Church Growth

Church Growth Basics - Part 2

We are staring this series of articles on church growth basics by talking about the importance of establishing an Internet presence for your church. Your web ministry could consist of a traditional church website, or a blog for your Church Pastor, or any combination of other possibilities. In our last article we talked about a couple of free blog services that are available. While these will work well for some churches, there are other churches who would be better off registering a domain name and getting a web host for their web ministry. In this article we will talk about the domain name. A domain name is the address that locates your site on the Internet. You can purchase and register a domain name for about $10/year. Before you choose and register a domain name there are some things to consider.

You need to get a domain name that is specific to your church or ministry. Do not use abbreviations or nick names that no one knows. A well chosen domain name can have a big impact on the search engines which will increase the amount of traffic to your site and to your church. For example, let’s say we were starting a Church Blog or Website for the First Christian Church of Fairbanks. Do not get a domain name like FCCF.com. You would be better off getting “FirstChristianChurchFairbanks” or “FairbanksChristianChurch”. Why? It seems that it would be easier for people to type in FCCF.com than FirstChristianChurchFairbanks.com. The issue is about how people who don’t know your domain name find your Christian blog or ministry site. With the right domain name, people could find you by searching for Fairbanks Churches or First Christian Church or Churches in Fairbanks. Since your domain name contains those words it has the potential of showing up on the search engines.

Once you decide what your domain name should be, you have to check and make sure no one else has it. I use Good News Domains (www.goodnewsdomains.com) to do this.

Once you are at the Good News Domain site look for the “Start a Domain Name search” box:

Now just type in the domain name you would like to have, like this:

If the domain name you want is available, you will see the following screen:

It may take you a few tries to find a domain name that works for your purpose. If the domain name you had hoped for isn’t available, Good News Domains will provide you with some suggestions. Once you have settled on your domain name, follow the instructions on the Good News Domain site to get it registered. Make a habit of making a note of any passwords that you might be asked to give during the process. Once you have your domain name, you will need to get a web host. We will talk about that in our next article in this series on Church Growth Basics.

Church Growth Basics - Part 1

One of the most effective ways to start your church growth process is to develop an effective web ministry.  There is so much more that a church website can do then display a list of your service times and locations.  It can serve as a coordinating hub, a point of contact, a way to keep your church up to date on all phases of the church ministry.  The problem with a lot of church websites, is that once they are put together, they are never updated.  I go to church websites all the time that haven’t been updated or changed for months or even years.  There are still a lot of churches that don’t even have a website.  There is really no excuse for this as it is possible to establish an effective web ministry that will impact your church growth for very little or even no money.   In this series of articles on Church Growth basics, we will present to you some options for getting your own web ministry started.  We will start with what might be the easiest form of web ministry, a free blog. There are many ways to accomplish this but there are two ways that we like to suggest.  One of them is Blogger (www.blogger.com):

and the other is Wordpress.com (www.wordpress.com)

Each of these options are completely free and are fairly easy to use.  There are a lot of churches and ministries who are doing very well with their church growth efforts just by using one of these free methods.

Other churches will need an option that provides more flexibility than is possible with Blogger or Wordpress.com.  Churches is that situation will need to register their own domain name and purchase web hosting.  This is still a very economical option and can be done for $60 to $100 a year very easily.  We will write about how to accomplish this in future articles in this Church Growth series.

For ministries that are looking to hire someone to help them establish a web ministry you should take a look at sites like Web Ministry and Church Webmaster to check out some of the services that they offer.

Most of you would benefit from trying out one of the free blogging options.  The experiencing will be an eye opener for the possibilites that the Internet has for helping to grow the church!

The Church Growth Debate

When it comes to church growth, there are a lot of opinions.  While it is obviously part of our commission to be involved in growing the church and advancing the Kingdom of God, how we set about doing it is widely debated.  If you do a Google search for “church growth” the results are amazing.  There are sites who promote all the latest ideas, and there are sites who believe any form of “church marketing” is heresy.  I believe that there is a balance to all of this, just like in most things.

When there is a lot of controversy over something,  I have a theory that I turn to to help find balance.  I will tell you what it is.  Let’s say that this line represents the controversy:

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At one end of the line is the group who believe that we should use every possible marketing tactic that we can find to grow the church.  The other end of the line is people who are convinced that church growth techniques are ruining the church.

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For it                                                                                        Against it

The people who are at either  end of the line are usually the most vocal people because they are the most passionate.  They represent about 10% of the people on either end.  So, 20% of the people are very passionate and the most vocal.  It is easy by listening to one end of the line or the other to quickly believe that they are speaking for the majority of the people.  They aren’t, the reality is that 80% of people are somewhere in the middle.  To find out where the issues really lie, you have to find people who are somewhere in the middle of the line.  These people can still be passionate about the issue, but they generally aren’t out championing the cause and are able to take information in from both ends of the line.

Having said all that, I believe I am somewhere in the middle.  If you are at either end of the line you might believe that I am closer to one end than the other but I am really just looking for a balance.  I believe that we need to preach the Bible, but I also believe that the messages should be practical and apply to life situations.  I believe it is OK to try new things to try and get people to come through the doors of the church, but I also think there is a line that we need to hold.  I believe that unless we really know people we can easily judge their motives wrongly.

On this site we will try and present some ideas to help grow the church.  Our motive is to accomplish just that. To see more people come to know Christ as their Lord and Savior.  We hope you will read and comment on the articles as we travel along. We hope to encourage some healthy debate on the issue.

Welcome to Church Growth!

The Church Growth Blog is designed to provide useful information for pastors and ministry leaders who want to see their churches grow.  When you search the Internet for Church Growth there is an interesting array of sites that pop up.  There are sites that are selling all sorts of church growth tools and seminars, and their are sites who talk about the dangers of the church growth movement.  There really isn’t a lot of helpful information published on the majority of these sites.

What we have done is to provide you with the RSS feeds from six sites that do provide a lot of helpful free information about different aspects of church growth.  You can find the RSS feeds and articles on the right hand side of this site.  Here is a quick list of what the sites provide:

• Church Growth Consulting - Besides offering a very reasonablt priced church consulting service they also have free articles addressing all sorts of outreach and church growth ideas.
• Church Planting - A new site that provides information about the latest in church planting, church planting movements (taking short term mission trips to plant churches around the world), and church planting resources.  The site also provides links to some of the more popular church planting sites on the Internet.
• Church Webmaster -  This site provides information about how to reach new visitors by using the Internet to get your church website noticed.  Church Webmaster has very reasonable rates for setting up and even maintaining church websites, as well as Internet church directories in many cities of the US to help send Internet traffic and new visitors to your church.
• Evangelism Software - This site gives practical information on how to start blogs on the Internet for discipleship and evangelism.
• Web Ministry - The Web Ministry site not only provides useful information on all aspects of an Internet based ministry, it has also developed some web ministries online that can be tailored to fit your ministry needs.
• Christian Cell Groups - This site provides information about setting up and running cell and small groups for the purpose of discipleship and church growth.  The site also includes free video lessons that can be used for the teaching portion of the cell/small groups.

Each of these sites should be able to provide you with helpful information in your desire to see your church grow.