Churches And The Internet - The Latest Research
Barna has recently done some research around churches and how much they use technology. What I found interesting about this research relates to the number churches that now have web sites.
Back in 2000, just one-third of Protestant churches (34%) had a church website. That exploded to 57% in 2005, and has inched upward since then to 62%
62% of Protestant churches have web sites. On one hand that is a great number. Churches are still adopting the web as an effective tool to utilize. What I would really be interested in knowing is how many of those churches do more than just cater to their members.
What percentage of those churches are actually doing ministry online vs. being just an information kiosk for attenders? How does your church do at giving all online visitors a reason to keep coming back to your site?
There were some other numbers from the research that actually caught me by surprise. I thought more churches would actually be tapping into these types of online ministry opportunities.
- One out of every four Protestant churches (26%) now has some presence on one or more social networking sites (such as MySpace).
- Podcasting has been adopted by one out of every six churches (16%).
- Blogging is also invading the ministry world. One-eighth of Protestant churches (13%)
This lower-than-expected numbers got me wondering. Why are some many churches not taking advantage of these latest opportunities for ministry? George Barna actually comments on this toward the end of the article.
“Many small churches seem to believe that new tools for ministry are outside of their budget range or may not be significant for a church of their size. It may be, though, that such thinking contributes to the continued small size of some of those churches.”
I think it may come down to a couple of different factors.
- Churches do not put a large priority on doing ministry via the Internet - most church sites are used more as an information kiosk for members than for ministry to online visitors
- Church Staff feel it would be expensive to do these things - In many cases it is free or would incur a considerably low cost to podcast or blog on a regular basis
Barna concludes the presentation of his research by re-affirming the importance of the Internet as a ministry tool that churches need to have a ministry strategy for.
“The Internet has become one of the pivotal communications and community-building tools of our lifetime. Churches are well-advised to have an intelligent and foresighted Internet strategy in order to facilitate meaningful ministry,” Barna commented.”
Does your church or organization have a strategy for using the Internet to do ministry? What is it? What types of methods are you using?
