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3 principles for creating better church webpages
Mark MacDonald Religious CommunityMost churches have websites, but sadly, most church websites are created so that many won’t be interested in looking at them. It’s a lot of wasted effort. Everyone arrives at a website, and they want to discover the information they seek as quickly as possible. If they don’t find it fast? They’ll give up quickly, get frustrated with the website, or pick up the phone and call your receptionist for the answer. If this sounds familiar to your church, here are three principles to creating better webpages.
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Consider conducting a mid-year review
Deborah Ike Religious CommunityYou've heard of spring cleaning and closing the accounting books at year-end, but have you considered doing a mid-year checkup? The halfway point of the year is an excellent time to make sure you’re on-track with your annual goals, budget, and other aspects of leading the church. It’s also an opportunity to check on facets of church administration that are easy to overlook when you’re busy with the day-to-day. Here are several items to assess when starting a mid-year review.
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Good church websites matter
Mark MacDonald Religious CommunityA website is "the front door to your church." At least that's what many are saying. But is it? Let’s make sure we understand our audiences first. Because they find this front door differently and open it for different reasons, too. Every church has an internal audience (congregation) and an external audience (community). Our role as the church is to reach both audiences. We do it so differently, but with our website!
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How to keep departmental silos from ruining your next church event
Deborah Ike Religious CommunityPlanning a church event, even if it’s focused on a single ministry area, requires involvement from multiple departments. For example: Running a week of Vacation Bible School involves more than the children’s ministry leader and his/her team. That department will take the lead role, but they’ll need support from those in facilities, finance, marketing/communications, and more. Unfortunately, it’s easy for the department in charge of an event to forget that the other groups work on more than one event at a time.
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4 ways your church sign lets you down
Mark MacDonald Religious CommunityDrive around the streets of your town near your church. There are signs everywhere. Seriously, everywhere. If you’re looking, you’ll see them, but for the most part you’ll stop remembering most of them. We live in a loud, marketing-saturated world. Your church needs to have a sign that stands out and is remembered. For the right reasons. Here are four ways that most church signs don’t help the local church.
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Spring cleaning your church database
Deborah Ike Religious CommunityWhile we tend to expect our church management software (ChMS) to display valuable information on every report, we need to remember that the information it provides is only as useful as the data we enter. If you’ve had your ChMS in place for several years or if you’ve ever switched from one ChMS to another, it might be time for a system cleanup effort. Here are several tips to help you get started.
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Is your church communications ready for summer?
Mark MacDonald Religious CommunityIt seems like spring just started but we’re almost into summer. Yes, time flies — especially when it comes to church communication. Summer brings added complication to your communication team: vacations, less attention from ministries, and your congregation drifts away from a regular schedule. Summer relaxes. Your communication team can’t.
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What systems do you need?
Deborah Ike Religious CommunityWhen you work on the back-office aspects of running a church, you tend to manage several different functions. You may have inherited those from your predecessor, or perhaps you initiated them as the need arose. Whatever the case, occasionally it’s helpful to evaluate what systems you need to have in place versus what you’re already doing. Here are a few systems to consider improving or implementing.
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Why being different is critical to every church
Mark MacDonald Religious CommunityHave you noticed? Products and services are dropping from existence regularly. Toys R Us is closing its doors entirely, and more than 5,000 individual stores closed across the country as major retailers decide it’s best for their bottom line. What’s happening? Even worse, 4,000 evangelical churches disappeared from the United States. I wonder if many even notice? Why all the closings? Because another organization started to supply the community’s needs in a similar or better way.
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4 signs you shouldn’t switch to a new ChMS (yet)
Deborah Ike Religious CommunityWe've all had moments where the software we're using doesn't seem to be working for us. When it comes to church management software, that tends to mean we aren't getting the information out of it that we want, reports aren't configured the way we expected, it's hard to set up new functions or features with the system, or other issues.
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