"10 Commandments" Canceled Due to Lack of Interest
Gotcha! What I really mean is that my presentation of "The Ten Commandments of Church Websites" which was scheduled for tomorrow has been canceled, because no one signed up for it. I don't know when I'll recover from this disappointment...wait...OK, I'm recovered.
I was never convinced that this session would work well as a part of a general Sunday School training agenda. (The session was added to the agenda, and then I was asked to preside over it.) Most of the attendees of the conference are either church staff specializing in Sunday School-related work or church members volunteering in that work, and very few would likely have "websites" anywhere on their job descriptions. Plus, the session was scheduled as a lunchtime talk coming at the end of everything else, and most folks would probably rather get back to their regularly-scheduled Saturday programming than listen to me (or anyone else) blather on about website usability.
I also wonder if this is a sign that church websites have finally been mainstreamed. It's no longer a question of whether a church should be on the Web, but, rather, how to use the Web to extend the reach of that church's ministries. Perhaps introductory courses are now too rudimentary. If that's the case, it's a positive thing.
Regardless, I've now got a freshly updated version of the presentation, should anyone else want to hear it, plus an extra hour or so on Saturday that I didn't anticipate. Onward and upward.
Bryan, I tend to think that church websites simply mirror the state of the web in general...there are some really good ones, some really bad ones, and a whole host of quite mediocre ones.
As you say, we shouldn't be surprised by this state of affairs. My church has an annual budget of over $5 million dollars. The % of that directed toward the website is approximately 0.0%. Nothing. Zip. Nada.
Posted by: Eric at August 16, 2004 03:14 PMAbout the publisher
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Perhaps not so surprisingly, church web sites seem to me to still be woefully behind the curve. Of course, now - in typical southern baptist fashion - Lifeway is providing a shell for local churches to dump their content in. (sigh)
Posted by: bryan at August 15, 2004 06:45 PM