I was recently told about a website called TED. Here is what the site says about the organization:

If you look at the site, you will find speeches by Al Gore, Freeman Dyson, Jane Goodall, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Bono, Bill Clinton, and many other “heavy hitters.” The person who told me about the website was pointing out (rightfully so, I imagine) that the membership of TED probably did not include many believers. So when I visited the site, I was surprised to find that the featured speaker on the front page of the site was none other than Billy Graham.

Here’s what TED has to say about his speech:

And here is Dr. Graham’s speech:

In May of 2007, James Cooper launched a new website called MinistryPool. James’ original idea (still a good one!) was to build a repository of top quality, easy to remember, domain names for use in ministry and Church marketing projects. The twist is that when one ministry or church is finished using the domain name for its project, the domain goes back into the “pool” so that other ministries or churches can use it.

James sent me an email this morning to let me know that he has expanded the concept of MinistryPool. From James’ “relaunch post”:

After a brief review, I can say that James has gathered together a great set of resources that will be helpful to any church or ministry looking to improve their digital outreach.

Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam team, was recently interviewed by Jefferson Graham of USA Today regarding solid search engine optimization (SEO) principles.

The article, while fairly basic, provides a good start. If churches and ministries just followed these simple principles, I believe they would see some good improvement in their search engine rankings. In the ecommerce world, I like to say that the buying cycle begins at Google (because that’s where people search for your products). The same can increasingly be said in the Christian world - the “searching for a community of believers” cycle begins at Google.

Matt Cutts’ blog is also a valuable resource.

Sally Stuart, a well-known authority on Christian writing (she has compiled the Christian Writers’ Market Guide for the last 23 years), recently posted a letter from Craig von Buseck (Director of Ministries at the Christian Broadcasting Network) about his upcoming book tentatively titled “NetCasters: Harnessing the Internet to Make Fishers of Men.”

Craig is looking for stories of those who have come to Christ through the internet. If you know of such a story, Craig would welcome your input .

Dr. Jay Herndon is the Secretary-Treasurer for the Northern California and Nevada district of our denomination (the Assemblies of God). He is also an old, old friend from elementary school, Little League baseball, junior high, and college!

Jay recently sent an email to a mailing list for the ministers of our district and mentioned an intriguing use of text messaging the denomination is planning on using:

Interesting! What other innovative uses for text messaging are being used by the church today? Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments to this article.

I just received an email from Mike Boyink asking me to help get the word out about a new project he’s starting through his Train-ee website.

Before I tell you about the project, though, let me give a quick word of explanation about Train-ee.com.

I’ve been using content management systems from EllisLab for about three and a half years. I first used pMachine and then switched to ExpressionEngine when it was launched. I’ve never been sorry. I now use or have implemented ExpressionEngine on 13 different websites.

Guess where I found out about EllisLab? That’s right — Mike Boyink has been a champion of EllisLab products for over four years, and he was the one who first turned me on to the joys of using EllisLab products.

In January of this year, Mike launched a new site — Train-ee.com — where he shares his wisdom and experience “to help web professionals get up to speed on ExpressionEngine^® as quickly as possible.” Through Train-ee, Mike provides online and in-person training, ebooks, and screencasts, all designed to help you learn the best content management system around in a minimum of time and with a minimum of pain! Mike is considered one of the experts in the ExpressionEngine support forums, and his combination of knowledge, wisdom, internet strategy experience, and extensive experience with ExpressionEngine means there is no one better to help you learn to use this great CMS.

Now, on to Mike’s newest project. One of Mike’s first projects for the Train-ee website was a series on “Building an ExpressionEngine Site - Small Business.” The series was very well-received in the ExpressionEngine community. And now, he will soon begin another “how to Build an ExpressionEngine Site” series, this time building a church website.  At the end of the series when the site is complete it will be auctioned off on eBay, with proceeds going to a TBD charity. You can learn more here:

A New Blog, A New Series

If you have been looking for a content management series for a new church website or to start redevelopment on an old church website, I am confident that this series will prove extremely valuable to you. Mike is the developer of the Manna? church website and is very experienced in working with churches to effectively use their websites. I would strongly encourage you to visit the Train-ee website and start following Mike’s new series!

I was reading this article on Think Christian last week, and was particularly struck by the comments, especially Jason Wells’ reference to 2 John 12. I often talk about the need for face-to-face community and about how internet evangelism still needs the foundation of a physical gathering in a local area. But I had never considered the relevance of 2 John 12 to the discussion (probably because it would largely seem like an obscure verse without much relevance to anything — shame on me for thinking like that!).

Here’s what 2 John 12 says:

The clear implication is that there is something incomplete about communication only through paper and ink — face-to-face communication is necessary for our joy to be made full.

The Greek word which is translated “be made full” in this verse means “to bring something to completion, to finish something already begun.” The verse suggests that face-to-face communication is necessary for believers’ joy to be brought to completion.

If writing letters with paper and ink could not make the believers’ joy full or complete in John’s day, can email make our joy full or complete? Can discussion forums make our joy full or complete? Can online video chat make our joy full or complete? Is there something incomplete about digital communication?

Here’s another blog I came across on Thursday:

ChurchSMO

Here is what the author, Aaron Marshall, writes about himself and his recently-launched blog:

I especially like Aaron’s use of videos throughout his articles. It lends a personal touch which is quite engaging.

Here’s a blog that’s been around for awhile but is new to me:

Church Website Help

Mickey Mellen, webmaster at Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church, has been writing the blog since September of 2005 (gee, where have I been to only have noticed it yesterday?).

The article entitled Church Websites Around Atlanta Are Pretty Bad caught my eye immediately since I used to work a bit on a website for a church in the Atlanta area (not on Mickey’s list thankfully! ). The article talks about some of the common mistakes churches make and it also brought the issue of proper canonicalization for search engine optimization purposes back into the forefront of my mind (the issue wasn’t entirely new to me, but I had never given it much thought until yesterday when I carefully read what Mickey had to say on the subject). It made me start testing a lot of my sites! Thankfully, most of them add the “www” in automatically, but the website of my last remaining “design client” (as vs. “strategy client") does not pass the test, so I’ll need to work on that a bit.

All in all, it looks like there is a wealth of content to explore on Mickey’s blog and I encourage you to add it to your list of RSS feeds so you can read him on a regular basis.

Churches, ministries, and missionaries should all be aware of solid search engine optimization principles and implement them faithfully on their websites. Here is a great resource to help you do just that:

Mihai’s SEO Cheat Sheet

from Mihai Gheza.

When I started Strategic Digital Outreach in the Fall of 2004, I would never have imagined that we would be involved in publishing a book. But here we are, three-and-a-half years later, and we have recently helped our friend and advisor Dave Dias publish his first book, Irene’s Journey Of Faith.

Readers of this blog may remember an earlier post in which we shared about the disease Irene Dias has contracted.

Here is the description of the book we are using on Amazon and other websites:

I would strongly encourage the readers of this blog to visit Irene and Dave’s website, IreneDias.com (this link will take you to a page from which you can either purchase the book or proceed to the blog to read its entries).

Tony Whittaker of the Web Evangelism Guide and Internet Evangelism Day has written a brilliant parable called A Tale of Two Golf Clubs. See if you can figure out what the meaning of the parable is!

By the way, this year’s Internet Evangelism Day is scheduled for April 27. That’s only 78 days away. Have you started to prepare?