Here is the review of the best links of 2009’s 8th week.

America’s Religious Gap
The importance of religion in Americans’ lives has interesting geographical differentiation. States whose residents are least likely to report that religion is important tend to be concentrated in New England and the far West (with the exception of Utah). (Via)

Students do not know the Bible
It is becoming increasingly difficult to teach English Literature because students do not know the Bible or classical mythology.

Children get 1st mobile phone at average age of 8
In the UK, 35% of children own a cell phone by age eight, according to the Personal Finance Education Group. Children as young as seven were offering to do chores in exchange for cash to buy ringtones. (Via)

Anti-social Behavior In Girls Predicts Adolescent Depression Seven Years Later
University of Washington social scientists tracked first- and second-graders for seven years and found that anti-social behavior among girls and anxiety among both sexes predicted depression in early adolescence. Surprisingly, early signs of depression were not predictive of adolescent depression. Boys with early anti-social behavior typically go on to show more anti-social behavior while girls may turn inward with symptoms, morphing into other mental health problems such as depression, eating disorders, anxiety and suicidal behavior during adolescence.

Bond with Mom Helps Kids Make Friends
A child who has a strong relationship with Mom during preschool years tends to form closer friendships in grade school. Children who were securely attached to Mom at age three showed more open emotional communication with mothers and better language ability at four and a half. Open emotional communication in turn predicted fewer hostile attributions at first grade, which predicted greater teacher-reported friendship quality at third grade.

10 Reasons Why Web Ministry Applications and Initiatives Fail
(1) Never Built. (4) Bad Modeling. (8) Strategy. Read the post for the other 7 reasons.

Digital Evangelism Issues
The people behind Internet Evangelism Day launched a blog. This year’s Internet Evangelism Day is April 26, 2009.

Facebook has 175 million active users
This includes people in every continent–even Antarctica.

The Internet has 1 billion users
According to the comScore World Metrix audience measurement service, the Internet surpassed 1 billion visitors in December 2008.

Top 10 Twitter Tips for Beginners
(1) Shrink you URLs. (4) Use the @ sign. (9) Pick a good desktop client. Read the post for the other 7 tips.

Study finds recession associated with increases in minority victims of crime
The victimization of both female and male blacks and Latinos increases during or after periods of economic recession, according to a study by researchers Karen Heimer of the University of Iowa and Janet Lauritsen of the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

How the Average U.S. Consumers Spend Their Income
It includes a comparison of the spending habits of different age groups.

The Middle Class Majority
For the first time in history more than half the world is middle-class—thanks to rapid growth in emerging countries.

Download NewSpring Church’s Communications Manuals
Get copies of NewSpring Church’s (Anderson, SC) Visual Identity Standards manual and Communications Standards manual for free.

50 Free High-Quality Icon Sets
Get 50 beautifully designed, free and professional high-quality icons for desktop and Web design.

Book Cover Design Inspiration
A collection of 1000+ fairly well-designed book covers. (Via)

MemberHub for Churches
MemberHub was designed specifically to help churches provide and manage private, online homes for each of their sub-groups.

MinistryQuestions.com
A new place to ask questions and get answers for ministry.

THE REVIEW OF 2008
- Rick Warren’s 12 Insights on Worship
- Q+A :: Meth Statistics

THE REVIEW OF 2007
- Sand Communication :: Advertising on Oceanfront Beach
- The Power of a Positive Environment
- Charles Stanley on Doing Church
- Donald Miller on Wasting Time
- Leading Change Through Emotions
- Top American Christian Leaders :: How Likeable Are They?

Church Relevance’s list of the top church websites has now grown to 85 sites. And by far, it is the best church web design gallery I’ve created yet. As a designer, it is thrilling to see more and more churches recognizing the importance of quality design and launching great websites.

Ten new church websites have been added to the list. Here they are in alphabetical order:

Edgepoint Church (Powell, TN)

Igreja Batista Missionaria (Ipatinga, Brazil)

James River Assembly (Ozark, MO)

New Life Church (Conway, AR)

North Point Community Church (Alpharetta, GA)
Now using the same design as their Buckhead campus launched earlier this year.

Planetshakers City Church (Melbourne, Australia)

The Church at South Las Vegas (Henderson, NV)

The Embassy of the Kingdom of God (Oshawa, Ontario, Canada)

Watermark Church (Grand Haven, MI)

Willow Creek Community Church (South Barrington, IL)

For more great examples of church web design, check out the complete list of the Top 85 Church Websites.

For Discussion:
- What are your favorite church websites and why?

The Internet Evangelism Coalition has tweaked and relaunched their church website assessment tool. The new and improved test is very robust with 55 questions. It also includes a free customized report designed to help each church develop strategies to better reach their community.

Each question also comes with tips explaining the importance of each area. A few of my favorite tips are:

• “Splash pages” are intensely irritating to users, and a percentage will never bother to click through. Equally annoying are websites that automatically play music when the visitor arrives at the homepage.
• Poor spelling, grammar, or punctuation will reduce the credibility of any website. And all written text should be checked and revised by someone other than the writer. It is frequently possible to reduce word-count by 25% or more.
• Interior shots will de-mystify and familiarize the church building to outsiders.
• Many people report the experience of emailing a church and never hearing back. If you can’t respond to emails quickly, maybe you should not offer email links on your website!

Web designers may have differing opinions on the importance of each of the 55 areas, but over all, it is an exceptionally useful tool.

FYI: Internet Evangelism Day is April 27th this year.

Here are the notes from the Friday afternoon session I taught at The Internet Ministry Conference 2007 about ”Design is Credibility.”

People think they know you. Even before they know your name, they think they have figured you out. Why?

Strangers make assumptions about you based on your appearance.

The scary part is that their assumptions about you are solely derived from their past assumptions and experiences as well a variety of cultural and psychological reasons. It takes a relationship or an outside opinion to change those assumptions.

PERCEPTIONS 

From the two photos below, which do you perceive to be Bob and which is Tim? 

 
Photo Credit: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

Most perceive the man on the left to be Tim and the man on the right to be Bob. Miami University Researchers are trying to figure out why. One possibility is that the sound of a name crosses over to a visual representation. (source)

These types of effects of category labels on lower-level perception are becoming a concern for researchers in cognitive and social psychology because their existence suggest that we may not ever be able to see what’s actually there but will always be influenced by what we expect to be there.
- Robin Thomas :: Associate Professor of Psychology :: Miami University

In other words, perceptions are influenced by expectations. [More]

Church Relevance - Issue 4
February 2006
by Kent Shaffer

A gentleman once approached us about designing a new website. His business was quickly dwindling, and he was becoming desperate. He had a limited budget and had finally understood the importance of a well designed website. However, before we could even begin designing his site, he invested in pay-per-click advertising. He had a good product, but his website’s poor design was ruining his credibility. The advertising brought 1,200 prospects but only converted two into customers. Instead of reaping a return on his investment, he lost thousands of dollars.

His mistake is a good reminder that marketability should be our first priority. Advertising is not essential for success, but a great product, service, and user experience are a must. Often great marketability leads to word of mouth. Marketability is what brings people back. Every touch point and experience a visitor has at your church should be a positive one. It must be relevant and appealing. Successful marketability is not found in any cure-all solution. Instead, it is a conglomerate of little, positive details.

Churches want to reach new people, but they must also recognize the importance of marketability. Would you rather have more visitors each week or more visitors returning because they made a connection on their first visit? Because reaching new people is essential to church growth, it can be easy to begin to only focus on how to attract new visitors. However, if a church is lacking marketability, their visitor retention and, ultimately, their church membership will begin to dwindle. The same boom of visitors a pastor thinks will grow his church can actually spread negative word of mouth if the church has poor marketability.

An advertisement may attract a visitor to your church, but your marketability will determine if they will return. Visitors can’t afford to spend two months taste testing your church. They usually give you one chance. It is up to you to make everything count. Let’s look at the four biggest areas of your church’s marketability - people, environment, design, and ministry. As we do, ask yourself if you would attend your church.

PEOPLE

The staff members, volunteers, and members that make up your church are the most influential touch points of your ministry. People need personal connections. In fact, just one friendship can be the influence over someone attending or leaving your church. People need the intimacy of friendship and are willing to bear through boring sermons, impersonal congregations, and dilapidated facilities for the sake of friendship. That says a lot! Establishing personal connections is much more difficult for larger churches. As churches grow, people are more inclined to feel faceless or unimportant. It is difficult for visitors to establish a personal connection in a large crowd. Without a connection, church can be a lonely experience. Work hard to create and maintain personal connections with your congregation and visitors.

Regardless of your church’s size, you need to create positive interactions between people. Personable staff and volunteers are essential, but you should also cultivate a congregation and church culture that loves people. Be sure that your efforts are sincere and not mechanical. People are not always expecting five star service, but they will always appreciate it. Think about how you would want to be treated and go out of your way to treat visitors even better. Create opportunities and small groups for people to establish connections. It does not take a huge budget to create a church that creates personal connections. All it takes is time invested into training staff, volunteers, and church members to think about how they can serve and make a difference in someone else’s life. This principle of personal connections is essential to ministry. Remember Jesus changed your life through a personal connection, and He expects you to change the world through personal connections.

ENVIRONMENT

Have you ever motivated yourself to do some spring cleaning only to be shocked at the layers of dust you never noticed because of your familiarity with your surroundings? When a visitor comes to your church, they notice all of your facility’s blemishes. Rule number one is keep your church aesthetically pleasing. This means well maintained and clean, but it also means creating a great atmosphere. Your facility may seem cozy, sterile, filthy, or tacky. It depends on the environment you have created. Visitors will make assumptions about your church culture based on your environment. Be sure they make positive assumptions.

Rule number two is be practical. If you lack proper directional signage, you have instantly created a negative experience for your visitors. A lack of direction makes people feel vulnerable and insecure which will leave them with their guard up for your sermon and attempts of personal connection. If your parking lot is chaos, you must deal with angry visitors. Look for ways to make your environment more practical and user friendly. Your church’s environment will shape visitors’ perceptions of you and influence their behavior throughout their experience at your church.

DESIGN

Design will shape your visitors’ perceptions about your church, as well as, each individual ministry. Brand your church. If you don’t understand branding, learn it. Think of branding as organizing your church’s message into a consistent and clear communication of what your church is about. Branding is about communicating your core values at every touch point, especially design.

Your designs should be audience appropriate and appealing. Often visitors are only able to evaluate the ministries targeting them based on a brochure or web site. If your program for married couples looks dated or elderly, you can forget about convincing a young married couple to return to your church. Young audiences in particular expect great design. Consider your web site. Many potential visitors may visit your web site to determine if it is worth going to. People will judge a book by its cover so be sure that your design will attract people not repulse them. Design is a staple in consumer culture.

MINISTRY

Lastly, people will be influenced by your ministry. Strive to make each sermon better than the last. Strive to communicate God’s love. Be conscious of creating a ministry that appeals to the unchurched but never lose sight of preaching the gospel in its fullest. Remember that you cannot please everyone. Your worship or preaching will not appeal to everyone. It’s okay. Understand that it is important that churches within your community differentiate so that there is something for everyone. Follow these three things: always be yourself, always better yourself, and continually further the gospel. People are looking for a real connection. They want to see sincerity. They want to feel God’s Love. Be passionate about your calling.

These four areas are directly related. If you are strong in one area, it will alleviate how hard you have to work in another area to make a good impression. Imagine your success if you excelled in all four areas. Strive for that. If you do, you will grow and be blessed. Great marketability will work for you. Give people something to talk about, and they will advertise for you. Once you have created a place where visitors want to return then you can begin your efforts to draw new visitors in.

November 2005
by Kent Shaffer

Have you ever seen a movie where the hero is shipwrecked and must learn to communicate with islanders in order to survive? That hero learns one thing quickly- his words do not matter.

We all know that words aren’t our only option for communicating, but we live in a word based culture. We go to school to learn how to better use words. Seldom do we get the chance to learn about alternatives to words. When we do, finding the effort to employ them is a whole new process. It is easy to settle for satisfactory. Words get the job done. But if you spend the time to develop other areas of communication, you will find that you are no longer dependent only on words but can mix techniques to create clearer and more effective communication.

There are many ways to communicate without words, but today we will focus of the power of art, environment, and behavior. Every point of contact your ministry has with an individual is communicating something. This something can be good, bad, or neutral. Fortunately, you can learn how to recognize these opportunities and alter them for the best experience. During the next few minutes, I encourage you to review how your ministry is communicating? If there are any bad experiences, I encourage you not to settle for damage control but to always invest the extra effort to create the best experience possible.

Art is powerful. It requires no literacy and communicates to all people. Art comes in many forms from design to performing arts. You can amplify its power by blending two or more forms. Movies blend theatre and music. This combination tells a more powerful story than the film or the music by itself ever could tell. Any art you use in your service should be appropriate and an enhancement to your message. Don’t get in a habit of doing art for art’s sake. This can lead to distractions. Your art should have a purpose when applied to your ministry. The medieval and renaissance Catholic church employed the finest artists to create paintings and stained glass that would illustrate the Bible to their congregations. They also commissioned these artists knowing that the “wow” factor would help draw the public away from the Protestant Reformation. Although the “wow” factor will temporarily attract people to church, it will not bring success if the church’s overall message is not relevant. Even the most impressive attractions will become boring with time. People will respond to the message that is most relevant and understandable. Art is much more than subject matter and “wow” factors. The principles of design will also communicate a message. Colors, shapes, and typefaces all convey messages. They can make you look fun or serious. They can make you look compassionate or apathetic. Color has psychological effects. It can excite. It can depress. It can guide viewers into a variety of emotions without being consciously aware of its effects. The elements of design can also be used to control a viewer’s eye and how he processes information. There are many well-written brochures and web sites that are never read because of poor design. A good designer will use the principles of design to communicate your message not only with words but with the art as well. As society becomes more saturated with media and advertising, people are increasingly drawn to appealing design. If that design offers a relevant message, it will also find plenty of listeners.

Your environment controls the way people perceive your ministry. It will also affect their behavior and how they receive your message. A person’s environment has a peculiar effect on his thoughts, feelings, and actions. We have all experienced the depressing effects of a dreary day, but we have also had the joy of rejuvenating sunshine. Sunshine sells homes. Windows sell fast food. Environments can aid success. In marketing, the effects of environment are called atmospherics. Retailers make use of all five senses and vast amounts of research to create environments that will control the user experience. Fortunately, these same principles work anywhere, and the church can use these concepts to create a more enjoyable and user friendly environment that is conducive to learning God’s Word. No one needs to tell you that people prefer plush seating over hard pews. It’s basic common sense that people will be happier and better listeners if they are comfortable. No one wants to sit through a sermon with their body screaming out in discomfort. Simple things like well-trained ushers and policies will prevent distractions in your service. These are basic principles that most churches practice, but atmospherics can be much more complex. Decor is very important. Your church’s color palette should not be chosen solely on the preferences of the pastor’s wife. Decor should be planned with consideration to a facility’s many users and uses. Color psychology works just as well on walls as it does in print or on canvas. Your facilities color palette can soothe or irritate your congregation. In the mid-twentieth century, there was experimentation in painting classrooms bright yellow to emulate the happiness of sunshine. I certainly do not recommend painting your church bright yellow, but the decor should be an enhancement and appropriate for all uses. I have seen many multi-purpose rooms that bias church social functions and rob the children’s ministry of a stimulating environment. On the other hand, not every exciting environment you see at a store or a theme park will work for your church. Imitating an environment without understanding the how and why could lead to undesired results. Focus on ways you know you can improve your environment. Think about what you want to communicate to people. What type of environment do you think of when you hear the word luxury? How about sterile? Trendy? Soothing? Fun? Look at your environment through someone else’s eyes. What word describes your environment? Take advantage of communicating with your environment.

Our last focus is behavior. Actions do speak louder than words. I have a friend, who is brilliant marketing professional but also an unbeliever. He has asked countless questions about Christianity and always seems unaffected by my words. He is, however, amazed at how I live my life. My actions cause him to keep asking more questions. Without a doubt, it is my actions and how they contradict the world he knows that have become my witness. The communication of the church is not limited to the pastor. Depending of the size of a church, a pastor may or may not be able to know each member by name. With these larger churches, it becomes the responsibility of the staff and volunteers to become ambassadors for the church and the pastor. It only takes one rude volunteer for a parent to decide never to bring his family back to your church. Months of hard work can be reversed in a second. Be sure your workers know your vision. An excited worker will not have negative body language. Remind them of their importance, and encourage them to minister through their actions even when not at church. Your church communicates every day of the week. People are drawn to Christ-like behavior. It is a powerful witness.

We’ve touched the tip of the iceberg on a few ways to communicate without words. There certainly is much more to be said about each area, but it is enough to give you awareness. I highly encourage you to learn more about how your ministry can better communicate.