Posted by struesda on October 10, 2007 at 2:52pm
I have a question related to a post from another thread:
As for the topic at hand, I'd like to see more churches integrating forums into their main sites. It's simply extending the community—fellowship and interaction—which is already taking place and introducing it to a potentially much larger audience.
I would like to see some forums take off on our church site.
But I haven't been able to convince the pastoral staff of the benefit of them, so there hasn't been much push from them to others to use such a thing.
I think once they saw them being used they would see the benefit more clearly.
Any suggestions on how to either convince the pastors to promote them, or advertise them to others who would start to use them?
Comments
no luck
I have had no luck here at all - it seems not just the pastors, but also the parishioners of the 3 churches we have built drupal sites for are just not comfortable with discussing things online
however knowing some of them i am aware that they do get involved in online discussions on other websites.
sadly the only way i can think of to convince them to do it is to put scandalous and trashy topics up to discuss - they seem keen to discuss those, and not theological debates
2 things
Don't start with forums. If you try to start with them before your site has traffic then people will see that others aren't using them and not use them either. Wait until you have been able to make your church website something useful before you launch forums. So, there are people already there to use them when they launch.
Forums scare church leaders. The modern day church has become about a very controlled presentation. When a pastor speaks it is well planned out. When they present information it has been check out and is approved. Everything that goes out from the church has been checked out.
Forums present a different angle. It's the same thing with comments. It's something they can't control. When they do try to implement something like comments they have to be approved. Forums need to go up right away. They are about conversation and not control. This goes against how they were taught, the culture they live in, and the way they do things.
So, before we can expect them to go for something like this we need to work on getting over this boundary and address some of their concerns. Especially the legitimate ones. What happens when someone puts something crude up there? How do you address when someone puts something in the forum that doesn't fit the theology? How do you handle the hard questions that are bound to come up that many churches avoid? Like sex.
I'd like more churches to have forums. But, we can't just ask them to put them on the sites. We have to help it be well planned out and handled so they can be a real success both on the site and in the culture of the church.
Forums Use
I am just working on converting our Church website from a static website to something that can be updated and used by more people and am looking at how I can use Drupal to do that. I have already had several people in our church ask about forums to be used by various committees in the church to reduce the e-mail strings and manage changes to distribution lists that are used now and get out of date.
Converting existing static website
I am facing the same challenge as gwheatleyoc (i.e., starting out with an existing static website that "needs to do more") -- anyone know of tools that can help convert a static website (e.g., done with Dreamweaver) into Drupal? Or is the paradigm shift so signifcant that it's just better to start from scratch?
Forums for a community
I run a Simple Machines forum for a neighborhood in Madison, Wisconsin (nothing with Drupal, I'm brand new here) and it has been a challenge to get people involved. I've had it up for over two years and still just a small handful of use it and it never really become the resource I was hoping it would.
Although we are a new development with primarily young people who do have high speed Internet at home, I've found people were nervous about using it, just didn't understand the concept or just weren't interested in taking the time to spend at it. We've also turned off many people due to "strong personalities" in the neighborhood.
One of the reasons I want to learn Drupal is actually to get away from the message forum being the center of the site. I'd like the site to become more of a blog where people can post info without necessarily registering so they have a greater level of anonymity. I also want everything admin approved, not just for content, but also for grammar/style so the content will flow together and I can get rid of the individual personalities, or at least put a cap on the strong ones.
mfer raises some excellent points that I tend to agree with. Good luck with your project.