I’m running a half-hour seminar tomorrow at a training day for people who are funding and facilitating school scripture. Most of the groups that fund scripture in schools don’t have websites — and of the few that do, they appear sometimes as an ‘afterthought’ not really of any particular use to anyone (though there are exceptions).
We’re going to look over the basics of publishing a website, as well as looking at some reasons why this might be a worthwhile thing to do. The focus will be more on functionality than on technical excellence, which is a bit of a shame, though necessary due to time (& the audience).
I had a great — albeit brief — chat with Angus Courtney from Sydney Uni’s Evangelical Union yesterday about Christian marketing & design, which was encouraging. We both got along to FEVA’s Promoting the Word through Image and Text conference last year (highly recommended, by the way).
However, for the purposes of tomorrow, it’s more about convincing people that the web doesn’t have to be scary and does have a legitimate place & purpose in ministry beyond some token page that declares you exist that costs twenty bucks a month to leave up there for no reason at all. Pointless, indeed.
Accordingly, once we’ve gone over potential things that websites are useful for, we’re going to setup a secure way to accept credit card donations up to $2,350 Australian dollars in under fifteen minutes.
The aim, of course, is to demonstrate that even what is traditionally the most terrifying part of web publishing (e-commerce) is entirely within the reach of scripture boards across the country.
I believe there are pastoral and community-building advantages to web publishing, too, and we’ll be looking over that briefly.
I’ll also be taking advantage of this opportunity to promote CYIADA — of course! — as well as making everyone aware we’re still looking for a programmer! We’ve had a couple of great applicants come through and will be trying to arrange interviews over the next week or two, but if you can think of anyone/you are that person we’re looking for, it’s in absolutely no way too late to get in touch!
