Gen-Xer's and Church Web-Sites - Frank McPherson.
Today I had a good conversation with Matt and his wife, Kim, about the unique perspective that Gen-Xers have on church. In particular, Gen-Xers expect far more use of computers and electronic communications such as e-mail, instant messaging, and yes, even PowerPoint.
One of the things that Matt said that really stood out is that he and his wife checked to see whether our church had a web site, and if it didn't that would have told them a lot about our church. The lack of a web site might have caused them to not come to our church.
I think that for anyone associated with Christian churches today, Matt's comment has got to make you think about how you are reaching out and communicating with today's generation.
The conversation inspired many thoughts. One would be, wouldn't it be cool if churches provided mail servers, message forums, online chats, and web server space for weblogs tools to extend their community into cyberspace? When a person joined the church they would be given an email address. They would be provided the webloging tools to contribute to the community by providing their own content. Not many churches have the ability to provide all this themselves, but it wouldn't take much for technology providers to provide this type of service. Take for example Yahoo, which provides mail, forums, and web server space. [more] [Notes From the Cave]
