First Baptist Church on the Web

Linked From They're Missing the Web Crowd 

I attended a big huge Baptist Church in an upscale suburb of Nashville yesterday (my parents are members there),  and it was massive.  It seemed like a sporting event in terms of the facilities.  Traffic cops,  guys waving you on as you enter the parking lot,  directing you to parking spots (like Disney World),  huge concourses like the Sports Coliseums,  and TV Monitors showing what's happening "inside".  

Of course, inside, there were Huge Screens on the left and the right displaying words to songs on Powerpoint type backgrounds (maybe a bit better than powerpoint),  and video of the speaker or "person at the front". 

I held a huge bulletin (program) in my hand with listings of the Church's upcoming week's events.

I had ,  earlier in the morning,  visited the Website to find the time for the late Sunday worship.  It was not an easy task.   I had to notice the calendar and click on today's date, and then scroll down.  For a Church with such massive resources,  especially in all of the latest "traditional" mass media technology (ie. Big screens , print materials, etc.),  the Web site doesn't seem to have in mind what vistors might need to see.  Any day of a week there ought to be a major link prominently dispalyed on the page to let them know when they should show up to visit,  and maybe a warning to get there 15 minutes early if they wish to park and walk inside in time to catch the beginning of the service.  We got there about 2 minutes before start time but it took 10-15 minutes to finally make it into the driveway with everybody waiting,  and 5 minutes to make the rather long walk from where we parked,  down the corridor,  and into the sanctuary.

Their site is ASP driven,  but is not making use of the present time...in other words,  it is not aware that Today might be Sunday,  or what events to show as "This week".  The user has to figure that out by clicking the calendar,  and many vistors may not be aware that they can get a listing from clicking onthe calendar.  Even if they do,  the listings do not tell me anything about what's going on for that Sunday.  There's no description of the fact that on this Sunday there's a guest speaker,  and the pastor is not there today.  I found that out from my Dad when he called me as I was on my way about 10 minutes from the Church building.

Clicking on Fall Activities brings back a "No articles found for this category." result.  Hmmm.  No fall activities?  The Fall Activities Link is a sublink off of the Home link.  Never, ever ,  should there be "Nothing" in a major category listing like that.  It's like handing out a balnk sheet of paper when they walk in the door,  except the people reading here may not even show up at all unless they had reason to believe that things are happening here. 

The apparent massive investment in communication technology of this Church makes it look somewhat "clueless" when it comes to the Web.  Of course,  there are absolutely NO discussion areas.

They have a photo gallery,  but the first one I looked at loaded rather slowly.  When I looked at rhe file size of the rather blurry picture, it was 300K!  Yikes!  NO way.

Opportunities for service has two listings: Both Christmas related,  one food baskets and the other to donate toys.  I don't know about you,  but these seem a bit typical (not that they aren't worthwhile,  but it seems a Church of this size would have more.  Perhaps they do,  and if so,  where are they?  Bad impression. 

Church Staff is only listed with email and phone numbers.  Why in the world do you not want to have some sort of Bio/descriptive article about who the person is and what it is exactly that they do? 

Bible Study and Sunday School Class Listings -  these are listed along with the leader/facilitator's name,  but me,  here's a spot for some great "ongoing" interaction.  Weblogs seem to be a great thing for this.  The teacher could keep notes online -  class members could post to a "Multi-author" weblog,  and discussion boards could invite outside participation,  which the class could respond to online as well as discuss in their face to face meetings.

The Home page displays a list of "Church Highlights" in the main content area.  While these are valuable,  I'm not at all convinced they should be the dominant content for the Home Page.  There needs to be "front page" and "Current" news and information here.  And,  there definately needs to be a "Member Login" so that memebrs can get information aimed at their particular involvements and what the Church Communication staff would like to tell them about,  based on their "Profiles" and History.    Also ,  with Member login,  the Home page for the visitor can focus on Descriptive and Defining what the Church is.

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© Copyright 2003 Dale Lature. Last update: 9/23/2003; 3:37:26 PM.