I think the future of evangelism is search engine optimized (SEO) online content.  By no means, will this replace face-to-face evangelism or other methods. However, online behavior is opening doors of opportunity that will only increase with time.

Optimizing your ministry for search engines is more than trying to show up in the top 10 search results for “your church name” or “churches in your city.” Using Google to answer life’s questions is normal for those with Internet access. Imagine what your church could accomplish if it provided relevant answers in these moments when people are more open-minded and seeking truth.

Scenarios:

Imagine someone in Chicago searching for “Chicago divorce attorney” because she is tired of trying to make her marriage work. What if a Chicago church has SEO content in the first results offering free marriage counseling or advice on how to make a marriage work?

Imagine a teen that is fed up with being the school outcast and begins searching for how to properly slit his wrists. What if a ministry had SEO content offering real time help (a live suicide prevention counselor) or guidance on alternatives to suicide?

What it looks like:

Creating relevant SEO content is not a bait-and-switch tactic. That will only fail.
It is also not about Bible-thumping or aggressive evangelism. That will only turn people off before they listen.

Creating relevant SEO content is providing relevant, helpful solutions to the problems people are searching about online. These solutions may be alternatives to what they thought they would find, but that doesn’t mean these solutions won’t connect with them, help them, and change their lives.

Make your goal to be able to connect with the searcher and offer instant help (i.e., advice, counseling, a team of workers, tangible resources). Equally important is that you make these connections sustainable. Don’t let the relationship die with the initial contact. Provide avenues for you to continue helping and for them to be able to hear the gospel and/or get plugged in to a local church at their own pace as you gradually earn their trust and respect.

Resources to Consider:

Church Web Optimizer
The creators of Ekklesia 360 and Cobblestone Community Network are launching a new church SEO service this year called Church Web Optimizer. From what I understand, it will be a very affordable alternative for churches to hiring a corporate SEO firm. The tools look great, but the tailored advice from a real human is one of the best parts. Features include:

• Google Analytics Installation
• Google Webmaster Tools Installation
• Google Sitemaps Submission
• Church Website Analytics /Pre-SEO Evaluation and Conference Call
• Google Local Search Submission
• Featured Directory Submission on Church Cloud & Sermon Cloud
• Online Targeted Advertising (eg. Google Adwords)
• Social Media Strategy Implementation
• Full SEO Services: Link building, SERPS Monitoring and Custom SEO Implementation

Google’s Keyword Tool
If your budget is $0, Google offers a nice free keyword research tool that identifies what topics people search for the most and how they word their searches. Relevantly sprinkling a few keywords into your content is one of many factors that will help your search engine results.

SEOmoz
If you want to dive into giving yourself a search engine marketing education, SEOmoz is a great place to start. They have a well-respected blog, articles (some free), and tools (some free).

For Discussion:
- What do you think are some effective strategies for church SEO?
- What SEO tools would you add to this list?

LifeChurch.tv’s free Bible, YouVersion.com, has now reached 1 billion minutes of Bible reading on mobile devices.

That’s 19 centuries and 16.7 million hours of Bible reading!

YouVersion Mobile has become my preferred way to read the Bible. You can read it for free on any mobile deviced that has Web access, and free custom apps are available for iPhones, BlackBerry phones, and Android phones.

Spread the word: OneBillionMinutes.com

SimChurch is a book by Douglas Estes of Western Seminary (San Jose, CA) and Berryessa Valley Church (San Jose, CA) that explores the answers to the question, “what does it mean to ‘do’ church in the virtual world?” I had an opportunity to ask Douglas Estes a question of my own:

What are the main advantages that a virtual church has that a brick and mortar church doesn’t?

Here is what Douglas said:

The average Christian in our world today is only vaguely aware of the coming role of the internet in being and doing church, and many are stuck on the questions of whether a virtual church is even real, or possible, or just a glorified video game. Most people can think up disadvantages (whether accurate or not), but if they see me praising the virtual church … it may seem crazy to them! Or cause them to wonder how much of my retirement I have invested in Google, Apple or Second Life.

To answer your question, we need an honesty-check: Are we willing to admit that any and every type of human church has both advantages and disadvantages? That traditional Lutheran churches and conservative Baptist churches and überhip ‘contemporary’ non-denominational churches and every other imaginable type of churches have strengths and weakness? I meet a surprising number of church-leader people who can’t wholeheartedly say ‘yes’ to that question. They’re convinced their version of the church is the one that God has blessed. If we can admit that all churches found in our world today have advantages and disadvantages, then here are three of the top advantages I see of virtual churches:

First, the most obvious is the increased reach a virtual church can offer as a congregation of believers. When I say reach, I don’t mean it will help Glory Church have more tithers members around the world. I mean that it will allow churches to reach areas where a brick and mortar church has a harder time reaching. We in the U.S. forget that our particular culture makes brick and mortar churches much more accessible than almost any other world culture (for a variety of reasons). In fact, virtual churches will not just increase reach in communist countries, but also post-Christian societies, cultures torn by war, isolated regions of our world, or places inhabited by busy upper-middle class workaholics. Part of this reach, I hope, will be within our own Western world—where being a Christian may one day have more to do with regular virtual connections with our church co-laborers and a lot less to do with one day a week performances.

This leads to a second big advantage of the virtual church: Its ability to redefine and even reform what church means in many parts of the world. Myself, I’m a pastor of a typical brick and mortar church in the US. If I had to pick one model to describe our church, it would probably be contemporary-attractional (though we subvert this at times). I say this because like most churches we are locked into Sunday performances; no matter how much I talk about being a follower of Jesus is more than this, actions do speak louder than words. Some folks would like to get rid of my kind of church to set up something communal but what the church needs (as always!) is some reformation, not destruction (as razing all our buildings to all meet in communes or homes would surely lead to). All this to say: The coming of the virtual church can retrain Christians in thought and practice to understand that church is not so much about a place or building but about the people who are connecting with the purpose of building up the Kingdom. (I see lots of people on blogs defend virtual churches by stating that church is the people … but this is inaccurate. The church is the people united by the presence of Christ on mission for the Kingdom. Just a few Christians hanging out at Seattle’s Best for coffee does not make a church, even if God may be there with them). So the virtual church can reform the church at large by reminding the church at large of the true nature of community (without demolishing the church at large, as some alt-church movements desire).

Third, and the thing that I am actually the most excited about, is the advantage the virtual church has to push margins. I need to say up front that I do not consider myself a margin-pusher, a radical, or anything close to that (far from it, actually). I’m just not wired that way. But as I was writing SimChurch, I really was struck by the testimonies of folks in virtual churches … and began to realize that many of these folks are marginalized-by-society people. And then I started to read a few Christian “trolls” (shouldn’t that be an oxymoron?) who would respond to blog posts about internet churches, implying that people who can’t or won’t go to a brick and mortar church are somehow lesser, weirder, weaker in their faith, or some other implicit negative descriptor. To be fair, many of these comments were not mean-spirited as in the political blogosphere, but there definitely was a strong undercurrent of ‘if you can’t go to a brick and mortar church, then there’s something wrong with you.’ To be honest, this torqued me quite a bit and got under my skin. Yes, a lot of testimonies from virtual churchgoers that I saw, read, heard, or heard about are in fact from people the world would write off—but why would the church do this? Just because a person feels uncomfortable in a Western-style brick and mortar church makes them unworthy of Christian community? If you met me in person, you’d know I’m not a bleeding-heart anything but to know that a real church with a real community could reach real people that Christ died for—people who have been marginalized by both society and church culture—does something for me. The church I pastor is an urban church, and I honestly know it will be very hard for us to reach the many marginalized people who walk past our church each day because they just don’t ‘fit in’ (and no amount of convincing myself they should fit—or simplistically thinking we just need to love them more—will cause that to happen). But a virtual church can reach them. And I applaud them for that.

For more insights on the pros, cons, challenges, and peculiarity of doing virtual church, read SimChurch.

Disclaimer: I received a free review copy of SimChurch.

For the fourth lab of Catalyst, Shane Hipps, author of Flickering Pixels, discussed how technology shapes us in unexpected ways. Shane is an ex-adman turned Mennonite pastor. Here is what he said:

When I was in advertising and worked for Porsche, I had a sense that I was creating a counterfeit gospel. I left advertising because I did not agree with how it manipulated people’s lives. While in advertising, I learned about what influences consumer subcultures.

The implications of how technologies shape you are vast and deep.

ORAL CULTURE (<1500)
<tribes / empathy / intimate>

In order to understand community, we must go back in time to the age of oral culture. This means that you must rely on the people around you. You share stories with each other… repetitive, conservative stories. People in an oral culture tend to be very tribal and communal and empathetic.  They are intimate in their living conditions. And their acts of violence are passionate.

The technology of writing changes this.

LITERATE CULTURE (1500-1850)
<individuals / separate>

Writing separates you from the tribe. Reading and writing as a technology demands isolation. In order to read, you can’t interact with others well while reading. Literacy brings the rise of individualism. It makes relationships distant. It has the ability to be anonymous. You no longer have to know the communicator in order to know his thoughts.

ELECTRONIC AGE (1850<)
<tribes of individuals / empathy at a distance / intimate anonymity>

The phonograph, the telegraph, and the radio revolutionized communication. Marshall McLuhan says, “The electronic age has given man an ear for an eye.” The separation experienced from literate culture is less destructive than what happens when oral cultures are fused through electronic media. It is a tangle of complex emotions. For example, while cell phones connect you with people digitally, they also separates you physically from the people closest to you. There are pros and cons.

Empathy at a distance is what happens when you sit down for dinner in front of the TV and you are emotionally engaged by the trauma on the news without being able to help. There may be an initial response, such as giving support to relief organizations. However, the human being was not designed to withstand human suffering all day every day. In order to survive, you grow numb, which leads to apathy not action.

Technology allows you to share intimate details with the masse. However, the way you preserve intimacy is by exclusive boundaries. The moment that curtain parts and everyone else is invited in there is no more intimacy.

Tech based communication lowers our inhibitions digitally the same way alcohol lowers inhibitions in person. For example, teens use social networks to do the following:

• 92% keep in touch with friends (which is normal behavior)
• 60% play a trick on someone
• 44% ask someone out
• 42% write something you wouldn’t say in person
• 24% break up with someone

So what does all this mean?

The more aware you become of these dynamics, the better it is for you as a leader. The trick is to understand the paradox. And if you understand the paradox then you can be discerning. You can become more intentional about your relationships.

Technology is like food. Ice cream has a proper place in one’s diet, but if you only eat ice cream then you are in trouble. If you only consume tech communication, it is not healthy.

If you doubt that these online mediated relationships are less than in-person relationships, they are. They are thinner.

Jon Acuff, Anne Jackson, and Carlos Whittaker discussed blogging at Catalyst’s first lab. They shared their blogging journeys and answered questions. Here are the highlights:

Carlos: With my blog, there is an actual expectation from my readers that there is a real, tangible relationship.

Carlos: After four years of blogging every day, I temporarily quit blogging because suddenly my life was taking shape because of my blog rather than my blog taking shape because of my life. So what I am learning right now is how to create very safe boundaries in my life with my blog.

Jon: The devil will never attack something that you are horrible at. The devil will try to get you to ruin your story. He wants you to discount your story. He wants you to lie.

Jon: I think fame destroys more ministries than anything else right now. Reality God knows who you are, and no other acknowledgement is greater than that. God loves to pour His stories into us so that we can pour it out.

QUESTION: How do you reevaluate the balance between your blog and your family?

Carlos: I see it as a constantly evolving decision making process. All three of my kids are different. And as they are getting older, I am realizing that they are they own persons, and I can’t use them as puppets.

QUESTION: Should a youth pastor blog?

Jon: Don’t start a blog unless you have something to say. The first question needs to be “What can I give to my readers?” rather than “How can I get more readers?”

Anne: Writing is one of those things that takes time. Don’t be intimidated by the art of writing.

QUESTION: What are things you would warn against?

Carlos: Manipulating relationships online is something you can do online without even knowing it.It is probably setting the same boundaries as you would with people offline.

QUESTION: Why do you not autofollow everyone on Twitter?

Carlos: There are too many porn sites that are on Twitter, and I don’t want to follow them. Also, it takes time to answer direct messages.

Jon: I was judging the value of my self-worth as  my stats and followers rather than how God sees me.

QUESTION: How do you look at tough topics that are import to talk about but could offend affiliations?

Anne: There is a difference between a story and a testimony. Exploiting a weakness is wrong, but a testimony gives glory to God.

QUESTION: As we are learning what our story is, where should we start?

Jon: Writing is just about writing. Perfectionism says it needs to be perfect, which is crazy. Your story is like your life… it is not done. Don’t wait for it to be done before you share it. Often you audience helps guide your story.

QUESTION: How should an organization start up a blog for its brand?

Carlos: When an organization starts a blog specifically to build their brand, bloggers can smell that. But when there is a story, people listen. When there is a heart and a face to a company it goes miles.

Want a sneak peek at YouVersion Live?

A public webinar giving you a glimpse at this free tool’s capabilities will be on Wednesday, September 23rd from 2-3pm CST. Simply visit youversion.com/live to participate.

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.