Cynthia is a leading thinker in the Internet ministry space. She is presenting at the 2010 CLA Ministry Internet & Technology Summit. She writes about using participatory media technologies to serve the Kingdom of God on her blog The Digital Sanctuary.  Follow her on Twitter @CynthiaWare.

Online ministry is always a work in progress. Excellence used to be about making your blog spectacular, but now we are seeing many more evolutionary and collaborative open source efforts. Sometimes online excellence is seen when someone has taken the initiative and laid the foundation for others to follow.

What are some key things to consider when striving to be excellent?

It all starts with a mission and values. From there you must set goals that can be measured. And then measure them; you cannot be effective without measurement! Also, remember that you can’t do it alone, you need to be involved with online community. Finally, you should also keep in mind the values that these new media technologies are bringing to our culture.

You have blogged and spoken many times about these new media values. Can you share a little about them with us?

About four years ago, I developed a set of traits that all successful new media had in common. These values are something to consider when putting your own social media strategy together. For example, a couple of the values are that your online presence should be collaborative and that it should be available 24/7. I am in the process of an update to these values right now – stay tuned for a 2010 version coming soon!

How important is design?

You must make your web site appealing; it must be relevant to your target audience. But this does not necessarily mean it must be cutting edge!

What are the benefits to having a standard of excellence?

We need to have a standard! But it must be understood that we are not defining something as excellent in order for others to copy it. Your own personal calling from God should reflect excellence and guide you.

Can smaller ministries strive for the same goals of excellence that larger ministries can achieve?

Your ministry should do what it does excellently. This may mean that your online presence is not the most important part of your ministry. If that’s the case, let others Twitter about you!

To learn how your ministry can benefit from our research, please click here for more information.

Interview has been condensed and edited.

The Internet is changing the way ministries impact the world but are ministry web sites accomplishing ministry objectives?

You are invited to participate in the State of Ministry Online: Ministry Web Site Effectiveness Study.

We are seeking 100 ministries to contribute their web site analytics data to our study of performance benchmarks, trends, and case studies for excellence.

Our prayer is that these studies help bring clarity and guidance for ministries to pursue excellence online to the glory of God.

Participating ministries will receive a free, exclusive report containing analysis and insights of effective ministry web site usage. Your analytic data will be kept confidential.

Would you like to submit your ministry to participate?

We ask that participating ministries have had Google Analytics tracking code installed on their web site for at least 3 months (preferably for 1 year).

To provide access to Google Analytics, simply add “research@monkdevelopment.com” and set account Access Type to “View reports only”.

Instructions:

Step 1: Sign in to Google Analytics (https://www.google.com/analytics/settings/home) and click on the name of the account that corresponds to your ministry’s web site.

Step 2: Click User Manager

Step 3: Click Add User

Step 4: Add “research@monkdevelopment.com” to the account.

#1: Enter “research@monkdevelopment.com” in the Email address field.

#2: Set the Access type as View reports only.

#3: Under “Allow access to:” select the profiles that correspond to your primary ministry web site.
If your ministry operates multiple domains, feel free to include them all. But we ask that you provide access to your main web site at a minimum.

#4: Click Add to move these profiles into the Selected Website Profiles list.

#5: Click Save Changes.

(Detailed instructions from Google can be found here.)

Additional information

If your ministry does not use Google Analytics, uses a different analytics solution, or if you have questions regarding any of this, please email us at research@unconventionalmethod.com.

Unconventional Method and Monk Development are committed to protecting your analytics data. To ensure your privacy, your data will remain confidential to persons who are engaged in carrying out the project. No identifying information about the visitors to your web sites will be collected. For more information, please visit our Privacy Policy or email us at research@unconventionalmethod.com.

Thank you for supporting our Internet ministry research!

Ministry leaders will be gathering at the CLA Ministry Internet & Technology Summit, April 19-21 in San Diego, CA to discuss the critical issues facing ministries and to learn from the Excellence in Online Ministry research. If you are a ministry leader interested in achieving excellence online, we invite you to join our efforts to strengthen online ministry.

Click here to take the Excellence in Online Ministry survey.

Click here to learn more about CLA Ministry Internet & Technology Summit.

Click here to learn more about the Excellence in Online Ministry project.

At the time, the God’s people had started slacking off in the giving of their tithes and offerings. Instead of bringing their best lambs, they were keeping the best for themselves and giving God the leftovers. God didn’t take very kindly to this when he spoke through the prophet Malachi.

⁶ “A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?” says the Lord Almighty. “It is you, O priests, who show contempt for my name.
“But you ask, ‘How have we shown contempt for your name?’
⁷ “You place defiled food on my altar.
“But you ask, ‘How have we defiled you?’
“By saying that the Lord’s table is contemptible.
⁸ “When you bring blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice crippled or diseased animals, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?” says the Lord Almighty.
⁹ “Now implore God to be gracious to us. With such offerings from your hands, will he accept you?”—says the Lord Almighty.
¹⁰ “Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar! I am not pleased with you,” says the Lord Almighty, “and I will accept no offering from your hands.”

Unfortunately, day in and day out I see churches and ministries essentially doing the same thing with their websites and online ministries – giving God the leftovers.

I regularly see ministries that spend a million dollars or more on a new building, but won’t budget more than a couple hundred dollars a year for their website. Many churches will ask an inexperience youth pastor or worship leader to take on the extra roll of developing and managing their website. Others delegate website responsibilities to volunteers to do in their “spare time.”

The result is often poor websites that don’t honor God.

Ministry excellence is not about how much you spend, how big your communications staff is, or whether your site has the coolest technology. Sure, money and staffing is important, but excellence is about honoring God by giving him your best.

Excellence includes things like:

• Proofing copy to eliminate spelling and grammatical errors.
• Responding the same day to people who contact your organization.
• Making sure the website always has current information on it.
• Doing periodic usability tests and soliciting honest feedback from users.
• Designing your website as if you were designing it for God himself.

Imagine yourself standing before God about to give him a tour of your website. That thought probably either gets you really excited or makes you want to put a paper bag over your head. That should tell you whether you’ve been honoring God with your ministry’s web endeavors.

Like the parable of the talents illustrates, it’s not as much about how much money/talent you have. Rather it’s what you do with the money/talent with which God has entrusted you.

The survey is part of our second phase of research looking to define how ministries engage online with excellence.

We are gathering information on how ministry organizations from the around the world are engaging online – capturing web strategies and tactics, tools and processes employed, and evaluating the impact created. Our hope is to help ministries to bring greater glory to God through excellence online.

Click HERE to take the survey

What does all of this have to do with you?

• If you are employed by or volunteer for a ministry organization, we want you to take our survey.
• If you support a ministry organization, we need you to share this survey with them and encourage them to participate.

If you aren’t affiliated with a ministry organization but you have a heart for ministry, well, this survey isn’t for you…

But we encourage you to share it with others and we’d love to have you join us at the 2010 CLA Ministry Internet & Technology Summit, April 19-21 in San Diego, CA.

Individuals who participate in the survey will receive a $50 discount on the registration fee for the 2010 CLA Ministry Internet & Technology Summit where we will be sharing the results of this research.

Additionally, all participants will receive a free report highlighting key findings from this research.

A few things to note about the survey:

• The survey should take less than 30 minutes to complete.
• There are 51 questions. The number of questions you are presented will vary. Depending on how you answer certain questions, additional questions may pop up.
• You do not need to complete the survey in one sitting, as long as you submit it by Friday, March 26; you can stop at any question, click “save” and come back later.
• When you complete the survey you will receive a discount code for $50 off the registration price for the 2010 Ministry Internet& Technology Summit.

Click HERE to take the survey

The Excellence in Online Ministry research project is sponsored by:

This research is being conducted by Unconventional Method. [Privacy Policy]

If you have any questions, please contact us at research@unconventionalmethod.com. ]]> http://www.stateofministryonline.org/2010/02/03/announcing-the-excellence-in-online-ministry-survey/feed/ 0 http://www.stateofministryonline.org/2010/01/14/the-case-for-excellence-providing-strategic-clarity/ http://www.stateofministryonline.org/2010/01/14/the-case-for-excellence-providing-strategic-clarity/#comments Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:41:54 +0000 David Bourgeois http://www.stateofministryonline.org/?p=253 We’re continuing our series building a case for excellence in online ministry. Today Dr. David Bourgeois explores how excellence can help ministries navigate through the chaotic environment of the Internet with strategic focus.

If you are a ministry leader interested in achieving excellence online we’d love to hear from you. You can learn more about the Excellence in Online Ministry project. Click here to participate in our online ministry research.

Through our interviews of leaders of successful online ministries, one thing has become clear: excellent online ministries have a clear sense of their own identity, know what they want to accomplish online, and have developed a plan that specifically focuses on achieving measurable goals. In other words, they have a strategy. This strategy allows them to confidently and successfully navigate the chaos of the web.

Excellence is having a strategy based on your ministry identity

One of the first things an excellent organization needs to do is to understand who they are. What is the underlying purpose of their ministry? For many ministries, the original purpose has been expanded or revised and many people in the organization are not quite sure about what the focus should be. Are we about spreading the gospel of Christ? Are we a missionary support organization? Are we a teaching ministry? All of these are worthy identities – but in order to develop a truly successful strategy, you need to be able to define exactly who you are.

Establish measurable goals for your web activities

Once identity is determined, the excellent ministry has developed a set of goals that are in-line with that identity. What do you want to happen online in support of your ministry purpose? These are your strategic goals and to be effective, they must be measurable. By identifying goals that are aligned with your ministry identity, you are focusing on outcomes that are achievable for your ministry and will have a better sense of which web activities will help you achieve those goals.

But what if your goal is something difficult to measure, such as “to deepen the believer’s relationship with Christ.”? It can be difficult to measure such goals directly, but it is possible to identify metrics that are indicative of these goals. In this example, a ministry could choose to measure how many times someone accessed specific materials or returned to the site. A little bit of creativity can turn even the most “unmeasurable” goals into measurable ones.

Select web tools that will help you achieve your goals

Once a ministry understands the goals of its site, it can begin to make determinations about the technology platforms and tools that will help it achieve its goals. Unfortunately, many ministries want to do this as the first step! A good strategy makes trade-offs that allow the ministry to focus on one or two tools that best meet their goals. When new innovations or tools become available, it is a strategy which will help you make your decision about how to move forward.

If your ministry wants to be excellent, it must have a strategy. Of course, fully implementing a strategy is much more complex than the few steps outlined here, but these are the fundamental starting points. Having a strategy will allow you to effectively navigate the chaotic environment of the Internet.

The Excellence in Online Ministry project is helping ministries achieve excellence online. I invite your ministry to participate in our online ministry research.

We recently interviewed Mr. Perman about how Desiring God has integrates web activities into its ministry strategy. He shared with us many of the beliefs about excellence that shape how Desiring God approaches web strategy. “Risk taking has to be part of how you discover excellence, you can’t always know what it will look like from the start. You have to work your way there by trying a lot of stuff and keeping what works. The culture at Desiring God allowed me to do this while we redesigned our site; I think I took a year to just learn by research and testing.”

Below are some highlights from our discussion with Mr. Perman about excellence in online ministry. The outcomes from this research will be presented at the 2010 Christian Leadership Alliance’s Ministry Internet and Technology Summit next April in San Diego, CA. To get more information and to register, visit the Ministry Internet and Technology Summit website. To have your ministry participate in the research, please sign up here.

In that vein, online excellence will be different from one ministry to another. But excellence is not something that causes people to marvel at the site. It is that which serves people most effectively; though, you do want them to have a good experience.

What are the one or two key things that a ministry must do to achieve online excellence?
A ministry’s website must be usable. It must contain edifying content. Most importantly, a ministry must develop a coherent web philosophy. A web philosophy is really central to us; we’ve had our website since the mid-90s but it wasn’t until around 2003/2004 that we realized we had this great content but it was hard to access.

So defining a web philosophy is my number one and has had the highest impact, driving the impact of our web effort. We’ve been heavily influenced by Jim Collins [author of Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Harper Business Essentials)
and Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't (affiliate links)] whose research of leading organization shows that those that had the greatest impact had a coherent set of beliefs.

In your experience, how do the following contribute to online excellence:

• mission/goals
• research
• analytics
• support of leadership
• financial resources
• IT/web experience on staff
• use of social media
• design/brand

All of these are essential; but if I was to identify one thing that contributes, it would be having a philosophy of usability. Great content must be wedded with high usability. If you have excellent content but it’s hard to use the content is obscured. Not focusing on usability creates distortion that gets in the way of the content. Even if you have financial resources and a competent staff, poor usability will lead to an ineffective website.

Quick thought about design — design comes after usability. In addition to poor usability, poor design is a guaranteed way to fail the user. Users don’t want to use sites with poor design. When you think about design, think first about consistency. Design is not first about making something look cool. You must have a consistent visual look that is faithful to your organization. Design is basically your permission to play; if a website looks atrocious, users will wonder if that organization actually cares.

What is Desiring God’s philosophy of usability?
We’ve found that there are certain principles of usability. The best exposition we’ve found is in Steve Krug’s book Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition. (affiliate link)

For us, the one thing that has the highest impact is good navigation. The biggest question a user has is “Where am I?”

A ministry must have a user-centered perspective which is really the second commandment. I believe this is an expression of Christian love, to put yourself in the shoes of the other person, anticipate their problems and needs and take action to solve those problems. Looking at things from the other person’s point of view and asking, “How can we make this experience better for the people accessing our site?”

In addition, we believe strongly in usability testing, we don’t want to guess at what users find helpful or problematic. We need to find that out for real. And we don’t want to necessarily ask the user to tell us, though that is important. You need to experience fisrt-hand how they interact with your website. When we were redesigning the Desiring God site we said that we were going to see if the designs worked before rolling them out on the site.

What benefits do you believe a standard of excellence can create for ministries?
A standard of excellence creates a shortcut for ministries; they don’t have to reinvent the wheel while developing their web strategy. That saves them a ton of work. The best example of this impact at Desiring God is our philosophy of usability. The great thing about focusing on excellence is the articulation of principles that all ministries can look at and see so that they don’t have to spend their resources figuring it out on their own.

Ministries need to partner with each other. My desire is to find a way for ministries to join together and enhancing the sharing of knowledge, contacts, and point people that can be effective. We’re all advancing the same goal; we should seek to make one another more successful.

Interview has been condensed and edited.

We’re the ones dealing with the hard stuff in life. We deal day in and day out with the world’s hurt and sadness. We combat pain, loneliness, sickness, and death.

And we often do this with inadequate resources. We often work alone, isolated from our peers by the constant demands of our ministry or by the lack of resources. Often we are called to be encouragers but seldom are encouraged.

The rewards for our work are not immediate. And while the rest of the world enjoys the fruits of its labors, we endeavor in faith that the reward that awaits us is far greater.

On top of all of this, our work is never done. Until Christ’s return there will always be sin. Death. Poverty. War. The challenges we face can seem insurmountable while our ministry goals always seem just out of reach.

We see this even in Paul’s ministry. In his letter to the church in Thessalonica he says:

“For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil: we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God.” (1 Thessalonians 2:9 ESV)

Any ministry leader will tell you that it can be hard to find the motivation to keep going. This is especially true for those working in online ministry as we are a step further removed from those who we are serving and are often met with critique or skepticism of the validity of doing ministry online.

Our hope is that by identifying ministries that are being excellent online, we can provide a little bit of encouragement to the men and women who give so much of themselves. The Excellence in Online Ministry project gives us an opportunity to say “good job” to different ministries.

You might be thinking, “What good is this to those ministries who aren’t doing cutting-edge online ministry? By highlighting excellence won’t you isolate those ministries who don’t live up to your standard of excellence? Don’t you risk demotivating ministries by pointing out their short-comings?”

Yes, the potential for this exists. But the truth is that in our ministry toil, it is in the areas where we fall short, in the suffering and hardship that we endure for the sake of the Gospel, that Christ is most glorified. For it is the power of Christ that overcomes all weakness, all suffering, all hardship. What Christ has endured for the world’s sake gives us the strength and motivation to keep striving to do more.

When we talk about celebrating excellence, we are talking about acknowledging instances of excellence in online ministries. We believe this type of recognition has creates a number of benefits:

• encouraging the people who work in the ministries being recognized;
• inspiring other ministries to be excellence;
• drawing attention to a ministry and thus raising awareness of it’s mission.

But celebrating ministry excellence also means celebrating weaknesses. Excellence provides a lens through which a ministry can evaluate both its strengths and weaknesses. And if the our standard of excellence is God-centered, then when we look at our ministry’s weaknesses, it is only to look past them in order to see the glory of Jesus Christ who makes up for our inadequacies. Paul, who suffered greatly in his ministry, describes this in 2 Corinthians:

²³Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. ²⁴Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. ²⁵Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, ²⁶I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. ²⁷I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. ²⁸Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. ²⁹Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?

³⁰If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. (2 Corinthians 11:23-30 ESV)

Don’t get me wrong, what ministries are currently doing well online is great. But the grace of God, when seen in how we evaluate our efforts is better. Excellence in online ministry must glorify God above all else. And when it does (whether through strength or weakness) it is cause for celebration.

In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty. (Proverbs 14:23 ESV)

Ms. Turner was very enthusiastic about the value of bringing ministry leaders together to discuss excellence in online ministry. “For me personally, opening the dialog and causing ministry leaders to think about excellence is beneficial. It helps to be able to articulate these things and to stimulate strategic conversations. It also increases the chances that we’ll be able to dialog with other ministries so we don’t feel alone and so there will be continual growth in the Kingdom of God. There is a lot we can learn from each other, so just being in dialog will benefit the Kingdom of God as well.”

Below are some highlights from our discussion with Ms. Turner about excellence in online ministry. The outcome from this research will be presented at the 2010 Christian Leadership Alliance’s Ministry Internet and Technology Summit next April in San Diego, CA. To get more information and to register, visit the Ministry Internet and Technology Summit website.

For prospective students, our message and mission to them is very clear cut in our mind – we need to bring students in. For current students, historically, for the most part the interaction with the students has been in the class room, so interacting with them outside of that is a little different. That’s what I’ve been taking risk in, engaging them outside of the classroom through the web.

For alumni, we’ve had a hard time figuring out what we can do with them online. The difficulty there is that our mission is already accomplished because we have given them the training. But there is also the expectation that our training and support would continue. I think that’s an option for us online.

For our donors, while we are the most far removed from them compared to the other constituencies, it is easier to connect them online because they align highly with our mission in that they also support the students.

It’s difficult to say all the ways that we do ministry online because some of the excellence we’ve experienced has been just by the grace of God because we haven’t had a clear cut plan.

What’s the balance between intent and responsiveness?
My gut says it’s mixed and the two go hand in hand more that some people would like to think. My experience is that things never work out the way you expected because there is always a human element that you can’t control for. You can only control what you can control. Most of what happens online are things that we can’t control. You have to be able to roll with the punches and think intuitively about how to respond to the types of things you can’t control.

Tell us about your own ministry’s successes and failures using the Internet.
Denver Seminary is in the process of shifting our vision because we recently got a new president. Two and a half years ago, responsibility for the Internet was entirely under the IT department. When I came onboard, my first project was to overhaul website and to move it under the Communications Department. This move reflected our shifting view of the website as a tool for reaching prospective students and donors. The new president sees the value of the website and of expanding it so that it’s not just a resource of information.

Much of Denver Seminary’s web success has been with main website. We worked with Monk Development on a complete redesign and have received many design accolades. As a result we saw a significant increase in traffic and our search engine results went up. On top of that, the publicity that we received because of the quality of our design brought more traffic. This success has translated offline and while the Internet is not our sole source of enrollment, we have seen record increases in enrollment in the period after the launch of our new site. We’ve also had an over 500 percent increase in online giving, but I must say that proportionally online giving does not represent a huge chunk of our total giving.

To you, what is online excellence?
I don’t know if I have a good answer as to what online excellence is. For Denver Seminary, as I think about trying to articulate our web strategy, I see online excellence characterized by an extension of who Denver Seminary is, that the brand is continued online. It is important that what people will say about us will be consistent both online and offline because we have a lot of integrity. If you believe and understand what God is doing in you and through you, to the point where other people can grab on to that as well, then excellence allows that to continue to spread online.

So, even if you’re a “mediocre” organization, you can be excellent online?
Yes and no, even if the organization is mediocre and doesn’t operate with integrity, it is possible to have an online presence that is “successful” as defined by a large number of followers. But that isn’t necessarily excellence. Excellence may not always look like what people may classify as success. Excellence is measured by the quality of the relationships that you develop with people, not just the number of relationships.

What are the one or two key things that a ministry must do to achieve online excellence?
First is having a clear sense of identity. If you don’t have a clear sense of that you might not know what to do with once you’re online. Second is having an idea of what you’re trying to accomplish and being able to focus on that in light of our identity. Third, I would say, is understanding where your constituency is and going where they are online.

In your experience, how does having the support of your ministry’s leadership contribute to online excellence?
If you don’t have the support of your leadership you may face roadblocks. Having people who understand the value of the web to a ministry can open doors and create opportunities. I find I’m constantly painting pictures that our online presence is just not an extension of our offline activities. Let me just say that support is enough to get started online but buy-in is the only way you can really move toward excellence. It’s a vicious circle; you have to start something in order to show results that demonstrate that it is worthwhile. While online hasn’t become part of the fabric of the institution yet, we are moving in that direction.

How important are financial resources in achieving excellence?
I’d put it toward the bottom of the list because there is a lot you can do with limited financial resources. If you have time resources you can put into things, financial resources are less important.

What about having someone with technology or web experience on staff?
It really depends on how your system is set up. For me, understanding CSS or XHTML is not important because we have a developer who as done that. Expertise is important but it depends on what your structure is. I will say that having someone with web experience – in that they understand how it works, what the intention is, and understands how people interact in the different areas – is very important.

Interview has been condensed and edited.

But is just getting by good enough? Go back to the first sentence, “The Internet creates tremendous opportunities to love and serve people, share Christ, and advance the Kingdom.” The things that we as Christians are about are important: loving and serving people; sharing Christ; advancing the Kingdom – we are in the business of salvation. Lives are at stake.

The opportunities created by the Internet must be seen as what they really are: opportunities to glorify God and to participate in his redeeming work. And when understood in this light, we are compelled to pursue these opportunities wholeheartedly. And, most importantly, we must strive to do so in a way that lives up to (to the best of our abilities) a standard that God has prescribed for us.

We believe that that standard can only be described as a standard of Excellence. We believe that Excellence online is tantamount to our calling as Christians.

We see in Scripture that Paul often encourages a standard of excellence. In Titus 3:5-8 he identifies that an implication of our salvation and justification in Christ is an aspiration to “things that are excellent”, namely to devote ourselves to a way of behaving that can be considered “good”.

“…He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, ⁶whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, ⁷so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. ⁸This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things, so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone.” (NIV, emphasis mine.)

In Philippians 4:8-9 Paul encourages us not only to set our minds on excellent things but to endeavor to put them into practice. Excellence should be our motivate and our modus operandi.

“⁸Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. ⁹Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.” (NIV, emphasis mine.)

As we’ll see in other posts, there are many reasons why excellence is important for ministries online, but at the core of them all is the truth that God has called us to be excellent. All of the benefits that excellence can create for ministries flow out of this truth.

We’d love to hear what you think about this: what do you believe God has called us to with respect to excellence?

“…identify an approach to Internet strategy and activities for ministries that is centered on Kingdom principles, based on excellence, and aimed at long-term success through Kingdom advancement and benefits to the organization and to society.”

Even though we’re still in the early stages of this research, we’ve already received tremendous response from  ministry organizations like The Salvation Army and Internet Evangelism Day. As we move forward, investing countless hours in pursuit of this idea of excellence, it is prudent to pause and ask the question “Why excellence?”

Every ministry leader we have spoken with thus far has responded with great enthusiasm upon learning of this project, many going so far as to say that ministries need this. So, what is it about excellence that makes it such a compelling and worthy goal? How is it that an idea can inspire such enthusiasm, yet few actually can say exactly what excellence is?

This enthusiasm resonates strongly with me; I believe that excellence exists. I’ve witnessed various shades of it and can identify some of the benefits excellence creates for ministry organizations. Yet I cannot fully articulate exactly what excellence is.

So, though I believe strongly in the need for excellence, I don’t expect everyone to blindly agree that excellence is importance. That is why over the next few weeks we will be posting a series of articles that explore the many reasons for organizations to strive for excellence in online ministry.

Tune in here as we develop this “Case for Excellence”. If you have your own ideas why excellence is (or isn’t) important, we’d love for you to join the conversation. Feel free to add your thoughts via comments on this site or by posting on your own blog and linking back here.

We’ll also try to further the conversation by adding links to other sites that are discussing this. Please contact the State of Ministry Online team via Twitter (@OnlineMinistry) or contact me directly (@kevinring) if you want us to link to you site.