Monday 6 July 2015

Websites Again

I have mentioned in the past how I believe that the church website is more important than the sign outside your church.  Well it turns out that, when you are in vacancy, this is even more important.

When a church is allowed to call a new minister, their name is added to the list of vacant charges where the probationer looking for their first charge, or a serving minister that is called to move, may obtain contact details.  On the back of this contact, the congregation will send out a parish profile, which gives details of the congregation and perhaps an idea of the type of minister they wish to call. 

It has came up in discussion with a number of my fellow candidates that they would not apply to a congregation that doesn't have a website.  A number of reasons have been given to me for this, but the main consensus is that it shows a congregation that doesn't wish to sell itself, both to the candidate and most importantly, to the local community.  The candidates that are looking all want to look behind the profile, and see the things the congregation is involved in.  They may also want to download a parish profile before making the first contact.

Just in the interests of making yourself visible to your community, you need a website.  And that website needs to say on its front page, where you are, what time you meet, and a bit about what you believe.  An evening spent learning to work blogger (who host this site) or Wordpress is a good investment in your time. 

Burning your parish profile onto a CD and posting it to every candidate is not a good use of your time.

If you don't have even the most basic of websites, then I'm probably not going to come and be your OLM, and a many of my full time colleagues will avoid you as well.

1 comment:

  1. OH, who is betting that they thought this was a good idea, and was up to date. Mind you i remember seeing parish profiles about 5 years ago and some were still typed on typewriters so i suppose this is some kind of progress. Could 121 not just give them email address and have done with it?

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