Each week MinistryCSS.com adds plenty of great ministry websites to inspire you.  Here are four of my favorite recently added church websites:

Brainerd Baptist Church

Access Church

Mission Community Church

Broadmoor Baptist Church

If you have a great looking website that you want added to this church website gallery, visit MinistryCSS.com and submit it for review.

Printed business cards are being used less and less.
And more and more of them are almost thrown away instantly once given out. People digitize most of that nowadays.

But what about a digital business card? You can email it or link to it from your printed card, which will maximize the lifespan of your contact information.

John Saddington of ChurchCrunch has released a free Digital Business Card Wordpress theme for download. It’s beautiful, sleek, and highly efficient.

If you are going to have a business card, think about making it a digital one. Be sure to stop by John’s blog and thank him for giving away such goodness for free.

Something exciting is happening! More and more churches are getting great church websites.

In fact, there are so many great church website designs that it is becoming difficult to list and keep track of them all. Fortunately, MinistryCSS.com takes on that challenge beautifully. Instantaneously, it is the new top church websites list.

If you have a ministry website that looks great and was designed with XHTML/CSS (tableless), you can submit your ministry web design for free to MinistryCSS.com. All submissions are:

1. Archived with a full screen capture of the homepage.
2. Able to be rated by other MinistryCSS.com users.

In other words, over time MinistryCSS.com will become an archived gallery of the best church web designs ranked by you and other users around the world.

View it.
Contribute.
Use it.

Many consider SXSW to be the best interactive media conference in the world. You learn from minds like Guy Kawasaki and the people at Facebook and Google. Unfortunately, SXSW has had little if any church oriented content in the past.

You can change that.

You can vote for SXSW Interactive to have several church oriented sessions in 2010. Why should you have to choose between SXSW and a church media conference? Let’s merge them together! If enough of us vote, then we have a good chance of getting these church panels.

FIRST STEP
Create a free profile for voting at http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/users/register
(an email confirmation will be sent)

SECOND STEP
Vote today for the church panels by clicking the “thumbs up” icon located near the top left of the following four pages:

#1 :: Creating Authentic Online Community
>> Tony Steward, Carlos Whittaker, John Saddington, & Cynthia Ware (moderator)

#2 :: Technology For Results Not Profits
>> Bobby Gruenewald, Brad Abare, Kent Shaffer, & Terry Storch (moderator)

#3 :: LifeChurch.tv - Reaching 2 Million+ With Technology
>> Terry Storch, Tony Steward, Bobby Gruenewald, & Kent Shaffer (moderator)

#4 :: Pushing Technological Change Without Alienating Your Co-Workers
>> Kem Meyer & mystery experts

Please spread the word and help us rock the vote!

When Clover launched their church website company in May 2008, I appreciated their immediate sponsorship of Church Relevance. But more than that, I was intrigued by their premade church websites that did not look like premade websites. They were clean and beautiful.

Now 14 months later, I am simply impressed.

I see more and more church websites sporting a “Made by Clover” icon. Their content management system is outstandingly simple yet powerful. And Clover has become an active supporter of many of my favorite church blogs, conferences, and magazines.

THE PROS

• Very Low Cost
  Every Clover website costs a one-time fee of $1,000 plus $20 per month for hosting and support.
• Quick Turnaround
  Rather than waiting months for a custom developed site, a Clover website is available the same day as purchase.
• Easy to Use
  The content management system is one of the easiest to use (if not the easiest) I’ve seen.
• Robust Features
  You can have online calendars, sermons, videos, and more.
• Search Engine Optimized (SEO)
  Despite being Flash websites, they are optimized for search engines.
• Beautiful Aesthetics
  As you can see below, the websites look good.

THE CONS

• So Easy It Is Dangerous
  Clover’s content management system is so easy to use that it risks empowering aesthetically-challenged users to turn a beautiful premade site into an ugly site through poor color choices and media uploads. However, in fairness all content management systems risk to some extent empowering people who should not design.
• Flash-Based
  I am not a fan of all Flash websites, primarily because of visitor inconveniences such as the inability to copy and paste useful info like a church address or event details. But Flash does look cool.
  *UPDATE* - Clover informed me that their sites actually do provide for the ability for visitors to copy and paste content.
• Premade vs 100% Custom  Tailored
  Theoretically, a 100% custom tailored website is better than a premade site. Ideally, a church website will be custom designed by a very talented designer that understands how to create desired responses and communicate the church’s unique DNA through the smallest online details. However, this is very, very expensive and difficult. And sometimes the beauty of a premade design can do a better job communicating your brand than the custom design of a designer still learning the ropes.

Visit CloverSites.com to see a video of their content management system and actually demo it yourself.

Church on the Move (Tulsa, OK) is currently renovating their facilities. In a recent building campaign update, Hank Spieker of Selser Schaefer Architects explains an interesting design decision to make a cozier feeling auditorium by randomly varying chair colors with gold (66%), scarlet (11%), purple (11%), and black fabrics (11%).

The idea is that whenever you are in the auditorium that it will always feel full. It will never appear like there are a bunch of empty seats anywhere.

Varying chair colors is a great design theory for large churches with multiple service times. For most of these churches, popular service times are packed while less attended service times can leave the auditorium looking sparse.

For more thoughts from Hank Spieker, go to the 4:55 mark on the following video:

For Discussion:
- What are some of your favorite architectural design tricks?

Environmental design for churches has changed drastically over the last two decades (at least on the fringes). It has become much more than church interior design. It has evolved into creating entire worlds and environments.

For example, when Cornerstone Harvest Church (Lima, OH) recently revamped their Heir Force youth ministry, they hired Little Mountain Productions to develop the environmental design. The result was a youth ministry design that featured a lifesize M-1 Abrams tank and 40 foot wing span plane coming out of the walls.

To complement these installations, Little Mountain Productions also added acoustic panel military graphics to the room.

In case you are wondering how they did it, here are some production shots.

OooRah!

Recently, I had the opportunity to discuss the future of church websites over a video conference with Cleve Persinger and the team at The Chapel (Libertyville, IL). I spent some time sharing my thoughts on effective SEO church marketing, and Cleve was kind enough to archive the talk for your enjoyment.
[pardon the rocky audio]

To sum it up, optimize your church website content by using the keywords that are most often searched by the people your are called to reach. You can research these keywords with Google AdWords Keyword Tool.

For Discussion:
- What is your church marketing SEO strategy?