Before creating or updating a Web page it is important to identify your viewers.
According to Mickey Crawford, Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions statistical consultant, churches have to realize that the people they’re going to reach on their Web sites are not going to be exactly like the ones in their pews.
“Sixty percent of U.S. adults have online access or are online at any time,” he said. “Those people are going to be college-educated, younger, a little more liberal in their views. So if a church is going to have a Web site or improve a Web site, one of the best things they can do is have a section on there with ‘what do you believe, why do you believe it.’”
Barna Research Group, a California-based marketing research company that has examined cultural trends since 1984, conducted a study in the latter half of 2000 on churchgoers and Internet usage.
Barna’s findings
-Millions of Americans are using the Internet to get in touch with God and others who pursue faith matters.
-Born-again and evangelical Christians are just as likely as non-Christians to use the Internet.
-Eight percent of adults and 12 percent of teenagers use the Internet for religious or spiritual experiences.
-More than two-thirds of people are likely to use the Internet to seek or engage in religious experiences as the decade progresses.
-Less than 1 percent of all adults and 2 percent of teens currently use the Internet as a substitute for a physical church setting.
-The most appealing religious uses of the Internet include listening to archived teaching, reading online devotionals and buying products and resources.
-By the end of the decade, online worship will attract 30 to 35 million adults and listening to religious teaching will draw more than 100 million adults.
-Reading online devotional passages and submitting prayer requests are of much greater interest to younger people.
-More than nine out of 10 senior pastors use computers at home or church.
-Pastors are more likely than others to use the Internet for research and information, to maintain friendships, to purchase products and to have religious experiences on the Internet.
-One out of three Protestant churches — about 110,000 — has a Web site.
-Half of churches that did not have a Web site at the time of this study were not planning to add one in the future.
-Most church Web sites are developed and maintained predominantly for the use of congregants, although pastors are most likely to say that the target audience was people from outside their church.
Bright future
-By the end of the decade, 50 million Americans may seek to have their spiritual experience solely through the Internet rather than at a church.
-By 2010, more than 10 percent of the population will rely on the Internet for their entire spiritual experience, with millions dropping out of the physical church in favor of the cyber church.
-Self-produced worship music will become much more common with technology allowing artists to market their products to millions on the Internet.
-Churches will be able to offer e-mail broadcasting, theological chats, online meetings and broadcasts to immobile congregants. They will also be able to have live Web casting of missions trips via Web cams and around-the-clock ministry training from the best trainers and educators in the world.
(TAB, Barna Research Group)
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