Steeples and Websites...

Today's paper had an interesting article in it about church steeples outliving their utility.  One paragraph caught my attention.

"Steeples may have outlived their times as signposts.  People hunting for a church don't scan the horizon, they search the internet.  Google reports searches for "churches" soar before Easter each year."

One of the first things that I did when I came to Community of Joy as pastor nearly 12 years ago, was to help create a website for the church.  I felt then and still feel that it is vitally important. 

For a number of years Stacy Habig was our "webminister" and she did a FABULOUS job at it!  I am so thankful for her willingness and creativity!  Our first website ROCKED!  But after many, many years the ways to develop websites outgrew Stacy's knowledge and with limited mobility she passed that on to someone else.  Just last year we had a Professional Developer create a new website for us.

But as they often do, it is now "stale" as someone at our Leadership Team noted.  And the only way to update it is to hire someone again... actually the first firm would love to do updates for us, but they will charge for each one.  So, I found a place that will help us develope a new site and will provide us with a template so that we can update each page as often as we like.  And all of this is for an initial fee of $1500 which is a bargain because our last website cost $800 and we had no ability to update it with out a fee.  This new firm specializes only in church sites and offers add ons at whatever point we would want them.  One that I am interested in from the begining is the ability to have the banner on the home page rotate as you are on it but that costs an additional $500.   But for a total of $2,000 initial (one time) fee we can have a website that will never grow stale.  And for a monthly fee of $50 they host it too.  We currently pay $15 a month to host our podcasts and that would be included.  Our hosting is currently free but who knows how long.

So, in a time when funds are tight but visibility and relevancy is important, I am praying for the provision of $2,000 to get us a new site! 

If I could sell the steeple I would!