Brent... very thoughtful and insightful post. I definitely can read and hear your heart that Christ remains first in all things. To this I say "Yes and Amen"... but I think you may be throwing the baby out with the bath water (so to speak). While I would not suggest "tweeting" while the preaching is being done (I hold in high regard for the office and function of the preaching of the Word) I would suggest that afterwards would be a great place/ time to tweet. The best example I see of this being done is at http://www.marshillchurch.org/ with Mark and his team. After the sermon people are encouraged tweet their questions about the sermon and then Mark answers the questions of the cuff. IMHO this is an excellent example of redeeming technology for the purposes of Christ. It allows for the whole church to participate in furthering their understanding of Christ in a corporate manner.

Hey Charles...

Great questions... there are 5 keys to a great website. These are industry standards, not just made up by us. They are...

#1 Visual Design "How does your website look ?"
#2 Structure and Nav " How is your website organized ?"
#3 Interactivity "How do people interact with your website ?"
#4 Functionality "Does your website work ?"
#5 Content "What does your website say ?"

According to "Your Church" Magazine 85% of people will visit your website before the come on a Sunday morning. So it is imperative to tell your story well on the web, if you do not the chances of them coming decreases. The question I always ask pastors about there current site is this..."If you knew nothing about this church, and just visited their website. Would you come on a Sunday morning ?" If you cannot say "YES !". Then you need some help with your website. Check out our "Best Practices" series for a more in depth look at the 5 keys. Thanks for the comment !

Hey Dave and Susan,

On of our staff writers actually wrote this response to the article. And as much as I would love Rick Warren to be a contributer here on Media Outreach... he is not. But you can go here and give him a tweet http://twitter.com/rickwarren . Thanks for commenting !

Good stuff. I looked into coaching with Los.. and it's $200 a month for 4 months ($200 x 4 = $800)... so it still adds up. I am sure its worth it, but I'm moving and don't have extra greenbacks to spare. I guess for now I will have to settle for reading his blog :)

Matt.. thanks for your response. I am not sure that you read this post ... in it I made clear... that these opinions are not ours. We have hired an outside company to call random people and show them random websites and asked that THEY grade them. THEY being people that have absolutely no connection to either Media Outreach or faithHighway.

The mission of "First Impressions" is to allow pastors and churches to hear "from the horses mouth" how they websites are making impressions on first time visitors. Until your comment I have only received very positive and grateful comments and emails from this series of posts.

Your "lets follow your sense of mission to it's logical conclusion" comment is just plain silly. That might be your leaning and your "logical" conclusion... so I will let you own that one. We are simply allowing pastors to see what "outsiders" think about their website when they see it for the first time.

I still think, in reading your comment again, that you are assuming that either Media Outreach or faithHighway assigned this grade to this churches websites. Please re-read the post... it clearly states that we hired an outside company to call random people and ask them to give their "first impressions" of the website.

I am not sure how I can make it any clearer to you then what I have already stated.

Hey Matt thanks for your comment... I started to respond and realized I should just write a post about design that will answer your question directly. You can find the link to the post here http://mediaoutreach.com/2009/08/best-practices-d...

Hey man... I don't mind you linking to my article and or criticizing our content. But I don't like you stealing my bandwidth by embedding my images. Please knock that off... thanks.

ive been rocking flickr for a while... but google... dang gina. It's like my blog died and went to picture heaven !!!!!

scbubba I struggled with that at first as well... and I went back and reread that he, Shane, thought that it could be used as a metaphor for his idea of the right brain left brain thing. My left brain still didn't like it... but my right brain loved the idea :).

Shaun.. I have been around a lot of different leaders using different tactics to avoid moral failure... these outward drastic measures won't do anything if the leader allows crap into their heart / life. I think "rules" might be able to help - but I have also seen those that have "rules" break them and have an affair.