straight talk, and a genuine point of view.

23. Churches attempting to “position” themselves need to take a position. Optimally, it should relate to something their congregation actually cares about.

24. Bombastic boasts�"We are positioned to become the preeminent provider of XYZ"�do not constitute a position.

25. Churches need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.

26. Public Relations does not relate to the public. Churches are deeply afraid of their congregations.

27. By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant, they build walls to keep congregations at bay.

28. Most outreach programs are based on the fear that the the “unsaved” might see what’s really going on inside the church.

29. Elvis said it best: “We can’t go on together with suspicious minds.”

30. Church loyalty is the denomination’s version of going steady, but the breakup is inevitable�and coming fast. Because they are networked, smart congregations are able to renegotiate relationships with blinding speed.

31. Networked congregations can change churches overnight. Networked knowledge workers can change employers over lunch. Your own “downsizing initiatives” taught us to ask the question: “Loyalty? What’s that?”

32. Smart congregations will find churches who speak their own language.

33. Learning to speak with a human voice is not a parlor trick. It can’t be “picked up” at some tony conference.

34. To speak with a human voice, churches must share the concerns of their communities.

35. But first, they must belong to a community.

36. Churches must ask themselves where their corporate cultures end.

37. If their cultures end before the community begins, they will have no congregation.

38. Human communities are based on discourse�on human speech about human concerns.

39. The community of discourse is the congregation.

40. Churches that do not belong to a community of discourse will die.

41. Churches make a religion of security, but this is largely a red herring. Most are protecting less against competitors than against their own congregation and staff.

42. As with networked congregations, people are also talking to each other directly inside the Church�and not just about rules and regulations, boardroom directives, bottom lines.

43. Such conversations are taking place today on church intranets. But only when the conditions are right.

44. Churches typically install intranets top-down to distribute HR policies and other corporate information that workers are doing their best to ignore.

45. Intranets naturally tend to route around boredom. The best are built bottom-up by engaged individuals cooperating to construct something far more valuable: an intranetworked church-wide conversation.

46. A healthy intranet organizes workers in many meanings of the word. Its effect is more radical than the agenda of any union.

47. While this scares Churches witless, they also depend heavily on open intranets to generate and share critical knowledge. They need to resist the urge to “improve” or control these networked conversations.

48. When Church intranets are not constrained by fear and legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage sounds remarkably like the conversation of the networked marketplace.

49. Org charts worked in an older economy where plans could be fully understood from atop steep management pyramids and detailed work orders could be handed down from on high.

50. Today, the org chart is hyperlinked, not hierarchical. Respect for hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract authority.

51. Command-and-control management styles both derive from and reinforce bureaucracy, power tripping and an overall culture of paranoia.

52. Paranoia kills conversation. That’s its point. But lack of open conversation kills Churches.

53. There are two conversations going on. One inside the Church. One with the congregation.

54. In most cases, neither conversation is going very well. Almost invariably, the cause of failure can be traced to obsolete notions of command and control.

55. As policy, these notions are poisonous. As tools, they are broken. Command and control are met with hostility by intranetworked knowledge workers and generate distrust in internetworked congregations.

56. These two conversations want to talk to each other. They are speaking the same language. They recognize each other’s voices.

57. Smart Churches will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner.

58. If willingness to get out of the way is taken as a measure of IQ, then very few Churches have yet wised up.

59. However subliminally at the moment, millions of people now online perceive Churches as little more than quaint legal fictions that are actively preventing these conversations from intersecting.

60. This is suicidal. Congregations want to talk to Churches.

61. Sadly, the part of the Church a networked market wants to talk to is usually hidden behind a smokescreen of hucksterism, of language that rings false�and often is.

62. Congregations do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the church firewall.

63. De-cloaking, getting personal: We are those congregations. We want to talk to you.

64. We want access to your church information, to your plans and strategies, your best thinking, your genuine knowledge. We will not settle for the 4-color brochure, for web sites chock-a-block with eye candy but lacking any substance.

65. We’re also the workers who make your churches go. We want to talk to seekers directly in our own voices, not in platitudes written into a script.

66. As congregations, as workers, both of us are sick to death of getting our information by remote control. Why do we need faceless bulletins and newsletters to introduce us to each other?

67. As congregations, as workers, we wonder why you’re not listening. You seem to be speaking a different language.

68. The inflated self-important jargon you sling around�in the meetings, at your services�what’s that got to do with us?

69. Maybe you’re impressing your big givers. Maybe you’re impressing other church leaders. You’re not impressing us.

70. If you don’t impress us, your staff and programs are going to take a bath. Don’t they understand this? If they did, they wouldn’t let you talk that way.

71. Your tired notions of “the congregations” make our eyes glaze over. We don’t recognize ourselves in your projections�perhaps because we know we’re already elsewhere.

72. We like this new marketplace much better. In fact, we are creating it.

73. You’re invited, but it’s our world. Take your shoes off at the door. If you want to barter with us, get down off that camel!

74. We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.

75. If you want us to talk to you, tell us something. Make it something interesting for a change.

76. We’ve got some ideas for you too: some new tools we need, some better service. Stuff we’d be willing to volunteer for. Got a minute?

77. You’re too busy “doing church” to answer our email? Oh gosh, sorry, gee, we’ll come back later. Maybe.

78. You want us to pay? We want you to pay attention.

79. We want you to drop your trip, come out of your neurotic self-involvement, join the party.

80. Don’t worry, you can still pass the collection plate. That is, as long as it’s not the only thing on your mind.

81. Have you noticed that, in itself, money is kind of one-dimensional and boring? What else can we talk about?

82. Your product broke. Why? We’d like to ask the guy who made it. Your corporate strategy makes no sense. We’d like to have a chat with your CEO. What do you mean she’s not in?

83. We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as you take one reporter from Christianity Today.

84. We know some people from your church. They’re pretty cool online. Do you have any more like that you’re hiding? Can they come out and play?

85. When we have questions we turn to each other for answers. If you didn’t have such a tight rein on “your people” maybe they’d be among the people we’d turn to.

86. When we’re not busy being your “target market,” many of us are your people. We’d rather be talking to friends online than watching the service. That would get your name around better than your entire mission strategy. But you tell us speaking to the congregation is the Pastor’s job.

87. We’d like it if you got what’s going on here. That’d be real nice. But it would be a big mistake to think we’re holding our breath.

88. We have better things to do than worry about whether you’ll change in time to get our business. Business is only a part of our lives. It seems to be all of yours. Think about it: who needs whom?

89. We have real power and we know it. If you don’t quite see the light, some other outfit will come along that’s more attentive, more interesting, more fun to play with.

90. Even at its worst, our newfound conversation is more interesting than most services, more entertaining than any TV sitcom, and certainly more true-to-life than the church web sites we’ve been seeing.

91. Our allegiance is to ourselves�our friends, our new allies and acquaintances, even our sparring partners. Churches that have no part in this world, also have no future.

92. Churches are spending billions of dollars on Y2K. Why can’t they hear this market timebomb ticking? The stakes are even higher.

93. We’re both inside Churches and outside them. The boundaries that separate our conversations look like the Berlin Wall today, but they’re really just an annoyance. We know they’re coming down. We’re going to work from both sides to take them down.

94. To traditional churches, networked conversations may appear confused, may sound confusing. But we are organizing faster than they are. We have better tools, more new ideas, no rules to slow us down.

95. We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching. But we are not waiting. 

Piece ‘o cake, really.

Yeah - I know. You wouldn’t think so, the way MeanDean carries on here.  With all his ranting and raving and “healing” of church websites gone bad, you might think that building a “good” church website (or any website, for that matter) is next to impossible, achievable only by Slashdot reading PDA-carrying geek who keeps a Wi-Fi enabled laptop on the bed stand for those middle-of-the-night dream-blogging episodes.

Phooey, I say.  Building a website that would pass even the “Mean” test is easy.

Well....

Yes, qualifier time.  Building a “good” website from a technical and presentation perspective—with a pleasing color palette, validated and accessible css-driven code, logical and well-organized navigation, proper copyright notice and privacy policy, along with any number of features like RSS feeds and daily Bible verses is easy.  Even enabling the site to be frequently updated by technophobes by building it on a content management system is easy.  Cheap, even.

These aspects of building a good website are easy because they’re challenges common to all websites, so those of us interested in building good church websites get a free ride on the backs of all the commercial developers out there.  Commercial enterprise produces tools like color choosers, CSS-based layout generators, navigation generators and privacy policy models.  If you get stuck trying to work with some of these tools, there are countless help resources on the web - mailing lists, discussion forums, or blogs where technical issues are discussed and solved.

But, the minute you move past the technical challenges and begin to ask questions like “What should this website say?” or “What should this website *do* for the church?”, or “How will we know if the site is successful?” or “what will we put there for members vs. non members?” you are guaranteed to get blank stares, drooping jaws, and schedule delays.

Content.  What is it about content?  Mention the importance of having good content during the site construction process, and you’ll get immediate agreement, heads nodding, everyone knows “content is king” on the web.  Bill Gates did, back in 1996.  Gerry McGovern has made a career out of web content - writing articles and books, and speaking to conferences and corporate customers about web content.  Your site-team will probably have content ideas galore - the possibilities are always endless and brainstorming is fun.

So why is it then, when it comes time to post some content to the freshly-developed church web site so often church web-builders are left to “bulletin-diving” or “repurposing” content from existing newsletters or brochures?  Why is the website so often updated reactively (if at all)?

Gerry McGovern, in his article Websites: easy to start, hard to manage” says

“One of the biggest problems websites face is that they lack proper planning in the design and development phase. Generally, the design of the website tends to overreach, in that what is built requires more staff to professionally manage than are available.”

I’m not convinced it’s a planning problem.  I’ve been involved on site projects where the planning was quite detailed, formulating content needs from audience research, then tweaking needs by factoring in the business or organizational goals and staff skill set and availability.  But plans are just that - plans - and they’re rarely executed word for word.  Sometimes both the plan and the site collect the same dust.

So where is the disconnect?

I think the main issue behind poor websites—church or business—is that the people responsible for the site don’t understand that the true power of the web is storytelling.

Eh?  Storytelling you ask?  Shall we gather our laptops around a campfire now? Hear me out…

Curt Cloninger writes in his AListApart article,A Case for Web Storytelling”:

“Is the web a global network of connected computers? No, that�s the Internet. Is the web hyper text transfer protocol? Well, technically. But if the web is to be understood as a communications medium (the only useful way to understand it), then it must be more than computers talking to each other. Otherwise, mere data exchange would succeed. But the web is not a global network of connected computers. The web is a global network of connected people. And story-telling is still the most effective way to emotionally impact people.”

Cliff Allen echoes the same idea in his ClickZ article Tell a Story to Engage Your Audience”:

“There are many ways to organize product information to communicate with an audience. Facts are typically grouped by such things as how a product is used, what it’s priced at, or what is known about a particular audience. However, corporate web sites have overlooked a technique that people have used for thousands of years to convey information: storytelling.”

He goes on to say:

“It’s a little surprising that most corporate web sites don’t take advantage of this technique to capture attention and lead prospects to make a purchase or inquiry. Most corporate web sites present product information as a snapshot - saying here are all the reasons why you’ll like our product. They don’t recognize that the decision to buy is a process: A prospect becomes a customer by recognizing a problem, learning about solutions, researching products, and, finally, making the decision to purchase product A instead of product B.”

So here’s the core frustration of what’s starting to become a personal rant (sorry Dean, you did ask for something I was “passionate about”..).  In one corner, we have the church website.  No, let’s not call it a website.  Let’s call it a “Story Container”.  A searchable, accessible, readable, always-available, hyperlinked, cross-referenced story container.  In the other corner, the Church has the best story.  Indeed - The Greatest Story Ever Told.  And countless related personal stories - stories of great faith, triumph over addictions, persistence through illness, gain from loss, and undeserved grace.

But we go on… presenting our churches like products - telling people why they’ll like our church (Relevant! Great Music! Fresh Coffee!) but so rarely simply telling the stories of what our church, our faith, and our God has meant to us, and the true change seen in our lives because of it.  What is it going to take to wake the modern church to the power of connecting the two, and filling our websites with our own stories?

It’s those stories that members need to tell and visitors need to hear.  Those stories are going to move people closer to God.  And if our church websites aren’t moving people closer to God then we’re wasting our time.

C’mon.  Tell me a story of when God was good to you.  Oh..before you start...I’ll bet there are other people that would like to hear it too.  Can I put it somewhere where they will find it when they need to?

Sounds nice doesn’t it?  I mean, who would expect anything different from a Christian non-profit than responsible information handling?

But wait - in order to use email as an effective marketing vehicle you need a big ole list of email addresses to send it to.  Preferably the email addresses of people in your target market - in this case Christians who are active online and likely to respond to your offer of online training.

Oh, you haven’t been building that list yourself?  No sweat!  There are plenty of businesses just itching to rent or sell you a list to use.  Very cheaply, in some cases.

So there you have it - a cheap, existing audience ready-made for your product or service.  Put the message together, pay the list provider, send out your message, and lean back in your chair, arms resting behind your head - just waiting to see those responses pour in.

Ain’t the internet grand?

Well, not always.

You see - you just became a spammer.  And by doing so you’ve put the reputation of your organization on the line.

Yeah - I know.  The list provider told you the list was “clean” - meaning the addresses were from people who have indicated that they are willing to receive messages such as yours.

Well, guess what.  They lied.  How do I know?

In Clear Creek Baptist Bible College’s case, the email was sent to “hycw@boyink.com” That’s an email address I only use to post comments to HealYourChurchWebsite.com.  Which means whoever put this email list together did it by email harvesting.

The only “responsible information handling” in this day and age is to build your own email list - in an opt-in fashion.  Yes, it takes longer - but you should know the best way is never the easy way.

C’mon folks...can we stop looking so incompetent when it comes to using the Internet for Christian purposes?  It’s embarassing already....

More on the subject: Are Unsolicited Church E-mails Considered Spam?.

Church Email Mailing List Position Statement

Disclaimer

The opinions and positions covered in this paper are not to be construed as legal advice.  There is no guarantee that by following these recommendations the reader will avoid either legal action or blacklisting as a result of sending out email.  This document is meant to serve as a professional opinion only, with quotes and web links as references where appropriate.

Position Summary

Broadcast email lists used by churches should be populated using a self-service, user “double opt-in” approach, only, ever.

Any other approach violates several agreements with internet service providers, and is unethical as it abuses the private property of individuals and businesses.  It also puts a church’s ability to communicate using it’s website or email - any email - at risk.

It’s also clear that pursuing an opt-out approach would set a bad example for the people who attend a church - if they see the church leadership using the approach they may feel it’s OK to add neighbors or other non-attendees to the list in the name of evangelism.  This would greatly increase the risk of being blacklisted.

Moving away from the self-service model also means church staff will be interacting with mail list users more - getting responses to the emails, help with change of email addresses, etc.

If the church’s desire is long-term management of mailing lists consisting of hundreds of recipients, look for a robust list management tool where subscriptions can be tracked closely - with audit trails for subscriptions and unsubscriptions.  This evidence would be necessary in the event of being blacklisted or sued.

The remainder of this document provides the references used in formulating the position summary, with definitions of various mailing list related terms, links to laws regarding email, references to the various agreements that might exist between a church and internet service providers, input from the email marketing business community as to what constitutes “accepted professional standards of conduct” and mailing list management guidelines for preventing abuse.

Definitions of Mailing List-Related Terms

- Opt out

(1) type of program that assumes inclusion unless stated otherwise.
(2) to remove oneself from an opt-out program.

http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/opt_out/

- Opt in/Double Opt In

Email that is explicitly requested by the recipient

The definition of opt-in email has been a matter of intense debate.

“single opt-in” vs. “double opt-in”

The term single opt-in simply means that actions were taken to sign up for the email in question. The term double opt-in means that the subscriber has actively confirmed their subscription, typically by responding to an automatically-generated message sent to the email address. Proponents of double opt-in may not actually use that term, as they feel any email labeled “opt-in” must be verified.

http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/opt_in_email/

- Spam

“Internet spam is one or more unsolicited 1 messages, sent or posted as part of a larger collection 2 of messages, all having substantially identical content. 3”

http://www.monkeys.com/spam-defined

This Google Search provides some additional definitions of Spam.

- Blacklists

“A Blacklist is a database of known internet addresses (or IP’s) used by persons or companies sending spam. Various ISP’s and bandwidth providers subscribe to these blacklist databases in order to filter out spam sent across their network or to their subscribers.”

http://www.spam-blockers.com/SPAM-blacklists.htm

“Like most public blacklists, SpamCop is a guilty-until-proven- innocent system. If a single SpamCop user reports your message as being spam, you are added to its blacklist. Email administrators at ISPs and corporate IT departments who visit the list frequently, may then block your incoming mail to all their users.”

http://www.emailsherpa.com/barrier.cfm?currentID=2212

State and Federal Laws

Church email is subject to current applicable state and federal laws :

A Summary of State Spam Laws:
http://www.spamlaws.com/state/summary.html

Federal CAN-SPAM law:
http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/108s877.html

Applicability to Non-Profits:

“Until the issue is clarified, it is recommended that non-profits comply with the CSA.” Link >>

View of CSA in the Marketplace:

Politicians Send Spammers Holiday Gift
“The main flaw in the Act is that it allows unsolicited commercial e-mail—otherwise known as spam—to be sent as long as it includes an opt-out option, a valid subject line and a working return email address. That’s not exactly prohibitive. Indeed, rather than punish or even curtail the act of spamming, what the bill actually does is legitimize it, as industry observers pointed out in a recent Datamation article.

“This piece of legislation is telling people that as long as they don’t lie, spam is all right,” said Ray Everett-Church, chief privacy officer of the ePrivacy Group, a Pennsylvania-based company that makes anti-spam software.

http://www.internetnews.com/commentary/article.php/3288991

“Anti-spam legislation, the CAN-SPAM Act, hasn’t made a dent in the volumes of unsolicited messages, according to a new survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. In fact, nearly one-quarter of the respondents reported a greater influx of spam in their personal e-mail accounts since Jan. 1, 2004, when the legislation went into effect.” Link >>

“What’s clearest in the CAN-SPAM law is there’s not a federal permission standard for e-mail marketing. This may not change most e-mail marketers’ acquisition practices, but it certainly creates a baseline for e-mailers who may be concerned with whether they need permission for e-mail prospecting. The expectation is e-mailers won’t look to the law as a best practice, but rather to industry resources such as ClickZ to help guide the way.”Link >>

Business Agreements

Church email communications are subject to a number of agreements between the church and the providers of the internet services required to deliver the church’s email.

- Website Host

If the church website is hosted off-site, there is typically a policy regarding email.  An example:

“We do not allow UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email), also known as spam, to be sent from our email servers, issued with a “reply to” address on our servers, or that advertises a URL on our servers. UCE includes unsolicited messages sent via email, posted on messagboards/newsgroups, or otherwise electronically sent to anyone not specifically requesting the information. This includes spam that is sent from your CGI scripts, whether sent by you or not. Additionally a $75 cleanup fee will be charged to your account, should our investigations confirm that bulk spam was sent from your account.”

https://www.bitserve.net/agreement.html

- Internet Service Provider

Churches accesses the Internet through the services of an internet service provider, who will also have a use agreement.  Here is an example:

“You agree not to engage in any conduct known as “Spamming.” Spamming includes, but is not limited to (1) the bulk sending of unsolicited messages, or the sending of unsolicited e-mails which provoke complaints from the recipients; (2) the sending of junk e-mail; (3) the use of distribution lists that include people who have not given specific permission to be included in such distribution processes; (4) posting commercial ads to USENET newsgroups that do not permit it; (5) posting articles containing binary encoded data to a non-binary newsgroup; (6) excessive and repeated posting off-topic users, including but not limited to transmitting any threatening, libelous or obscene material, or material of any nature which could be deemed to be offensive; and (7) the e-mailing of age-inappropriate communications or content to anyone under the age of 18.”

http://www.tdstelecom.com/partners%5Cprod_internet_tos.asp

- Other “Upstream” Service Providers

Typically an email will go across wires owned by many entities.

Reference:
http://techsupport.charterpa.net/routing/flow.htm

Each of these entities has a terms of use agreement which may have spam-related provisions.  Examples from some of the “Backbone” service providers:

- MCI:

“Sending unsolicited mail messages, including, without limitation, commercial advertising and informational announcements, is explicitly prohibited. A user shall not use another site’s mail server to relay mail without the express permission of the site. “
http://global.mci.com/terms/a_u_p/

- AT&T:

“Spam/E-mail/Usenet Abuse is prohibited on AT&T IP related Services. Examples of Spam/E-mail/Usenet Abuse include but are not limited to the following activities:

using another site’s mail server to relay mail without the express permission of the site;

using IP addresses that the Customer does not have a right to use;

collecting the responses from unsolicited electronic messages;

maintaining a site that is advertised via unsolicited electronic messages, regardless of the origin of the unsolicited electronic messages;

sending electronic messages with petitions for signatures, or any chain mail related materials;

sending unsolicited electronic messages with charity requests;

sending messages that are harassing or malicious, or otherwise could reasonably be predicted to interfere
with another party’s quiet enjoyment of the AT&T IP related Services or the Internet (e.g., through language, frequency, size or otherwise);

sending bulk (i.e., twenty-five or more recipients) electronic messages without identifying, within the message, a reasonable means of opting out from receiving additional messages from the sender;

sending electronic messages that do not accurately identify the sender, the sender’s return address, the e-mail address of origin, or other information contained in the subject line or header;

distributing or using software designed to promote the sending of unsolicited bulk electronic messages;

using distribution lists containing addresses that include those who have opted out;

posting a single message, or messages similar in content, that could reasonably be expected to provoke complaints, to more than 10 online forums or newsgroups;

posting messages to or canceling or superseding messages on an online forum or newsgroup in a manner that violates the rules of the forum or newsgroup or that contain forged header information; and
sending bulk electronic messages in quantities that exceed standard industry norms or that create the potential for disruption of the AT&T network or of the networks with which AT&T interconnects.”

http://www.business.att.com/default/?pageid=aup&branchid=aup

Qwest:
http://www.qwest.com/legal/Acceptable_Use_Policy_202.pdf

Employer Internet Acceptable Use Policies
Corporate email addresses are considered corporate assets by the companies that pay for the ability for their employees to send email.  As such their use is often covered by an Internet Acceptable Use Policy written and enforced by the company.

Here is an example from Herman Miller, a Fortune 500 company in Michigan:

“Information technology is a company asset made available to a Herman Miller, Inc., employee so that he/she can meet the informational needs of employees in providing products and services to the company’s customers and meet the administrative, development, and technical-assistance needs of employees in fulfilling their work responsibilities. ”

Internet Professional Community References
In addition to knowing what the government says is legal, and what businesses include in their terms of use agreements, the Internet Community provides direction on what’s considered to be “conforming to accepted professional standards of conduct”, or “ethical”.

“Netiquette" Demands Permission:

Courtesy #7:
“Never, ever, ever, never send anyone an email about anything (especially your product or service) if the recipient did not specifically email you for that information and you are responding to their request.”
http://www.getnetiquette.com/courtesy7.html

Netiquette: The Advertising Flame:
“Consider this: in conventional direct mail, a 2% response rate is considered decent. If your company experiments with unsolicited direct email, don’t be surprised if you get a 98% response, from people flaming you for clogging up their electronic mailboxes.”

http://www.albion.com/netiquette/book/0963702513p79.html

The Legitimate Business World Recommends Opt- In only:

Consumer Privacy: Some Email Marketing Best Practices
“Many marketers have translated the laws into practice and assert that it is acceptable, but not recommended, to send email to an individual with whom they have an existing business relationship. However, the preferred approach from legal and consumer standpoints is to deliver email messages only to those individuals who have explicitly consented to receive the email. Gathering an opt-in from consumers is essential for gaining their trust, retaining their business, and minimizing legal risks.”

“It is clear that offering consumers explicit notice about email collection, gathering consent through an opt-in process, and providing the ability for an individual to opt out in every email sent will enable you to foster trust and ultimately retain your customers longer. Review your email marketing practices with your legal counsel, determine the level of risk you are comfortable with, and make sure you’re operating within the law and building trust and loyalty among your customers to maximize the effectiveness of your marketing program.”

http://www.clickz.com/experts/em_mkt/opt/article.php/835841

Opting for Results
“Permission marketing” is the buzzword for the politically correct way to manage your customer relationships today. It means you must have consent before you email anything to anybody. There’s opt-in and opt-out, double opt-in and double opt-out, and lots to talk about, but here’s one simple fact right up front: Someone who fails to opt-out has not opted in.”

http://www.clickz.com/experts/design/traffic/article.php/843491

How NOT to Promote Your E-business:
“It only takes one message to shut your site down.”

“It really is simple to stay out of trouble—just don’t ever email anyone without their permission.”

http://sellitontheweb.com/ezine/opinion064.shtml

Growing an E-Mail List: Five Practical Tips:
“You always want to bring in new opt-in subscribers, enough, at least, to replace the e-mail addresses lost each month (via hard bounces and unsubscribes).”

http://www.clickz.com/experts/em_mkt/opt/article.php/3329951

- Permission to Spam?
“When requesting permission to deliver future e-mail communications, be very explicit about how the address will be used. Make it clear what kind of communication the individual is agreeing to receive and at what frequency. An opt-in for a certain type of communication does not constitute broad permission to blast away at that person’s inbox with different categories of messaging, unless that broad permission is explained and agreed to upfront. Someone who opts in to receive a newsletter about personal health may not be thrilled to unexpectedly receive an unrequested travel newsletter, a third-party promotion, or a monthly company update from the same organization.”

http://www.clickz.com/experts/em_mkt/opt/article.php/2179291

Basic Mailing List Management Guidelines for Preventing Abuse
We recommend the mailing list guidelines found at:

http://www.mail-abuse.com/support/an_listmgntgdlines.html

A recent discussion on the Churchsite Chat Yahoo! Group has been quite thought provoking.  It started when a webmaster for a small church noted that not much traffic was going past his home page, and asked how to get people to go deeper.  The resulting discussion tells me there are three basic things that we don’t know regarding church websites:

1. How Christians (and people interested in Christianity) Use the Web
Some of the thought-provoking comments from the discussion:

• “Remember most people who will come by your site are not local and will never attend your church. What do you have for them?”
• “Start to think like a web surfer. Ask yourself, if I came to a page like mine, what would make me go deeper into a web site? Put that on your front page. But remember nearly always more people will come by your front page than stay around. Surfers are notorious for being easily bored.”

I’m going to go out on a limb here - in light of any data to the contrary - and say that Christians are no different from the average web user, and that 1997-esque web surfing is dead.  People are going to the web, and your church site, with a specific task to do, or question to answer—let’s forget about having to entertain easily-bored surfers.  But what content should your church site have then?  Aha - there’s the second thing we don’t know:

2.What a Church Web Site Should Be:
Comments from the Churchsite-chat discussion:

• “considering the time you need to spend developing and maintaining a church site, if it’s done SOLELY for advertising purposes, it probably isn’t worth the time involved.”
• “If I was looking for a church web site locally it would probably be because I had been invited to a meeting there and no one had given me the directions on how to get there. I would also be interested in seeing how that church fitted into its local community. So what groups met there and when would be useful information to include.”
• “more people check the weather daily than any other online info...making the addition of a weather module one of the best ways to attract return visitors.”
• “I think if you want your church website to have an evangelistic input to the local community, then a community-resource page(s) is very useful”
• “a good number of church sites create a “portal page” for their visitors...they can make that page their personal homepage so that every time they log onto the internet they can see church events, weather, community events, and more on a single page.”
• “if all one has on a church site is a picture of the church, names of the staff and a program of events, that you really have missed an opportunity and are doing a lot of work for a very limited purpose. If someone is looking for a church, the majority will turn to the Yellow Pages before they will the WWW”
• “I can see why we would put up community news, weather, sports, etc. While I haven’t heard a pastor give sports scores from the pulpit, I have heard many make reference to a big game as a peg for a sermon. The same with weather and news and entertainment. Besides, maybe some Christians would like to have their local church set up as their home page and get such dynamic content.”

Many interesting ideas.  The trouble is, for people involved with building church sites, there’s no existing research to authoritatively show what it is that people coming to a church site want, need, or expect, as exists for other audiences.  And lacking any direction, it’s easy to see why church site builders so often go for what Dean Peters at http://www.healyourchurchwebsite.com calls “Jesus Junk”.  But I’m starting to think that Jesus Junk is the symptom, and this church-site identity crisis is really the root problem.  Lacking any concrete data, though, discussions about church sites break down into “what I think” type arguments.

So here’s what I think.  Maybe I spend too much time on the business side of bulding web sites, but for me the first and primary thing a church web site should do is present what is unique about that church - and that really starts with the journalistic basics of “who, what, where, when, why, how”.  Getting this part done right is fundamental and your first priority. 

What this unique content doesn’t include is the local news, sports, and weather.  Given that to an individual web user the entire internet is the same distance away, and takes the same effort to get to, there is just no good reason to give up your church’s valuable home page space to this type of content.  Based on our knowledge of “direct driving” on the net, people wanting weather will go to weather.com - even if your feed is from weather.com.  Weather from a weather site will be perceived as being more up to date, and more trustworthy than that same weather presented in the context of a church site. The average user is confused by the function of the home page button, for goodness sake - what do they know about dynamic syndicated content?

And what’s it say, really, when someone comes to your church’s home page and the “best thing ya got” isn’t about the church?  Would you direct newcomers to your church building to TV’s showing local weather?  Would you ask your pastor to give high school football updates mid-sermon?  Sounds silly to even ask, no?

And once the basics are down?  Then what?  Your choices are either build to support the community within the church, or build to support the community outside the church.  I recommend the first.  Build tools that nurture and support the community already happening inside the church.  Put up discussion boards for small groups to use, or for digital small groups to form within the church.  Create email lists for prayer needs, or bible studies.  Build group blogs for volunteer groups that need a way to organize and administer their outreach. 

Why this inner focus rather than external?  Because the value will be more immediately apparent to the you, and the rest of the church.  You’ll hear people talk about connecting via these tools.  You’ll see reference to them in other publications the church does.  You’ll create a buzz within the attendees of your church.  You’ll be able to roughly measure the effectiveness of what you’ve built by how often you hear that buzz.  Which brings us to (and helps get around) the last thing we don’t really know about church web sites:

3.How To Measure the Success of a Church site
Snippets from the Churchsite-Chat group discussion:

• “Most of the hits come in..”
• ...church sites don’t get the traffic we would like, many who do get that traffic...
• ...regional search engines to drive the traffic to your site..
• ...gets over 500 hits a month…
• ...high search engine ranking for keywords relating…
• ...The test of course is the number of hits the page gets...

Here’s the problem: hits are meaningless.  Site traffic levels fail the “so what?” test.  Even in the business world, looking at traffic levels as a success metric has been questioned for a couple of years now.  If the bottom-line businesses struggle to connect traffic levels to web site value, how can the Church?  If the Church is about changed lives, then what’s the metric we can use to measure the effect of all that web traffic?

This comment from the Churchsite chat discussion really caught my eye:

“Of course,traffic isn’t the point of having a church website...it’s creating more community to further the gospel”.

Amen.  But let’s do that by nailing the basics, then building community from the inside-out where the results are more immediately apparent.

And let’s think about how we can, collectively, somehow produce the professional level research that might help answer some of these things we don’t know about church web sites. 

I’m open to ideas.

Yes, another article on church web design.  I’ve been (or have tried to be) quiet on the this topic lately, because I’m not actively engaged in building any church websites so was starting to feel like a “Monday morning quarterback”.

There’s a difference with this article, though, that makes it worth linking to. 

Ben Dubow, the author, isn’t a web developer—he’s the pastor of St. Paul’s Collegiate Church at Storrs in Connnecticut.

Here’s a few of Ben’s “Ten Things to Know About Your Church Website”:

• 1. The web is probably the first place people look for a church—before the yellow pages, newspaper, or anything else.
• 2. Prospective visitors have already formed an idea about your church based on your website - good or bad.
• 3. A website communicates your “true values” to people.

Good stuff.  I’m encouraged to hear these words coming from the Pastor of the church.  I’d love to see Ben’s article get picked up and published in other places where Pastors with less of an “Internet Mindset” will read it.

Christianity Today - are you listening?

Since so much traffic to Boyink.com is by those interested in church websites, I thought I would mention a new publication - Church Web Adviser, published by Communication Resources.

I just received a copy of this last week, and have to say that I’m impressed with the quality and content that I see in the premier issue.  Authors include Kevin D. Hendricks of ChurchMarketingSucks.com, Mike Atkinson of uneekNet.com, Lou Hornberger of Youth Specialties, and others (including a small submission on church blogging by yours truly).

Topics besides blogging include web pages for children’s ministries, online photo albums, selecting a host for your church site, how to connect with worshippers online, and a bunch more.

While it may seem strange to subscribe to a traditional printed newsletter to learn about websites, we web-heads need to remember that not everyone is so averse to the printed page.

For $99/year, if getting a regular newsletter mailed to your church staff increases the interest and involvement in adding quality and value to your church website then it’s money well spent, even if it doesn’t appear in a browser window....