Hi from England . . .

[Greiggy]

. . . and that's not New England but where the Mayflower sailed from.

I'm Pastor Ian Greig and I lead a small but growing non-traditional Baptist church just on the south edge of Reading, Berks, which is where H-P, Microsoft, Oracle and all that lot have their headquarters in the UK.

I'm interested in using websites for evangelism and just simply as a means of connecting with post-modern people. Not really a techie but technically minded anough to hack it most of the time. I'm more orientated towards content design than pure graphic design. I don't think a church website should look like a business website but have a more "living" and less neat and ordered approach.

My present challenge is to redesign our present church website
www.shinfield-baptist.org.uk

so that it is orientated towards people who are asking spiritual questions and "seekers" rather than people who might be looking for a different church.

We are in a much more post-Christendom setting than in the US and churchgoing is definitely not part of the culture here, so we have to start in a different place.

Look forward to getting advice through the forum.

[David Gillaspey]

Hi Ian,

Thanks for joining the forum, and for your posts (here and elsewhere in the forum).

No doubt you know of Tony Whittaker, a fellow citizen of your country who has a lot of expertise regarding making church websites evangelistic. I share his passion for this but certainly not his expertise, so I regularly promote his sites; he does the same for my website. Anyway, below are some links to his websites and publications (his sites are usually uncredited, so you'll have to take my word they're his). You may already know of them; if so, I'll list them anyway for the benefit of all.

60+ tips for effective church websites (http://ied.gospelcom.net/church-site-tips.php)
Church websites: a special opportunity (http://guide.gospelcom.net/resources/church-pages.php)
Church websites that reach non-Christians (http://ied.gospelcom.net/church.php)
Web Evangelism Bulletin (http://guide.gospelcom.net/resources/bulletin.php)
A guide to web outreach (http://guide.gospelcom.net/)

Other resources:

There's a church in California that has a nice treatise on postmodernism on its website.

Postmodernism meets Christianity meets Coastlands (http://www.coastlandschurch.org/about_values_postmodern.html)

and finally, one of our members, Bob96, made us aware of a page on his site (that he wrote) that's a guide to seekers about getting to heaven. The thread is here:

http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/forums/showthread.php?t=99

(see posts 11 and 12).

Hope these are helpful.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

[Greiggy]

Very helpful, thanks David. I've got a lot out of the forum already.

I'm familiar with the sites you mentioned re Tony Whittaker but didn't know they were his or even that they pointed back to England -- especially as they are hosted under gospelcom.

I am influenced a lot by his approach -- it just hasn't shown up in the sites I'm responsible for yet.

Thanks again for having the vision for this forum

IanG