Church is now a NONE-Issue!

Have you seen the October 2012 Pew Research Center story that has major implications for the church? Polling by the Center has found that the number of Americans who don’t identify with any religion continues to grow quickly. One-fifth of the U.S. public (and about 1/3 of adults under 30,) are religiously unaffiliated today. This is the highest ever recorded in Pew Research Center polling. When surveyed on church affiliation, they marked “none.”

Have you also seen the statistics on how many of these adults are actually online? In August 2012, 96% of adults 18-30 are online. This is a snapshot of the survey showing the complete age breakdown.

I remember not too long ago conversations in our church about the lack of older attendees online. Now “older” in this context does happen to include those 50+, simply because this particular survey only has four age groups. In context, the argument was that we shouldn’t focus too much energy on email, websites, online registration, podcasts, etc because not a lot of our people would be willing to access such things online.

Man have things changed!

The point is this: if one of these “None’s” in your area decides to look for information on churches, will you be there?

It was just a few years ago that one would grab the phonebook to find information. I can’t get phone companies to STOP sending me phonebooks because I just throw them away. I mean, why would I need it when I could Google it right away? When at home, I could Google anything I needed to find in the phonebook before I even FOUND the phonebook.

What Does This Mean, Exactly?

You and your church need to be online! Yes, you may have a web page, but is it full of outdated information? Are you still promoting events from two months ago? Are your messages online? Do you have an actual chuch email address?

Facebook is gigantic and a lot of churches and their ministries have Facebook pages. This is good, but not good enough! If anyone looking at your church on Facebook is like me, they will be off your page in minutes. It doesn’t take me long to get distracted by everything happening on Facebook and I trust most “Facebookers” are the same.

BUT…….

Now, having worked in church leadership for almost 20 years, I have a pretty good guess what these ‘buts’ are:

1. We don’t have the money in our budget for a website or all the stuff that goes with it.
2. I don’t have the time to keep a website updated and can’t pay someone else to do it.

Well, I can’t argue with that. You are right on both accounts.

Of course, now that you’ve found Little Guy Web Host, you are wrong.

1) For only $25 per month, you can have your church and each church ministry online. Not a trial rate, not a teaser, not a promo. $25 per month.  In a lot of churches, that could be same amount they send to one missionary each month. Can your church afford $25 to get your name online in your community*? Remember, NO ONE but us is offering this type of service for this price.

2) The best part of the deal is not the price, but what you GET for the price.

Imagine during your studies, you come across a great devotional you think everyone in your church needs to hear. Normally, such a task would require you to copy the devotional (or have your office staff do it,) get it ready for the newsletter (print or email,) and finally send it out. Or forget about it on your desk.

You need to remind a ministry that their next meeting is coming up. You could try to type up a reminder, but would keep getting interrupted; you could try the “phone tree” but don’t know who all gets the message; you could leave it to the ministry leader but have to wait for them to call you back.

Remember, we’ve been in ministry and know that the “road to great ministry is paved with good intentions.” We’ve been there, so we have you covered!

Once your account is fully active, you simply send us the information you want online, distributed, etc and we take care of the rest. This can be daily, weekly, monthly, or anywhere in between. We have clients who email us, text us, call us, or even put it online themselves and have us edit it. Whatever works for you will work for us. IN FACT, one church regularly gives us a photocopy of their weekly bulletin (not even an original) and has us make website changes from there!

Time to Hire Yourself a Website Team.

Our team will:

• Update web content as needed
• Create graphics for your content
• Send broadcast messages for you (text, newsletter, email, etc)
• Create teaching pages based on message files you provide
• Regularly update Facebook/Twitter/etc with your ministry information
• Much, much more (review our “LittleGuySpecial” page for more info)

If you are still in doubt contact us. If you are ready to get started, visit our plans page and chose the “LittleGuySpecial.” We will then contact you to get the ball rolling.

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*If your church currently has a large team working on your website or you can afford to pay one of the other companies hundreds of dollars each month, that may be your best bet. While we don’t want to turn away business, our goal is to help those churches who DON’T have the resources to hire a large in-house team.