More goodies from “Creating a Congregational Web Site”:

Does the “look” and “feel” of the web site really portray the image the congregation wants to project?

This image is so important.  A welcoming , story-rich, story-encouraging website that expresses an authentic human voice witnessing to the activity of God in their midst is such a powerful tool.  My own life was forever changed and shaped by the initial act of “reading a story” which told a tale of a people who began a community called The Church of the Saviour in Washington , DC,  and these stories compelled me to meet with people who were reading these stories and were wondering aloud about how a community modeled after this would take shape among us.  The stories and the meetings and the relationships built around this seeking drove me to later vistit on three separate occasions the location where The Church of the Saviour built it’s first “Headquarters” and where they began a coffeehouse that cam eto be known as The Potter’s House.   If books could instill an energy that shaped my journey and brought me into contact with others along the way (as it did yet again in 1995-96 as I participated in a group seeking to be a “Servant Leadership School” in Cincinnati).  The people who say that online community and online stories cannot help build ftf community are missing the clear fact that Books (like, uh,  the Bible) and other later stories published in books,  have long been the impetus of stirrings to find that which has been written about and “those things which we have seen and heard”.  If we can get people in our churches to “log” and to “testify” to the happenings amongst them and within them in the context of a community of faith,  the Web becomes a CRUCIAL TOOL FOR POSSIBILITY.