Church community - online
30 Sep 2004 
in the early evening 
Matt Winckler
It seems that I’ve been given carte blanche by the church elders to redesign the church web site. I’m looking forward to the project, and I also have some ideas that go beyond a new look. I am very fond of the idea of having a church “online community”, so to speak. Such a community, in my mind, would include things like:
- Businesses: if I need a product or service, I’d love to know if there’s somebody in the church offering it so I can support them.
- Skill sets: on a less formal level than business, who’s good at giving advice on wiring a new switch or taking down popcorn ceiling?
- “Classifieds”: I currently have fifty spare computer monitors that I’m selling on the cheap…
- Prayer requests: an extension of the already-existent email prayer list
- Announcements/Events: people like me would find an online church calendar much more useful than the bulletin or phone calls.
Naturally, these thing would be provided on an entirely voluntary basis, and I suspect that a lot of it would be request-driven (”I need x; does anybody have it?”). However, this sort of thing works very well for Christ Church with their mailing list. In their case, they have a full-time secretary that administers the list, and things like the above items get sent out to all church members.
There are certainly no technical difficulties to implementing such a plan; the problem will always be getting a critical mass of people to actually use it. Without lots of people using it, such a community really becomes useless. So time will tell whether these ideas blossom into success or wither on the vine.