How To Grow Church Group?

I always start with the simple question... "What do you want the site to do?" In other words, if my church can't tell me why they want the website, I'll hold off until they know what they want. Personally, I think you should do as much as possible to keep real communication and fellowship face to face. This gathering together and speaking the truth in love to one another is the way God designed our church bodies to function and to grow! Our church's website, then, is simply an information portal. It provides access to church documents and sermon downloads. We may (and should) integrate the church directory somehow, but I haven't really been told to make that happen.

So... to get more "Drupal" exposure for church websites, I really just ask my friends who are interested what they want a site for. I tell them Drupal can do it and I know how to make it do it... but I leave it at that. If they think it would be an important tool for their ministry, I'm happy to help them make it. And I'm happy to share the "how-to"s with anyone in the group. : )

Absolutely agree with mfer's analysis: helping often doesn't involve giving people what they think they want. Fortunately, there are plenty of religious analogies to support this. God doesn't always give us what we think we want. And that's the point of this comment. Church website development today generally involves dealing with people who aren't in a position to make well-informed decisions even about content, let alone the technology to support delivery of the content. So, as a developer/helper, you have to start with story analogies that these decision makers can relate to. I find it helpful to use words like "adventure of faith", because essentially that's what a congregation does when they let a knowledgeable developer "run with it". That developer, who does have some knowledge and a vision for what the website could be, is essentially acting in the role of "prophet". This is a term that often resonates with congregations and their ordained leaders.

Of course there are "false prophets" out there, and prophets who felt genuinely inspired, but turn out to be wrong, or too busy, or whatever. That's ok, too.

One of the things I'm finding is that agile development models work well in situations like this. If the congregation is having trouble envisioning what the website could be, then show them something - anything. Don't worry about making it perfect, and about getting down an exhaustive list of requirements. Just put something down in front of them and let them fix/ criticise it. This is why Drupal is such a great tool. It's so easy to get something running, and so easy to fix & change stuff.

Soon (end of March) others will be able to use our church's new site as a starting point for this envisioning exercise. We're hoping to release as many as possible of the intermediate work products as foundations for other churches to use & build on.

So first time poster, long time lurker. I believe that the two questions that were, asked were:

1. How can this group provide more added value to those of us in the group?
2. How can the group reach others who need it?

I started reading the posts in this group back in June 2007, but only recently decided to actually join the group. My logic was that I wasn't absolutely certain that Drupal was a good choice for some of the churches that I work with and I wanted to read and absorb what others were thinking. The Geeks and God podcast was excellent for me in learning more about Drupal and helping to formulate a full and complete understanding of how to utilize Drupal within the unique confines of the church. That combined with the interest in this topic is what finally persuaded me to join the group.

With that said, I believe that there are others who are most likely lurking as well and so one way to bring them into the group discussions might be to continue to create posts that would address specific ideas and concepts that could be applied to churches. Posts are somewhat frequent, but I would think that being intentional by design in providing appealing content and concepts to consider would be something that would encourage more discussion.

Additionally, I would think that developers/designers who are looking for ideas to work with their church would greatly benefit from the ability to be a part of a larger group that shares the same vision and idea. So, by continuing to create posts and generate discussion, the needs, both real and perceived, of the other drupalers who are a part of the group as well as the lurkers who read the posts would begin to be met.

Now, the question is what should those posts be on? Well, I would tend to think that the posts that would be most beneficial to the church world and it's developers would be posts that take an idea or a problem and works towards providing an adequate solution to that problem. I realize that's a broad statement and absolutely no help whatsoever, but I believe that also provides us with a wide range of opportunity to pull from, whether we talk about theming, graphic design, modules, or anything else.

With regards to using this group to reach others who need it, that's a tough one. I believe that maybe the best thing that we can begin to do as developers is to raise the standards of church web development through the effective use of Drupal. I believe that we must use clean design, effective module use, and a strategic development mindset in order to create something that early adopters will rush to, mid adopters will desire to be a part of, and that late adopters will embrace. If we can do that, then I believe that other developers will begin to seek out knowledge about Drupal, and thus grow the group.

I do apologize for the length of this post, but I have one more comment. In my life, I go to church for 1 hour a week. I host a small group at my home for 2 hrs a week. I long to be a bigger part of my church community, but quite frankly, I've got a 40 hr week real job (real job - one you hate going to, hate being at, and hate leaving because you know you've got to go back - that's a real job) and a three-day weekend every week to build websites, provide technical support, and train churches and pastors on how to use technology effectively. I've been watching and learning about Drupal for the past 7 months, I've built one Drupal site for a client and I'm just getting started on rebuilding an existing website for a church in Drupal. What made the decision for me to step in and learn Drupal was that I felt that it could provide the sense of community that I am wanting from my church and it could connect me with other like-minded individuals within my church who I may never have the opportunity to see. As I see it, yes the youth pastor could spend 2 hrs with a teen, but if he spent 2 hours on his blog, how many teens could he reach with that message, both in his local church and outside of it? It's not that technology will ever replace personal relationships, but if we as developers of church websites can use that technology effectively, it will enhance the personal relationships in a way that works very well in our busy world.

That's my thoughts, for what it's worth.

I started with reading a book, "Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, and Community Websites," by David Mercer. It gave me enough information to get a good feel for what Drupal could do, and some of the basics. But it wasn't enough for what I needed, so I continued with the information on the drupal.org site. The Handbooks contain a wealth of knowledge. When I started about a year ago, I used the Drupal Cookbook. Since then, more handbooks have been added.

I followed this with setting up a test site on my PC, and using searches of the forums to learn things I wanted to know. You will see that some of my early posts were really basic.

I also read "Pro Drupal Development," by VanDyk and Westgate. It helped fill in a lot of holes in my knowledge about how things worked.

Now, after a little more than a year, I have set up 6 sites using Drupal. including my church site, http://www.fumcsantarosa.org, and my personal site, http://www.dornbush.net. I have a great team at church who meet with me regularly to continue to enhance the web site. I haven't done any modules, but I have customized themes. I like Aberdeen and Zen themes, which are the ones that I have used on the sites. My church hired a professional designer to develop the look-and-feel of the site, and I took her html code and implemented it using the Zen theme. Since then, I have been using customized themes, and my clients have liked them.

I spent some time looking through the module listings, noting which ones seemed interesting and then reading the support requests on them to get familiar with the modules.

I really like Drupal, and am starting a business to do web sites based on it. My first clients wanted a system where they could maintain the contents, and would only need me for the more technical end. Drupal gives that to them. I am about to start working on a module for announcements, news, and events, to replace using CCK and Contemplate and Views and Calendar and Date and Event to do almost the same thing. I want to package all of the functionality so I can more easily use it again.

There are a wealth of modules, and you will want to learn about them real soon, as they will do a lot for you. For example, in addition to the modules I named above, I also use Audio, Image, Acidfree, FCKeditor, Webform, and a few others.

There is no click by click and keystroke way to get into Drupal. If you want something really simple, you don't want Drupal. But if you want a tool that will enable a team of church people to maintain the content while you maintain the site, and to be able to add lots of functionality in the time it takes to install a module and learn enough about it to get it going, then Drupal's for you. I know it's for me.