Thursday, February 16, 2012

Easy Website Updates for the Lenten Season

During this Lenten season I’ve noticed quite a few interesting things that parishes using OSV’s websites have done to keep everyone up-to-speed on church activities. After seeing all of these great ideas I thought I would take a moment to share a few tips with you in order to keep your parishioners in-the-know. 

Tip 1. Start with adding a special tab or section specifically for Lent which leads to a page that has information about activities that will be going on for the next 40 days. 

Tip 2. Include a page on Ash Wednesday, what it means, how we should reflect, and the special mass times to receive ashes. Some parishes are creating pages with special slideshows with the Stations of the Cross on them. 

Tip 3. Create pages on your Eucharistic Adoration events and times. Don’t forget to include the actual meaning of these events, giving your parishioners knowledge about the Catholic faith and what we believe in this time of year. 

Tip 4. Consider starting a blog on your site specifically for the season. Ask the parishioners how they are sacrificing. How are the children in the parish being asked to participate? Ask the children what they are giving up or doing for others during Lent. 

Tip 5. Finally, consider sending or posting daily spiritual meditations, prayers, and reflections. 

Once you have implemented your Lenten section on your website make sure you promote it. Parishes are doing this by mentioning it in their bulletin with references to the information found exclusively on the website. They’ve also made announcements at the end of mass informing the parish about the Lenten and reflection sections on their website. 

Your parish website is a window to your community. It’s that location that your parishioners can turn to for their spiritual knowledge and growth. Why not make the most of it during this special time of year.

What kinds of things are you doing with your parish website during Lent? Go ahead and leave a comment on the blog so that we can continue to share ideas.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Engage and Inform Your Parishioners - Use Your Website

Where do we send our parishioners regarding questions about the Faith? Certainly the pastor, deacons and associates are all good sources, but they are not always available. Does your parish have a decent library?

It is more likely that parishioners will search the web for their answers. Why not have them find the answers on the parish website? Should we not take responsibility for providing basic information about what we believe and why? As we become more accustomed to finding information on the internet, we also must step up the level of information we provide.

First we must raise the level of priority of the web site as part of our parish communications. As part of our planning we must consider who our website is reaching. Usually we think of the site for visitors, so we include schedules and bulletins. But we also can make the website a source for our parishioners, by including great information about what we believe, and also daily meditations and news articles that help inform us. We won't attract people to the site regularly unless we have interesting and useful information available there.

Research from Villanova University, and the Archdiocese of Boston indicates that parishioners are looking for more than a glorified bulletin when we look for information about parishes. And others are looking for a home that welcomes them. Our Sunday Visitor is helping to meet this need with Catholic content built into websites.

For a couple good examples of parish websites, visit: http://www.stannecsg.com/ and http://www.sacredheartquincy.org/.