I never thought this day would come. I’ve heard people argue against why it’s not important. I know myself, I’ve said that there are more important things to focus on, but now here I am, doing the very thing I never thought would matter.
I’ll be moving out to Spokane, Washington on Monday. I can’t tell you how excited I am. I’ve lived in Minnesota my whole life and so spreading my wings feels like a liberating experience. However, one of the things I’ve been trying to figure out is how will I ever find a church out there?
I don’t know anybody in the area, I don’t know really much about Spokane. I don’t even know where to start. I did a Google search of churches in Spokane and was overwhelmed by the results, pages and pages of different places to find other Christians. It would take me forever to visit all of these locations (1,630 results to be accurate) and be a major suck of my time to research every single location.
The solution I devised? Look at the church website. If it looked not only up to date, but was designed well, then I would put it on my list of a church to visit.
You may think this sounds shallow and superficial, and you may be right. But let me try to explain myself a little bit. After experiencing a very conservative church culture and seeing the experience many of my friends had with churches through college, I know the type of place I want to attend. I want there to be more than 6 people my age and I want them to be aware of current trends, basically, relevant. I know there are a lot of pastors out there that find the importance of culture and media… well sacrilege, but I think it is a great way to reach out to other people. It’s a stereotype, but churches who know what the importance of a good website also know the importance of relevancy and reaching out to others.
After looking for a church of my own to find, I now know the importance of a good church website. A good church website isn’t built for the congregation (although it’s a plus if it can be used that way) but is a gateway to allow others to get to know you more. It’s a great non-committal way to allow people to get a feeling for what you are about so that when they first visit, they aren’t completely scared out of their minds. So how important is a good church website? Important if you want tech-savvy people to come to your church, which is becoming the case more and more as younger generations grow up.
I’ll keep you posted as the search continues. What do you think? Think I’m being shallow or is there a fair argument to be made here? Let me know in the comments!
