Leadership Journal

Frustrated because our guys couldn't make their schedules work for a Christian book study a couple of years ago, I stumbled onto the idea of a small group meeting in cyberspace.

Once we all had the book and each other's e-mail addresses, I assigned each man a chapter to review. We discussed Stormie Omartian's The Power of a Praying Husband by e-mail. Whenever we met in church, we would talk about it in real time, but that was a bonus.

The Internet study worked so well I suggested it to a friend who runs a website that equips married couples. Together we created a study called the Growing Husband's Book Club (http://www.growthtrac.com). Visitors can join the club and receive periodic commentary on the Omartian book, or a second book, The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. So far, more than 500 men have participated through the Internet.

We buy Google Adwords to promote our church, online bookstore, conferences, sermons, and music CDs. An Adwords account is easy to set up and costs as little as five cents per click. You can set your own daily budget to limit spending. The ad appears based on the keywords you choose.

Google ads can be localized to most cities in the U.S. We have an ad that appears for Google users in our area that reads "Looking for a new church?" When a user clicks on the ad, it links to our website.

We're using a listserv for prayer requests. Anyone can send an e-mail to the prayer request address, and after review by the moderator (pastor), we send the request to the whole list with a couple of clicks. We also made our newsletter available by e-mail and cut postage costs. The same with meeting notices. Our board is more responsive to church needs and action items.

We had a problem in our youth ministry getting forms, paperwork, studies, and such to our leaders on time. So, now we post the info on our website and the leaders download what they need. We have calendars, a youth directory, even video from our meeting.

It works great, and we have seen such a difference in our team's communication.

Each Friday we e-mail a list of the next week's events to subscribers. Our online supplement to the Sunday bulletin and monthly newsletter has proven very popular.

We were suprised how many of our older members have commented positively on the service. We're thinking the Internet would be an excellent tool for ministry to our homebound members, and we may explore that next.