Registered Charity No. 1117022
Ideas and
Resources
Resources
iChurch websites and you
General
Whether we’re talking about Synod or local church websites, the following general rules apply:
Whether we’re talking about Synod or local church websites, the following general rules apply:
|
1.
|
Your website gives a message. You need to pay attention to the overall ‘look’: does it carry the right combination of professional, welcoming, user-friendly? What font are you using (different fonts convey different messages)? Does it look inviting? Easy to navigate? What would grab you about it were you visiting it for the first time? Is there anything to pull visitors in? Is it cluttered? Over-busy? Is there white space?
|
|
2.
|
Your site needs to be easy to use. You need to pay very careful attention to the navigation structure of larger sites (eg Synod sites) that carry large amounts of information. It is good practice to have a sitemap page where visitors can see exactly what is on the site. Contemporary sites use a horizontal navigation system across the navbar of the site, with drop-down menus, rather than the traditional left sidebar navigation. Make sure you have breadcrumb navigation that shows visitors exactly where they are in the site structure.
|
|
3.
|
Your site needs to be interesting and attractive. A Synod site that contains loads of useful information and documentation can also carry photos of Synod life and personalities, and have sections designed to celebrate the ‘Synod family’ aspect of Church life. Make your site newsy as well as informative. Image-rich sites work well. Make as much use of the image capabilities as possible.
|
|
4.
|
Your site needs to be interactive. This is to move beyond the (very) outdated concept of a website as a ‘notice board in cyberspace’. It ought to be a place where visitors can come and enjoy themselves. What is there for them to do on your site? Do you have any videos for them to watch? Places for them to comment? Think quizzes and surveys. Think fun and entertainment. That’s not to say that your site ought to be an entertainment centre; it ought to have an aspect of fun, though.
|
|
5.
|
You site needs to be up to date and active. There is nothing more off-putting than arriving on a site and seeing that the ‘latest news’ is months old. Furthermore, the more active the site is, the more noticeable it will be to the search engines (eg Google). You need to be able to update your site easily, which means that the more direct control you have over it, the easier that will be. A system that depends on people handing on material to someone else (particularly if your webmaster is not a member of the Church) and being dependent on them to load the material on to the site only makes it more difficult to keep the site current. In other words, the ideal is for you to be able to run the site yourself.
|
|
6.
|
Your site needs to be SEO-friendly. SEO refers to Search Engine Optimisation: making your site easily discoverable by the Search Engines. This is actually even more important than your design; after all, it’s no good spending hours and hundreds of pounds getting a killer design for your site if no one is ever going to find it! SEO isn’t easy; that’s why you will see ads promising to get your site on the Google front page.
|
A Wordpress-based solution
iChurch runs on Wordpress. Wordpress is an Open Source blogging software platform. Blogs are designed to do two things: (1) enable people to write comments on your site and (2) be useable by everyone. In other words, the software is supposed to be really easy to use – not very different from writing/editing a Word document.
Wordpress is strong on design: the software is designed to make it as easy as possible to make your site look good.
Being Open Source means that the software itself is free and is constantly under development. There’s a strong ideological conviction at play here: Open Source software aims to make the Web as free and universally accessible as possible. The benefit to you is that you never have to pay for upgrades to your Wordpress software. Even more importantly, there is a huge community of Wordpress developers producing widgets (add-ons) to do just about anything you might want from your software: add calendars, maps, galleries, videos etc.
Wordpress follows the ‘sophisticated but simple’ maxim; the more the software is developed, the more user-friendly it becomes. Crucially, it is also extremely SEO-friendly.
Most importantly, Wordpress can be used as a Content Management System (ie to run your website rather than simply a blog). That means that you can have multiple users of the site who can each contribute to different areas of your site. It means that your Church or Synod web team can work together and divide up the tasks among themselves. It spreads responsibility, builds up camaraderie and maximises the chances of the site being kept up to date.
iChurch: an out-of-the-box solution for your Church website
Start communicating!
iChurch has been developed as an out-of-the-box website kit for United Reformed Churches with little or no experience of or expertise in designing and maintaining a website. It is based on Wordpress, a blogging platform. If you can write a Word document, you will be able to use Wordpress! It has been designed for you to maintain and update your own site so that you’re not dependent on someone outside the Church to maintain it. You’re given your own domain name (yourchurch.urc.org.uk) and the site is hosted on the URC server. Your one-time £100 includes set-up, template, domain name and hosting.
The design work has been done for you (though you can customise colours, fonts and layout to make it look as you wish). Once your site is up and running, with the content you want, you have access to a series of video tutorials to teach you how to use the software to make sure you have a site that reflects your Church life, that you can be proud of, which advertises you in cyberspace and allows people to interact with you online.
This is your ideal communication tool. If you’re a Church taking part in the Vision4Life Year of Evangelism, or simply wishing to reach a new audience, iChurch makes having and maintaining your very own website a reality.
What do you get for your money?
Have a look at the dummy site on http://ichurch.urc.org.uk. The site is designed to be:
1. Easy to navigate
2 Attractive
3 Image-rich
4 Simple to maintain
5 Interactive
6 Customisable
Imagine someone planning to visit your area and looking for a church. They’d want to know what times the services were and how to get there. More importantly, they’d want a sense of who you are and what they can expect. That’s what your iChurch site will give them.
iChurch makes it easy to involve different members in maintaining the site. Your minister can post sermons and letters. Someone can maintain the Junior Church section, someone else Commitment for Life and someone else the News section (for example). And what about getting members to offer their faith stories?
What do I do next?
There are 3 iChurch courses running this year:
1 Getting off the Ground (11-14 November 2010): Build your website from scratch in just 3 days! You get your domain and the site template set up and installed. You will learn how to use the Wordpress software to set up and maintain your site and leave with a fully-functional website. If you’ve already purchased a site and want to use the course to learn how to use it, your cost will be reduced by £100. Otherwise, the course costs £280.
2 Pimp Your Site (10-12 September 2010): Already got an iChurch site? Ready to take it to the next level? This is where you will learn advanced image use, the extensive library of Wordpress widgets to add virtually any function to your website, FTP and SEO. £180
3 The Sky’s the Limit (19-21 November 2010): Got to grips with what Wordpress can do? Ready to step out on your own? Become a designer? You will be given a special licensed template that allows you to build your site from scratch. You can set it up to look and function in any way you choose. You’ll learn advanced design techniques as well as advanced Wordpress. £200
Sign up!
Go to the Windermere Centre site (http://windermere.urc.org.uk), download and complete the form and send it to the Windermere Centre, together with your £30 deposit. You’ll need to hurry: the training is intensive and hands-on, so space and places are limited.
MARGINALISED?
Is British Christianity being marginalised? That idea makes better sense – but, if so, why?
The numerical decline of the churches is sadly obvious, and fewer committed Christians may mean fewer practicing Christian head teachers, elected councillors or MPs. And a government or local authority with few Christian representatives is much less likely to understand what we are trying to do.
Then there has been the effect of immigration and the creation of the so-called multi-faith society. Many immigrants are Christian, and their arrival has often given a welcome boost to many hard-pressed churches. But the multi-faith agenda also provided ill-wishers with an excuse to get rid of Christianity, simply by reducing ‘faith’ to the rank of ‘culture’. This is unfair, because the Christians churches, notwithstanding all their shortcomings, are still the biggest multicultural show on society’s road.
Nevertheless, multiculturalism gave birth to multi-faith religious education, for which, again, there is much to be said. But the disappearance of the school Scripture lesson, plus the decline in Sunday schools, has speeded up the disappearance of biblical knowledge from the population as a whole.
As a trainer of secondary religious education teachers, I used to set my students this challenge. Suppose that the school syllabus provided time for just one 40 minutes lesson on The Life and Teaching of Jesus. How would you set about teaching it? (Try answering that one yourself)
SECULARISED?
The trend towards ‘marginalising’ is often linked to the idea of ‘secularisation’ but we must beware of the meaning of this slippery word.
A secular society could mean a level playing field for various faiths and philosophies. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution states: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’ In principle, this sounds like a good idea. And in India, for example, the secular constitution works for the benefit of the Christian minority.
But the word ‘secular’ (or more particularly ‘secularist’) could also mean anti-religious and atheist. Thus the creed of the anti-religious National Secular Society ‘assails …supernaturalism… as the enemy of progress.’ Back in the USSR, this kind of secularism was compulsory for 70 unprofitable years. It is to be resisted, with charity, courtesy, skill and common sense.
FREE TO THINK, PRAY, LOVE AND HELP
Having got the idea of persecution in proportion, we will be set free to help our Christian colleagues who really are having a harsh and cruel time. North Korea atheism is the official creed. In India Hindu extremists have been gaining influence. In Sri Lanka Buddhism is closely linked to the state. And in many Muslim-majority countries, Christian and other minorities are under cruel and increasing pressure. Their tribulations are sometimes under-reported – or even ignored – in the Western media.
And here it is important to get our facts right. The first headline is not always the correct headline, and interreligious conflict is often linked to complicated social and ethnic tensions. So how can we keep un to date? I get good information from Barnabas Fund – www.barnabasfund.org – and commend the work of its international director, Dr Patrick Sookhdeo. His book Freedom to Believe – Challenging Islam’s Apostasy Law introduces us to a harsh world where, even today those who take a stand for the gospel may share the fate of Alban and James Guthrie.
Is British Christianity being marginalised? That idea makes better sense – but, if so, why?
The numerical decline of the churches is sadly obvious, and fewer committed Christians may mean fewer practicing Christian head teachers, elected councillors or MPs. And a government or local authority with few Christian representatives is much less likely to understand what we are trying to do.
Then there has been the effect of immigration and the creation of the so-called multi-faith society. Many immigrants are Christian, and their arrival has often given a welcome boost to many hard-pressed churches. But the multi-faith agenda also provided ill-wishers with an excuse to get rid of Christianity, simply by reducing ‘faith’ to the rank of ‘culture’. This is unfair, because the Christians churches, notwithstanding all their shortcomings, are still the biggest multicultural show on society’s road.
Nevertheless, multiculturalism gave birth to multi-faith religious education, for which, again, there is much to be said. But the disappearance of the school Scripture lesson, plus the decline in Sunday schools, has speeded up the disappearance of biblical knowledge from the population as a whole.
As a trainer of secondary religious education teachers, I used to set my students this challenge. Suppose that the school syllabus provided time for just one 40 minutes lesson on The Life and Teaching of Jesus. How would you set about teaching it? (Try answering that one yourself)
SECULARISED?
The trend towards ‘marginalising’ is often linked to the idea of ‘secularisation’ but we must beware of the meaning of this slippery word.
A secular society could mean a level playing field for various faiths and philosophies. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution states: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’ In principle, this sounds like a good idea. And in India, for example, the secular constitution works for the benefit of the Christian minority.
But the word ‘secular’ (or more particularly ‘secularist’) could also mean anti-religious and atheist. Thus the creed of the anti-religious National Secular Society ‘assails …supernaturalism… as the enemy of progress.’ Back in the USSR, this kind of secularism was compulsory for 70 unprofitable years. It is to be resisted, with charity, courtesy, skill and common sense.
FREE TO THINK, PRAY, LOVE AND HELP
Having got the idea of persecution in proportion, we will be set free to help our Christian colleagues who really are having a harsh and cruel time. North Korea atheism is the official creed. In India Hindu extremists have been gaining influence. In Sri Lanka Buddhism is closely linked to the state. And in many Muslim-majority countries, Christian and other minorities are under cruel and increasing pressure. Their tribulations are sometimes under-reported – or even ignored – in the Western media.
And here it is important to get our facts right. The first headline is not always the correct headline, and interreligious conflict is often linked to complicated social and ethnic tensions. So how can we keep un to date? I get good information from Barnabas Fund – www.barnabasfund.org – and commend the work of its international director, Dr Patrick Sookhdeo. His book Freedom to Believe – Challenging Islam’s Apostasy Law introduces us to a harsh world where, even today those who take a stand for the gospel may share the fate of Alban and James Guthrie.
|
§
|
John Coutts is a poet, performer, author and translator. He worships at the Stirling Corps of The Salvation Army and can be contacted by email at johnjcoutts@aol.com or visit his website johncoutts.eu.
|
|
§
|
This article was first published in the Salvationist on 15 May 2010 and is reproduced by kind permission of the Editor-in-Chief of The Salvation Army’s UK Territory with the Republic of Ireland.
|
ARE CHRISTIANS PERSECUTED?
John Coutts considers whether Christians are getting a raw deal.
John Coutts considers whether Christians are getting a raw deal.
In the United Kingdom several recent legal cases have given cause for thought. Nurse Shirley Chaplin, forbidden to wear a cross with her uniform, went to court to defend the right to profess her faith – and lost. Some followers of Christ feel they are getting a raw deal, or at least are losing out when compared to members of ‘other faiths’.
Let’s keep things in perspective. In St Albans, where I grew up, the great Abbey church celebrates the courage of Britain’s first Christian martyr, who gave his life for the faith back in Roman times. And here in Stirling, where I
live now, the local museum displays the ring of the Rev James Guthrie, who was put to death in 1661 for defending the Church of Scotland against the persecuting regime of Charles ll. Nowadays nobody – north or south of the border – is trying to kill me, or even shut me up. To say that British Christians are being ‘persecuted’ is to go way over the top.
live now, the local museum displays the ring of the Rev James Guthrie, who was put to death in 1661 for defending the Church of Scotland against the persecuting regime of Charles ll. Nowadays nobody – north or south of the border – is trying to kill me, or even shut me up. To say that British Christians are being ‘persecuted’ is to go way over the top.
A prayer
written by Revd Jenny Dyer for use at the
Methodist Conference.
Slightly adapted by our Chair Revd Anne Brown
for a Churches Together in Hertfordshire Committee meeting
written by Revd Jenny Dyer for use at the
Methodist Conference.
Slightly adapted by our Chair Revd Anne Brown
for a Churches Together in Hertfordshire Committee meeting
Lord Jesus, who said that no jot or tittle of the law would be changed, we give thanks for the scribes and experts in the law who serve our churches and whose calling it is to take care that each comma is in its place.
We pray that we may all see beyond the letter of every Resolution and Constitution to the Spirit it seeks to serve.
May the methodical-ness of our churches and Churches Together in England, serve that unpredictable One who blows where She will, and the Son of Man who is Lord of the Sabbath, and the Creator God who is Sovereign over all.
In Jesus’ Name
Amen
Revd Jenny Dyer.
We pray that we may all see beyond the letter of every Resolution and Constitution to the Spirit it seeks to serve.
May the methodical-ness of our churches and Churches Together in England, serve that unpredictable One who blows where She will, and the Son of Man who is Lord of the Sabbath, and the Creator God who is Sovereign over all.
In Jesus’ Name
Amen
Revd Jenny Dyer.
QUIZ AID
You don’t need brains… but it helps!
You don’t need brains… but it helps!
Between the 13 and 19 September Christian Aid is encouraging everyone to get quizzical and hold a Quiz Aid event at your church, home, work or even down the pub. A great opportunity perhaps to get a group of local churches together for a fun night. Christian Aid will provide everything you need including all the questions, so it really is straightforward to take part. The money raised will go to help some of the world’s poorest people.
It’s easy, great fun and everybody wins.
For more information or to register for your free fundraising pack go to www.christianaid.org.uk/quizaid or text ‘quiz’ to 88802.
Alternatively call Sarah Clay on 01865 246818 to find out more.
It’s easy, great fun and everybody wins.
For more information or to register for your free fundraising pack go to www.christianaid.org.uk/quizaid or text ‘quiz’ to 88802.
Alternatively call Sarah Clay on 01865 246818 to find out more.
