This past Sunday, I joked that the best evangelist in our church has been Mr. www.newlife-glastonbury.org, our website. That was meant both to challenge our church members to consider who God might be asking them to invite to church or to the Family Fun Day this Easter season, as well as to honor what God has done through the hard work of Matt LaCroix, who created and administers our website. As a church that only recently moved into a 7-day a week space, our website has been instrumental in serving as a front door to our church for many people who want to learn more about us, and we have been blessed to have someone like Matt who has dedicated numerous unpaid hours to giving us an excellent presence on the internet. Our goal with the website has been to give people a picture of what our church is like before they even enter our doors, as well as to provide another opportunity for our sermons and Pulse essays to reach people with the gospel.
Matt and I have been working the past couple of months on a redesign of the website, and this Sunday we launched the new site. I would encourage you to check it out, and would love to share with you some of the new features we have added:
1) Pictures, pictures, pictures – we’ve added many more pictures to the site to help tell the story of our church and the people who make it up. We’ve been blessed with talented photographers like Sarah McCoy, Heather Lanier, and Ali Durbois, and their work has really helped us give people a window into our church life. And of course, we’ve been blessed with some beautiful people!
2) More information on children’s ministry and home fellowships – many people looking for a church do so mainly for their children, and for that reason we wanted to make sure we gave our children’s ministry a more prominent place. And since we believe that our home fellowships are an important way that people can connect on a deeper level, we wanted to highlight them as well.
3) Prayer Center – we often receive prayer requests from people who find our website, and so we have added a Prayer Center where people can share requests or praise reports. There is also a feature that allows anyone to add their email address to an online prayer chain, so that when a new request comes in, an email will be sent out letting you know that someone needs prayer.
4) Better organized sermon archive – on our old site, every sermon was listed by title; on the new one, we’ve grouped them by sermon series, so that you can look back and see what has been preached on over the last three years.
In addition to the updated site, we have also added a presence on Facebook, the social networking site. Our page includes pictures of past events, information on upcoming events, and links to the profiles of some of the people in our church who are on Facebook. With an increasing number of people having profiles on the site, this presence allows us to introduce our church to a whole other population.
While our website has been instrumental in introducing people to our church, the best way to connect people to God and to our church will always be through friendship and personal invitation. We should be like Andrew in John 1:40-41, who when he heard about Jesus, “The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ).” The Easter season is a great time to invite people to church – many people are more open to attending church on Easter, and of course the weather is no longer a hindrance. And if you know a family who may not come on a Sunday to visit our church, invite them to our upcoming Family Fun Day on April 4th, where they will have the chance to see our church and hear the Easter story. Please prayerfully consider who God might be putting on your heart to share the gospel with this Easter season.
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