orginaly published by Silas Partners July 2005

Excuses are easy. “We already have a web guy.” “We are a small church.” “Our pastor just started using Outlook; we aren’t ready for a Web Ministry.” At Silas Partners, we hear excuses like these from churches all the time. If these website excuses or others like them hit too close to home, you might want to stop reading now.

Volunteering at a church with a small congregation, I understand why these excuses feel like perfectly good reasons to keep things as they are; however, as a web professional, I understand that churches need to take some steps outside of their comfort zones and invest the time and effort necessary to create a great Web Ministry. Let’s take a closer look at the “excuses” I listed above and let me tell you why theses excuses shouldn’t stop you from moving forward with your own Web Ministry.

Excuse Number 1: “We already have a web guy.”

Well so does Silas Partners, in fact, we have sixteen web professionals. Volunteers are great and most churches couldn’t work without them, but what happens when your web volunteer moves or gets a promotion or gets married? You may find yourself with a website that no one at your ministry knows how to manage. When I go on vacation, my fellow web developers and designers are here to pick up where I left off and your Web Ministry doesn’t miss a beat. We always work together as a team to make sure everything runs smoothly.

Most volunteers are already working full time jobs, and God bless them for their willingness to come home and work for the church in their spare time, but we all know at the end of the day sometimes we need to take some time “off.” Self care is something that many church leaders and volunteers don’t take seriously enough, and we have seen people burn out and have to step away.

At Silas Partners, your Web Ministry is our fulltime job. We think about everything else so you and your staff can do what you do best, minister at your church. We have designers, marketing folk, client service people and technical wizards all managed by a top notch project management team. Greyhound bus line used to have the slogan, “Leave the driving to us.” When you work with Silas Partners you can leave the driving, engine repair, navigation, and bus cleaning to us.

Excuse Number 2: “We are a Small Church.”

The web provides a great way for your church staff to reach out to visitors. Imagine if I were to visit your church and fill out a visitor card and include my email address, and then you entered this data into a Content Management System (CMS). Later that week, you sent me an email that includes a link to a “New Members” section of your website.

Your Content Management System tracks me through the new members section recording which ministries I am most interested in learning more about. The following Sunday, you send out a follow-up email that automatically highlights what I care about most. So now, with only a few clicks and in less than thirty minutes, one staff member has personally communicated twice with me. This may seem like a lot of work just for little old me, but keep in mind it is the same amount of work for one visitor as it is for fifty visitors.

A Web Ministry can also cut the time your staff has to take answering routine questions. My mom was a church secretary and during the summers she would have us come into work with her. My sister and I would always be excited, but it always turned out we were coming in on newsletter collation day. If our church would have used an email newsletter instead, they could have saved time and money (and saved my sister and me from many paper cuts).

Excuse Number 3: “Our pastor just started using Outlook; we aren’t ready for a Web Ministry.”

We understand that this is uncharted territory for many churches. Don’t worry, we have been here before. It is our mission to help ministries achieve their goals and it is our passion to work intimately with you to help you realize your church’s vision. We are dedicated to being a virtual staff member for your organization.

If our client service team were to come by your church on a Sunday morning, they could be ushers and greeters without missing a beat. Our project management team would be able to answer the phones and our creative director could run your Christmas pageant. We emotionally invest in the churches we serve, and it shows.

At Silas Partners, we realize that not everyone is technically savvy. We don’t want you to have to worry about the process of putting content on the website—we want you to worry about the content itself. With our training and support, you have nothing to worry about. We have trained grandfathers who didn’t know what an email address was on our tools, so we should be able to train just about anyone. And if you want to be pampered, Silas Partners has webmaster services where we work with your church to create web pages from something as simple as a Microsoft Word document.

No More Excuses

We firmly believe churches need a Web Ministry to be successful on the Internet. So the question for you is whether you are going to choose to keep making excuses or give a Silas Partners Web Ministry Consultant a call to start a relationship that will help your church harness technology for the Gospel.

When I started at Silas Partners two years ago, I had no idea what a Web Ministry was. I thought a church website should be about three pages of fairly static content. After seeing the life changing work a real Web Ministry can do I can honestly say I was wrong. Most churches out there are satisfied with their website, but they shouldn’t be. No one should be satisfied to have a hastily designed, seldom updated static site, when a professionally designed dynamic Web Ministry is easier to create than ever before. Two years ago, I was in a very similar place to many of you; if I would have heard that last sentence I would have had no clue what to do next. Luckily that was two years ago, and now my friends and I at Silas Partners have a bunch of ideas. So are you ready to stop making excuses and come alongside us to create a Web Ministry for your church? I know I’m hoping the answer is yes.