Posted by mikey_p on March 5, 2007 at 9:05pm
Sooooooo....How many of you out there are using forums on your church site? Is this a common request? With full community plumbing we can add comments to anything and make the site very open to hosting discussion, so what are the throughts on this? I'm leaning away from this for most churches.
-Mike
Comments
Every single site...
I'm currently building a new church site about every 2 weeks. Every single site requests this and I put it in. Some have used it to their advantage, and some have not (and it makes them look bad).
I think it's a good idea for church sites, the question is: Will the church actually use it, or will it sit there empty and make the church website look like no one ever visits it? That's something that has to be answered for each church.
Is this yet another issue that depends on the type of church?
I'm wondering if this is yet another factor that depends on what type of church the site is supporting. My theory would be that older churches (which tend to be associated with national denominations) would find forums hard to figure out, whereas newer more "emergent" churches would take to them immediately.
I say this because the congregations of mainline churches don't have much comfort with online participation through forums. Their members are summoning all their "tech savvy" to communicate by email.
I just returned from a meeting at my church (the one for which I'm facilitating the conversion to a Drupal site from a static html site) and the thought occurred to me that there might be a number of factors that are associated with, and predicted by, the governance model of the organization. Appropriateness of forums would be one, model of access control (taxonomy or OG) would be another.
In an older church, one way to make the use of forums more likely is to allow people to participate as much as possible via email, i.e. send newsletters summarizing new posts, with links that allow people to respond. I know Drupal does this already (these forums do it) but enable it by default. Might also have to provide people with an actual tutorial on how to click a link in an email, and fill out a web-based response forum. Seems crazy, but such is the technical sentience of many members of mainline denominations.
Distribution lists
My church is undergoing the transition to Drupal, so this thread is interesting because it could keep us from heading down the wrong path.
To date, we have used distribution lists such as Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups with varying levels of participation, but never forums in the traditional sense. The group lists have been useful as a mechanism for relaying announcements, but few church members have used the lists for ongoing "conversation." We've had glimmers of hope here and there as "hot" topics have come and gone, but forums, or lists, don't seem to be catching on quickly.
What type of church is yours?
Is it an older, established congregation, or a newly planted, emerging group? My theory would predict the former (older established).
Established, yet Internet-savvy
Yes, ndru, it's an established church, but even among the younger, internet-savvy crowd, it's been difficult to get forums and other technology-based interaction to take hold. The funny thing is that you'll hear members talk about how they were on the local sports team forum or reading so-and-so's blog, but they won't participate in a church-oriented online discussion.
Different topic, comfort level?
Could this be a situation where people's comfort level with the discussion is the problem?
For example, I'm not a big sports fan, so I'd never post to a sports forum; I'm an eager user of Linux, and I know quite a bit about it, so I don't hesitate to post in Linux forums.
Perhaps some people simply feel intimidated posting about their faith. Personally, I would have been totally unwilling to do this a few years ago. There was a great fear for me of appearing "wrong."
Perhaps it's the forum topic and the way the discussion is approached rather than the members' acceptance of forum technology?
Forums on a church website
Forums on a church website is a radical idea because, well, churches even having websites is a radical idea. : / Some people in the congregation need to get acclimated to going online to view what's on a church website, let alone contributing to a church website and being a part of an online community. That's a hurdle.
To get over that hurdle, I think it's important that church leaders be involved in the website by them creating content.
--
Sojourn Church - the Hushed Casket
@ericatkins
Another theory (oh no!)
Personally, I just think that most churches, unless they're mega-churches, don't have "critical mass" in terms of the number of users required to sustain a successful on-line discussion.
One example of a church-sponsored discussion that is having some success is Wonder Cafe (www.wondercafe.ca). However, this is a discussion board that is available on a national level, and supported by extensive (and deliberately provocative) advertising in other media. Ideally, I'd love to be able to have wondercafe available as a section on my own church's website, but have it show the postings from all the various churches in the same national denominational organization, or maybe even broader?
Take a look at how craigslist handles their discussions. Each and every locality of craigslist appears to support the same discussion, and you can contribute to discussions without changing your geographic affiliation. However, you see content that's been posted by craigslisters in all locations around the globe. That ensures a lively discussion.
Surely some of the excellent drupal minds could figure out a way to manage this type of "federated" discussion system within Drupal? I think it would be a total boon not only to churches, but other community organizations that engage in inter-community federation as well.