061 – The Five Don’ts
This week on WELSTech the topic is digital evangelism. Martin and Sallie discuss five “don’ts” for church web sites and talk with Pastor Ken Fisher about the WELS evangelism site, WhatAboutJesus.com.
Podcast: Download (28.4MB)
The discussion:
- Don’t make these mistakes on your church web site! – Your church or school web site is oftentimes making first impressions on the world so it is, of course, important that its design and content reflect favorably on your congregation. Martin and Sallie discuss five “don’ts” you’ll want to avoid when creating your site.
- Learn how to incorporate WELS RSS feeds into your site
- Sample WELS RSS feeds
- Evangelism Toolbox DVD
The interview:
Reaching out with WhatAboutJesus.com (23:08) – Martin and Sallie talk with Pastor Ken Fisher from Risen Savior in Milwaukee, WI about the development behind the WhatAboutJesus.com evangelism web site. Pastor Fisher also shares info on some of the key site features, feedback they have received and future plans for the site.
The tidbits:
- Picks of the week (37:20)
- Free Technology For Teachers blog – www.freetech4teachers.com
- Black out your screen for distraction-free writing
- Focused (Cross-platform) – spreadingfunkyness.com/focused
- Darkroom (Windows) – they.misled.us/dark-room
- WriteRoom (Mac) – www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom
- Of interest (47:14)
- 2009 WELS International Youth Rally – Register now at www.welsyouthrally.net
- Community feedback (48:08)
- Brent Nemmers from Atonement in Plano, TX shared a link to a cNet review of online photo editors
- Steve Mathwig from St. John’s in Oak Creek, WI asked about the FinalWeb custom template feature, which is scheduled to go live March 5th! Join the WELS FinalWeb user community at www.wels.net/jump/wnuwebhosting
- Martin shared an update and invitation to the inWELS group on LinkedIn.com
- Recent WELSTech listserve chatter includes an online memory test generator from Karl Henslin at St. Mark in Green Bay, WI as well as a discussion of open source Student Management Software
- Perry Lund from Grace in Oskaloosa, IA updated the audio equipment and recording pages of the WELSTech wiki – welstech.wetpaint.com
- Gail Potratz “tweeted” to let us know that an audio version of Luther’s Large Catechism is available on LibriVox.org. Join the #WELSTech Twitter conversation and follow Martin (mspriggs) and Sallie (welstechtrainer)
- Coming up on WELSTech (58:57)
- Episode 062 – “Publish, Then Filter”, the fourth chapter of Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody, will be our discussion topic
The featured artist:
- We close with the music of WELS praise band, Koine (www.koinemusic.com) – Crown Him With Many Crowns from their CD titled Koine (59:45)
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Thanks for the link of online image editors! I see that Pixlr and others let you add text in a not-so complicated way. This will be useful for adding scripture to backgrounds for Bible Classes and Videos. Thanks!
Ben, I have seen very few WELS congregations do this well. I’ll do a bit more research and perhaps suggest some good examples on next week’s show. Thanks for your comment.
Very nice discussion around website design. Your first “Don’t” and the struggle around catering to two audiences with a church website is an interesting one. Do you have any examples of churches that have successfully separated visitor and member sections of their websites? especially if they are using different domain names or designs/themes?
I think a church has to walk a fine line in this regard so that it doesn’t seem like they are trying to hide something in their “member’s only” website/subsite even when both are completely open to anyone browsing the web.