HOW TO KEEP CHURCH WEBSITE CONTENT FRESH
Greetings from your good friends at Church Plant Media. We’re back with more thoughts about church website content. For this installment we will be answering one of the questions that Brett shared via a comment on our introductory post. He asked the following:
What’s the best way to keep site content up-to-date and fresh with limited time, resources, and staff/volunteers?
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in the USA and many families are getting ready for their big meal. Sometimes it can be a difficult challenge to keep all of the food fresh, heated, and ready for all extended family to eat at the same time. Just as you never want your Thanksgiving turkey to get cold, it is never a good idea to let your church website get cold without fresh content. We understand this may be easier said then done sometimes, but we want to encourage you that you may be sitting on content you have not even thought about.
We like to call these the ABCs of fresh content:
- Ask – and you shall receive some help
- Batch – and your burden will be light
- Catch – and it will not go to waste
1. ASK
Ask and you shall receive some help. Jesus said it best, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8, ESV) Ask God first and then ask others. If you do not tell people about the need, no one may volunteer. But if you ask, your volunteers may surprise you.
It is wise to ask those who serve on Sunday mornings to take a few extra steps and help with the website. If people help with your audio ministry, those same volunteers should know how to record the sermon. Once the audio is recorded, it is only a few small steps to get the sermon posted online. You may also have a blogger in your midst who is waiting for you to ask them to do testimonial interviews for a church blog.
2. BATCH
Batch and your burden will be light. If your volunteers are tapped but you still need fresh content, try to think about ways that you can kill two birds with one stone. If you prepare a bulletin every week, the content from that bulletin will make a great blog post to remind people of upcoming events, people to pray for, and any number of things that you communicate in print each week. Plus the reminder couldn’t hurt.
It would also be helpful to do a weekly recap of your worship set or liturgy. Even if your church has bulletins, many people misplace them (or place them in the circular file when they get home). Once your song leader knows what songs will be sung and what prayers will be prayed, they can take one more step and draft a blog post with your order of worship, linking to songs online to encourage singing after the service.
3. CATCH
Catch and it will not go to waste. This is another way to keep content fresh without creating something from nothing. Every preaching pastor spends at least 15 hours each week to prepare their sermon and it would be a shame for any of it to go to waste. When the sermon is preached not everything fits into the time allotted. We suggest that pastors do what they can to catch those “sermon crumbs” and post them to a blog.
Although the following verse is a little out of context, we can still learn from it. A Canaanite woman responded to Jesus by saying “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” (Matthew 15:27, ESV) Why not take a minute on Sunday afternoon or evening to catch those crumbs? They don’t need to be new ideas. Even these “crumbs” can be used by the Lord to feed a hungry soul.
We hope these ABCs will help your content to stay fresh and ready to serve.
Your friends @ Church Plant Media | (800) 409-6631 x 1
