To be frank, it is an almost insurmountable challenge, especially given the fact that, as Keith Drury notes, the vast majority of ministry students in his classes at Indiana Wesleyan University are from churches which are undeniably, unmistakably large. They are therefore accustomed to all of the programs, budgets, personnel, facilities, marketing, and more of a larger congregation, all of which can be leveraged to make a spectacular impact in a community or even the world. To them, this is the image of a normal, healthy, effective church. In comparison, a 2001 study by Barna found that the median total operating budget for churches of less than 100 was just $68,000 (http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/5-barna-update/59-a-profile-of-protestant-pastors-in-anticipation-of-qpastor-appreciation-monthq). Of course, this figure has increased some over the last ten years, but when you add in that the same study found that 8 in 10 of those churches was paying a full-time pastor (some would point to this as yet another fault of small churches), you realize that there simply are not as many resources available to make such a large splash.

But I like a challenge. So here we go.

The primary argument for the potential of small churches must come from Scripture. In Acts 1, just before the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples gathered in the upper room, we are told that “the number of people who were together was about 120″ (vs 15 HCSB). A few verses later, after the Spirit had been poured out, it was these 120 who rushed out into the street and proclaimed the gospel, inspiring 3,000 to be baptized and join the newborn church.

One hundred twenty people may be a bit larger than a small church, but it’s far from a large church. And yet, this is what God used to start the Church (please note the distinction between individual congregations (i.e., churches) and the Church as a whole).

But maybe the Acts 2 church isn’t the best example of a small church. It did, after all, become a megachurch on launch day. Or did it?

Maybe not. The truth is perhaps found in the fact that it was Pentecost. You see, Pentecost wasn’t just your average Sunday around Jerusalem. No, it was one of the major feasts of the Jewish year, and so the streets of the city would have been absolutely flooded with pilgrims from around the known world. This is why it was so significant that the disciples emerged speaking in tongues: the people on the streets of Jerusalem that day spoke all sorts of different languages. And so it’s reasonable to assume that, once the feast was done, these men and women started trickling back toward their homes. And in fact, even a significant chunk of the 120 were probably from places other than Jerusalem and, sooner or later, started heading for home. Not because they gave up on the faith, mind you, but because they needed to get home to tend to businesses, families, etc. As they went, they certainly took the Gospel with them, but their departure also meant that the church at Jerusalem contracted until was once more a medium – or maybe even a small – church.

In the aftermath of Pentecost, as Acts 2 comes to a close and the church settles into a routine and begins to figure out what it means to be the Church, we have a brief profile of the things they did which has often and rightly been advanced as the description of a healthy church. We read in verses 42-47:

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to the prayers. Then fear came over everyone, and many wonders and signs were being performed through the apostles. Now all the believers were together and held all things in common. They sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all, as anyone had a need. Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple complex, and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with a joyful and humble attitude, praising God and having favor with all the people. And every day the Lord added to them those who were being saved. (HCSB)

To be clear, there are at least 14 ingredients which comprise a healthy church:

1. Devoted to the apostles’ teaching (aka, Scripture)
2. Devoted to the fellowship (i.e., working together toward a common goal)
3. Devoted to communion (i.e., memorializing Christ’s life, death, and resurrection)
4. Devoted to prayer
5. Reverence for God
6. Wonders and signs
7. Unity
8. Generosity
9. Devoted to meeting in public
10. Devoted to communing in private
11. Joyful and humble attitude
12. Praising God in every situation
13. Positive relationship with everyone
14. Evangelism

All of these traits were present in the church at Jerusalem, however small it was, and as the masses from Pentecost began to disperse – and especially as the believers in Jerusalem scattered as a result of the persecution which followed Stephen’s martyrdom – they were present in the churches which were planted wherever the Gospel was taken. And by and large, those churches which were planted were small churches, too.

Further, I think you could make a compelling case that some of these traits are actually easier to find in a smaller church than a large one. For instance, in a large church, it’s much more difficult to have everyone devoted to the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, and communion. There always seems to be a group devoted to the charismatic leader, exciting youth program, awesome worship team, etc. It’s certainly far easier to unite twenty people than two thousand. And if you’ve ever tried to get twenty people all on the same page, moving in the same direction at the same time, you know what a challenge that is!

Certainly, small churches can be healthy. And I would submit that the fact that the Church sprung from the church at Jerusalem demonstrates soundly that small churches can be viable, too.

But what about effective? I mean, let’s face it. There aren’t too many small churches out there seeing 3,000 people saved in a single day. And when you hold up the typical small church stats on salvations, baptisms, sanctification, etc., to the same stats from large and megachurches, they pale in comparison. Are small churches really effective when measured against that last statement of verse 47?

I believe that they are. And to show this, I would draw your attention to a single key word found in that very last statement of Acts 2:47: “added.”

I think this word is key because, if the church at Jerusalem continued to experience the kind of growth detailed at Pentecost, Luke the physician would have used the word “compounded.” I mean, there is no getting around it: 3,000 converts / 120 starting disciples = a compounding factor of 25. Like when the bank figures interest, compounding is an exponential function. And the thing you need to know about exponential functions is that they snowball. On day 2, the church would have seen 108,000 converts. Assuming the most ambitious population estimates, that would mean that at least 86.4% of everyone in Jerusalem, including Pentecost pilgrims, was saved. On day 3, 2.7 million. That’s more than the entire population of Israel in Jesus’ day. On day 4, 67.5 million. That’s almost 1/4 of everyone in the world. On day 5, 1.69 billion. In other words, just after 9:00 am on day 5, the entire world would have been saved. Just in Jerusalem.

Similarly, even if the church at Jerusalem failed to see Pentecost-like growth, but still saw even a hundred or so believers added daily, Luke the physician would have used the word “multiplied.” This would have resulted in rapid but steady growth. On day 2, that would mean 3,240 disciples. On day 9, 4,080. On day 30, 6,600. I don’t know too many megachurches that even see that kind of growth!

Instead, we read, “added.” And the reason that this is significant is that addition is slow but steady work. The growth wasn’t even close to dramatic, and that makes sense because, as we see starting in Acts 3, the Gospel was – and is – best communicated one person at a time. In fact, once we get past Acts 4, where we learn that the Church had grown to 5,000 men, plus women and children, we don’t see any more hard attendance figures. But we do see Acts 5:14 (HCSB): “Believers were added to the Lord in increasing numbers – crowds of both men and women.” And Acts 11:24 (HCSB): “And large numbers of people were added to the Lord.”

Pentecost and other dramatic, mass conversions were the exception to the rule in Acts. In fact, they always have been. And I would suggest that Luke’s addition accounted for days, weeks, even months and years when individual churches may not have seen any conversions, but the Church as a whole did. The key was that, even when they had a dry spell in conversions, even the smallest church was still ministering and witnessing, witnessing and ministering. Intentionally, deliberately, effectively drawing people to the Lord.

History bears this out. The large and megachurches with which we are so enamored today are entirely modern inventions. A study by The Hartford Institute for Religion Research found that “nearly all current megachurches were founded after 1955″ (http://hirr.hartsem.edu/bookshelf/thumma_article2.html). In other words, the Church survived the better part of two millennia without them.

Now, please understand that I am not anti-megachurch. Or anti-large church. None of this is intended to criticize these churches or their leaders in any way. They do tremendous work for the Kingdom, and I praise the Lord for that! But it would be utterly wrong to discount the Biblical, historical, contemporary, and future health, viability, and effectiveness of small churches.

Truth be told, the table made the room precisely the right space for such a class: with its top constructed of a single, apparently solid slab of wood, it was exactly the sort of table one would expect to find in a medieval monastery. But honestly, the table had nothing to do with why I remember that first day of class so well.

I remember the table and everything else about that day because of the question that Dr. Hughes asked just minutes into that first day of that first class of my ministerial preparation: “How were you called to ministry?” And I remember the puzzlement, followed by shock, followed by horror, as student after student answered the question with answers that were starkly different than my own.

I mean, I didn’t really expect every story to be exactly the same as mine, but I was, frankly, stunned to find just how different some of them were. There were a couple called to be missionaries. One called to be a Bible teacher and professor. And then there were about ten called to be youth pastors. One called to be a worship pastor. And as the last person shared, I realized that, of the fifteen or so students in the room, I was the only one called to pastor a small church.

Moreover, four years later, when that cadre of ministry students graduated and headed off to ministry, to my knowledge, I was the only one that went into a small church. Outside of the few missionaries and a couple that went on to even more education so they could become college professors and such, all of the others headed for staff positions. Or found other jobs to keep them busy until they found staff  positions.

For a time, I thought it was because I was special. Someone I greatly respect told me that I was exceptionally mature and grounded for my age, so I was the only one qualified for solo ministry right out of school. But none of the others even tried to become solo pastors.

Then I thought I was proud. Was I not humble enough to accept a staff position to learn and grow as a minister? But before I was invited to candidate at a small church, I seriously contemplated a couple of staff positions that were offered to me. And besides, I was – and am – learning too many lessons to think that I was Superpastor or Mr. Wizard or something. And just in case I entertained such thoughts anyway, it was only a matter of minutes before I was reminded of the megachurch down the road that was “successful” in comparison to the tiny little flock which I was charged to shepherd.

So I decided I was weird. For some reason – perhaps a lack of ambition or vision, or maybe a buried masochistic streak? – of all my classmates, I was the only one willing to go to a small church and serve as a solo pastor.

The problem is, after ten years as a solo pastor, I’m beginning to realize that I was right. I was weird.

More than that, though, I am weird.

A 2007 article entitled “My Students: The Coming Wave in the Church” by author, theologian, and associate professor Keith Drury (http://www.drurywriting.com/keith/my.students.htm) explores the mindset of the students in the ministry classes he teaches at Indiana Wesleyan University, noting a number of significant tidbits:

• “They are products of youth pastors.” That is, their example of a minister and ministry is a staff pastor doing specialized ministry.
• “I have never seen more hard workers than this crop of students, especially when they are doing a project in a group.” In other words, they excel in working in together but have a hard time being self-starters.
• “Most expect to get settled in life and ease into life by age 30.” I.e., they don’t think themselves ready to settle their calling and establish what they’re going to do for the rest of their lives until they hit 30, not 22 or 24.
• “They don’t seek a job ‘where the pastor leaves me alone’ but want plenty of structure and mentoring.” Translate that, they expect a supervisor to tell them what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.
• “The last study we did showed our [ministry] students came from larger churches—the median home church was 700.” In other words, they’re not from small churches (<100) or even medium ones (100-500). They’re from large churches.

And then Drury drops this: “They not only expect to serve with a church staff, they expect to have a staff. In my sophomore class when I assign them to develop a church program to promote one-to-one mentoring, they often assume they’ll have a staff to do the work! Really!” (Emphasis his).

Remember, this is in an article about the “prominent characteristics of [Drury's] students.” In short, the next wave of ministers comes from large churches and expects to work in large churches. Because large churches are normal.

Except that they’re not. While a majority of church attenders attend medium and large churches, the majority of churches are actually fairly small, with an estimated 60% coming in at less than 100 in average worship attendance (http://hirr.hartsem.edu/research/fastfacts/fast_facts.html#sizecong).

And so we have come to a curious situation. Our colleges and seminaries are churning out more graduates with ministry degrees than ever before. In July 2010, the Presbyterian Church (USA) reported 2,271 clergy seeking positions but only 532 vacancies (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/06/from-clergy-shortage-to-c_n_566934.html). In my own denomination, I know of several people who have been forced to take secular jobs to pay the bills while they keep searching for an elusive staff position. And yet small churches routinely go months without a pastor because they can’t find anyone who will take the job.

Indeed, there is a crisis looming in small churches across America which will eventually reach cataclysmic proportions, ultimately impacting even the largest congregations both in the US and around the world. We’re about to have a critical shortage of pastors for small churches.

The only solution to the problem is for small churches to step up and raise their own crop of ministers convinced of the viability and import of small churches.

So for a few weeks (or months, however long it takes), I’m going to be exploring how we might do this very thing. If you have any comments or insights, I would very much welcome them in the comments section below or at my personal email, jrgeerdes@gmail.com.

Zondervan’s announcement was shocking to me because it meant that, all of a sudden, the translation I had relied on for better than half of my life was obsolete.

Now, it is not my intent to open a debate on the merits of the NIV2011. Please understand that. But I wonder how many other pastors and churches are also in the same situation. Maybe not because the Bible translation they rely on has been discontinued, but because their methods and style for communicating the unchanging message of Scripture has been outmoded and ineffective, quite possibly for some time.

As the pastor of a small church, I am keenly aware that we are very susceptible to such a situation. For example, in the 1950′s, our church was on the forefront of the bus ministry movement. As one of the larger churches in town at the time, the congregation purchased two large buses and saw many people brought to the Lord over the course of 25 years. Yes, we ran our bus ministry that long. But eventually, rising costs of maintenance and fuel, coupled with a couple of church splits and declining use of the buses, compelled the congregation to sell the things. Years after the bus ministry heyday had passed.

Why did we hang onto those buses so long after they had grown largely ineffective? And why, some 25 years after that, was at least one faithful saint in the congregation so insistent that the key to growing our church was restarting the bus ministry?

The answer is that we, especially in smaller, older churches, have a very real tendency to look back on the heyday of the past and think that, if we can just resurrect the methods and models – and even the language – we were using back then, God will bless again.

The only problem is, in more cases than not, it’s not true.

Granted, there are occasions when we must have a Revelation 2:5 – “Remember then how far you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first” – moment, but I think that, more often than not, what we really need are modern men (and women) of Issachar, who understand the times and know what the church should do (1 Chronicles 12:32), and ministers like Paul, resolved to become all things to all people, so that they may by every possible means save some (1 Corinthians 9:22).

So, here’s the challenge for today. Consider everything that you and your church are doing to minister. Never change the good news of Jesus Christ itself, but find a new and fresh way to present it to the world in which we live. Don’t let the Bible which you present – which may be the only Bible some ever see or hear – be obsolete!

I would be lying if I said that our church is effective at reaching young people in particular, but this conversation gave me hope for a couple of reasons. First, probably most important, Deprez and Frontline, an undeniably large church, were finding increased effectiveness at building long-term faith in teens in particular by including them in the rest of the church rather than constantly separating them out into specifically targeted ministries. Our small church has done this, more out of necessity and by default than design, and I know of a lot of small churches that are in the same boat.

Second, it provided a little more substance to the argument that youth ministry can’t be something done by just a particular person or team in the church. It is everyone’s responsibility to build connections to other generations because, regardless of what generation we’re in, we need the others. Each generation has something that it can teach the others, and we need them all.

And third, it provided more evidence for a ministry philosophy that I’ve had for a long time: the church can be – and should be – a cross-section of all generations.

All of this is really neat because, as I noted above, in many small churches, it’s something that just happens. We don’t have enough Sunday School rooms for separate youth classes, so we all meet in one place. We don’t have enough volunteers for a dedicated youth service. We don’t have enough youth to go on a youth-only missions trip. So we have to do things intergenerationally. We’ve always had to do things intergenerationally.

And while that’s not to say that small churches are automatically good at it, let alone deliberate about it, it is to say that it feels good to have our method of necessity validated by the discovery of some big churches.

So be encouraged! You can be effective, even if you don’t have a dedicated youth-whatever. You’re not behind the curve; you’re actually ahead of it!

Willingness is perhaps a bigger obstacle. Not on the part of the pastor, mind you, but on that of the leaders in the congregation. Simply put, there are a lot of people who come into church leadership with their own agendas. And even those who don’t have their own ideas about what the church should do are often not particularly interested in taking time to explore what their role in church leadership really is. They’re simply not interested in being developed as leaders. But again, there are numerous ways that we can work around this problem. Good leadership development programs will compel people to want to press further. You can always just do the leadership development at board meetings, whether they like it or not. And then, there is always the option to remove a leader if they absolutely refuse.

I think, though, that for me, the biggest obstacle in leadership development is something far more simple than either of these things. It’s not that our leadership team doesn’t appreciate the value of development; indeed, we hunger for it. And it’s not that we’re not willing to take the time to do it; indeed, we have set aside weekends for retreats and times at our regular board meetings for leadership development. Rather, it’s that we often don’t know what to do. Simply put, while an internet search for church leadership development will instantaneously yield nearly 1.75 million results, the vast majority of these are nearly useless.

Why? Well, I’ll give you three reasons. The first has to do with the sheer volume of results that are returned. Whether you’re looking online, in books, magazines, etc., there are all sorts of sources that talk about the importance of leadership development. But they don’t necessarily have any real materials available right there. What you end up with, then, is a search for a needle. But this needle isn’t in a proverbial haystack. As someone on one my wife’s favorite TV shows said the other night, it’s in a stack of needles. So you’re looking for one particular needle in a whole stack of needles. It’s simply overwhelming.

The second is that those that do have real materials available right there often charge a fee. Now, I am not particularly opposed to paying for leadership development materials, but when you pastor a small church, you become very conscious of how you spend every dollar. And since many of these materials are hundreds of dollars, the meager budget that I have available for such materials might as well be nothing.

And the third is that, even if you do find and/or pay for those materials, a large portion of them are undeniably geared toward larger churches with multiple staff, where “leader” translates to “paid ministry personnel.” In a small church, you don’t have that luxury, and so you have to adopt a dramatically different approach to leadership development. Frankly, a lot of the concepts don’t apply at all. And there are entirely different challenges involved.

So I’m stuck. I’m looking for some great leadership development materials to work through with our board this year, but I’m stumped. Thus the question (plea, really): do you know of any great leadership development materials that I (or any small church pastor) could use? If so, please leave a comment below. I will certainly welcome any insights! In the meantime, I guess I’ll keep plugging away. And I’ll post anything I come up with, too.

I look back on those days and laugh at my arrogance, naiveté, short-sightedness, and closed-mindedness.

You see, I’ve discovered that small churches are not bad churches. In fact, as I have noted on several occasions in this blog, I believe that small churches truly have a number of significant advantages over their larger counterparts, and it all boils down to the this notion that I have that, per capita, small churches are more effective.

This morning, I ran across an article in the SermonCentral.com newsletter that I believe clearly explains five reasons why this is true, and I wanted to share it with you. Check it out at http://www.sermoncentral.com/articlec.asp?article=brandon-obrien-five-strategic-advantages-small-churches&ac=true&utm_medium=SC-newsletter-links&utm_campaign=SC-Newsletter.

Feld’s achievements in the world of venture capital are impressive, to say the least, and so when he speaks, entrepreneurs do well to listen. But in the case of this article, I think Feld is speaking to more than just businesspeople. His basic advice is that, if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you must be absolutely consumed with the product that you have to sell. And I would submit to you that, if we want to be successful leaders of churches, big or small, then we must be consumed with the product that we have to sell, too. The question is, what is the product that we have to sell?

For several years now, the prevailing paradigm of church growth has held, I believe, that the product that we have to sell is the church. Thus, we expend fantastic amounts of energy and resources to make sure our kids’ programs are superb, our singles ministries thriving, and our worship services on a par with rock concerts. The problem is that, for small churches, that’s simply not viable. We will never be able to have a kids’ program that competes with the megachurch up the road. Our singles ministries may never fly because there just may not be enough singles to populate it. And our worship service may not be a rock concert. In fact, I would submit that even megachurches can’t satisfy this paradigm every time. Some have begun to realize this, and so one of the models we’ve been seeing among church planters focuses solely on one or two of these things, foregoing everything else. Thus, we have churches that have great Sunday morning worship services, but nothing else throughout the rest of the week.

Over the last few years, as leaders have realized the flaws with the paradigm where church is the product that we sell, we’ve started to see new emphases arise. Probably the most popular is what we’ll call the Body. As in, the Body of Christ. That is, we’ve begun to sell people the relationships that naturally form among people who live and minister together. It makes sense, and I truly believe that it is one of the greatest things that we have to offer a generation which may have a thousand Facebook friends but none in real life. Indeed, of the 170-ish friends that I have on Facebook, there are only about 30 that I speak with on a regular basis. Only about 20 of them that I speak with regularly off-line. And I don’t need all the fingers on one hand to count the number that I would actually entrust with the most intimate details of my life. There are lots of people out there who don’t even have that; they’re desperate to connect with someone. And offering them the chance of fellowship – of friends – is compelling. So we have churches that focus primarily on relationships, encouraging people to come and “get connected” with a small group, ministry team, or just plain friends. The problem here, though, is that it’s difficult to keep forming new relationships with new people, all the time. So you end up with a church that is fragmented into a bunch of cliques or, maybe worse, in-grown to the point that it no longer reaches out. And even if that doesn’t happen, there’s probably always going to be a bigger church down the road that offers more relationships than you can.

I would like to suggest to you a different product that we can obsess over. No, that we must obsess over. Eternal life.

Eternal life is, after all, the product that Jesus sold. I use that term “sold” carefully because Jesus was always up front about the cost: while they could never truly earn salvation, people who would own eternal life would have to repent of their sins (that is, stop doing them!) and commit to a life-driving faith in Him as the Son of God (that is, live in obedience to Jesus!). But he was also always telling them about what it did for them. In Matthew 19:29, He promised we would “receive a hundred times” whatever we sacrifice to obtain eternal life. In John 3, we discover that it will protect us from [eternal] death. And a chapter later, in John 4, He proclaims that eternal life will “well up” within us, providing the image of life that doesn’t just fill, or even overflow, but gushes forth! Who wouldn’t want that kind of life?

Moving beyond the gospels, we learn that – as though that stuff wasn’t enough – eternal life includes the personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2) which fills us with the presence and power of the Most High; inclusion in the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12-13) which provides fellowship (i.e., relationships with a purpose); an infusion of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5); forgiveness and actual cleansing from sin (1 John 1); and more!

In fact, just like the entrepreneurs Feld describes in his article, Jesus and his disciples were constantly talking about eternal life! Every now and then, they would stop to do a miracle, but then, immediately after, they would be right back on message. And the miracle they just did? Well, it was just one of the things that eternal life could do for you!

Jesus and co. didn’t have a church to sell. There were no fancy buildings or outstanding programs or kicking music. There was no children’s ministry, or youth ministry, or singles ministry, or seniors ministry. There was just eternal life.

While Jesus and co. certainly did offer fellowship within the body of Christ, it was always secondary. They didn’t worry about organizing small groups or scheduling lunch fellowships. That stuff just sort of happened as a natural part of eternal life.

For them, it was always all about eternal life. They lived and breathed eternal life. They talked about eternal life. And they wanted nothing more than for every single person they encountered to experience eternal life.

Because they knew that, if you only experienced the kind of life they had for even a split second, you would never ever let it go.

So here’s the thing. When you lead your church, however small it may be, what are you obsessed with? Are you constantly telling people about your church, how great the programs are, how wonderful the facilities are, and on and on? Because you’ll never be able to match the megachurch over there. Are you trumpeting the connections your church offers, the relationships people can build? Because there’s someone else who’s going to do exactly the same thing, only better.

Why don’t you start obsessing about eternal life?

For young adults, it’s all about connection.

Now, on the surface of it, this isn’t all that revolutionary. I mean, if you’ve ever paid much attention to how people 18-35 operate, it quickly becomes obvious that, in a world which has cheapened every relationship to a consumer product, they are desperate to form truly meaningful connections with all kinds of people.

What’s revolutionary is that the conversation facilitator suggested that, while relationships with other young adults is important, those in this age group actually crave connections with older people as well. Suddenly, my assumption that we had to have a dedicated young adult ministry to effectively reach these people is drawn into question. And that’s a huge deal because, if your small church is anything like mine, you will find your pews populated by an ever-increasing number of gray hairs, and an ever-decreasing number of young adults. So I guess I’ve always assumed that we had to have some sort of dedicated young adults ministry to minister effectively to this generation. But if young adults crave relationships with their elders as well, then maybe that’s not nearly so important.

Far more important, it would seem, is someone who will know their name when they walk in the door, be excited to see them, and check up on them a time or two outside of the worship services.

Suddenly, it doesn’t matter if the person is young or gray. And suddenly, effective ministry to 18-35-year-olds doesn’t seem so far out of reach. Why? Because even our small church can make someone feel welcome, valued, and connected.

So you have your design laid out, and you’re ready to start building the actual site. This is where the rubber meets the road for website design and development. Before you think that you don’t know how to code a webpage and just call someone to do it for you, though, I want to let you in on two earth-shaking secrets that web developers don’t want you to know about. Ready?

1. You can do this yourself, without going back to school, spending a small fortune, or losing a lot of sleep.
2. Most of the “professional” web developers out there don’t know that much more about this than you do.

How do I know these things? Well, I know the first secret because I once knew absolutely nothing about coding a website, but I found tools and resources which helped me to learn. To tell you the truth, I have spent a lot of money on books and other resources that weren’t nearly as good as the stuff that’s available online for free or really very cheap. And I have come to realize that, contrary to all the things those highly-paid professionals would have you believe, it’s not really all that difficult to learn.

And I discovered the second secret through personal experience. When I was in college, I worked with a team of wonderful volunteers to help pick up the pieces from a horrific “professional” website. More recently, as a web developer on the side, I was asked by a man to completely rebuild his website because, after spending nearly $60,000 with a “professional” developer, his site was a disaster. And as an API guru (aka non-Googler who has been recognized by Google for knowing an inordinate amount of stuff about one or more of their various services), I speak almost daily with “professional” developers who have little or no experience with anything beyond the most rudimentary concepts of web development.

Please understand that there are great developers out there; I’m not disputing that at all. But to get a basic church website up and running, you can do it. And if you decide you want to incorporate some more advanced features later, then I guess you can find a developer then.

So now that you know the two dirty little secrets of web development, it’s time to get to work. What are the things that you need to know to get this done? Well, to get a site rolling, we’re going to start out with two things: HTML and CSS. Let’s start with HTML.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<head>
          <title>Welcome to Debra Heights Wesleyan Church</title>
          <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/site/master.css"/>
          <style type="text/css">
          </style>
     </head>
     <body>
          <div id="page">
               <div id="banner"></div>
               <div id="nav">
                    <ul>
                         <li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
                         <li><a href="/about">About Us</a></li>
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               <div id="sidebar">
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               <div class="well">
                    <img class="floatRight" src="/cgi-bin/molded4/template.cgi?m=gallery&s=/images/jgeerdes.jpg&w=250&h=250&output=image" alt="Pastor Jeremy"/>
                    <h1>Welcome to Debra Heights Wesleyan Church</h1>
                    <p>Thanks for checking out Debra Heights Wesleyan Church online! We're so glad you're here! Here's a list of reasons you should join us this Sunday!</p>
                    <ul>
                         <li>We're a family, and we've been missing you! Come, connect with people who truly care about you!</li>
                         <li>We're close. I mean, who wants to drive all the way across town anyway?</li>
                         <li>You didn't really want to sleep in anyway. You know you want to do something with yourself and your life that will make a real difference in the world around you.</li>
                    </ul>
               </div>
               <div class="clearAll footer">©2010 Debra Heights Wesleyan Church</div>
          </div>
     </body>
</html>

That is a simple web page. If you copy the code into a text editor, save it as helloWorld.html, and open it in your browser, you’ll see that it might not be pretty (yet), but it works. And my guess is that, if you look at it for more than a second or two, it’ll even start to make sense. But just to make sure, let’s break it down.

The first thing you need to know about HTML is that it takes a hierarchical form. The hierarchy is visualized in this code by the indents of each line. Think of each level of indent as a generation of a family. So <head> is a child of <html>, and <title> is a child of <head>, etc. The second thing you need to know is that each member of the family has a beginning and an end. Beginnings look like this: <html>. And ends look like this: </html>. Notice the / in there.

Once you get those two basics, you’re ready to look at the different members of the family. Please understand that this page does not include all of the HTML “elements” that you can use, but these are probably the ones you will use the most. So here’s what they are. See if you can find them.

• <html>…</html> This is the patriarch of the html page. Everything flows from this. You only have one of these on any page.
• <head>…</head> Think of this as the header of a Word document. You include pertinent information that will tell us about the rest of the page. For our page, we’ve kept it pretty simple with just three children here. Some pages will include meta tags, script tags, and a bunch of others. We’ll worry about those later.
• <title>…</title> This is the page title which will appear in the window’s title bar or tab.
• <link rel…/> This is where we tell the browser to load a single CSS file which will determine the layout of the entire site. If you want to change the look of your entire site in just a few minutes, you can simply alter this file! But more on that in a bit.
• <style type=”text/css”>…</style> This is where we’re going to put some page-specific CSS.
• <body>…</body> This is the main body of the page, or the part that everyone will see in the browser.
• <div>…</div> Think of these as divisions or sections of a page. These get really cool when we start playing with the CSS!
• <ul>…</ul> ul and its fraternal twin ol are lists. If you have a list of something (e.g., this list right here), you want to use this. ul is for Unordered or bulleted lists. ol will create an Ordered or numbered list for things like outlines, etc.
• <li>…</li> li stands for List Item. So each of the bullet points in this list is an li.
• <a…>…</a> a stands for Anchor. The most common use for these is as links, where the href=”…” is normally the url of the page to which you want to link. As you can see with the Contact Us link, though, you can also make it an email link by adding mailto: to the front of the href.
• <img…/> img is a very important tag, but probably not nearly as important as most designers would tell you. It is used to place images on the page. The src “attribute” is the path to the image file you want to display. And you will want to include the alt attribute so that people who are visually impared can know what the image is, or just in case the image fails to load for some reason. The key to the img tag is to use it when you need it, but to skip it when you really don’t. Otherwise, your users will be twiddling their thumbs while your excess images load.
• <h1>…</h1> Header or title for something. Just like a header style in a Word document, text contained in an <h1>…</h1> will generally be larger, bold, and have a little vertical space on top and below to set it off. Actually, there a bunch of different levels of h* elements. I rarely use more than the h1, h2, and h3.
• <p>…</p> p stands for Paragraph. Other than that, it’s pretty self-explanatory.

And that’s really all there is to HTML. In the past, you would use table tags and a bunch of other things to do layout in your code, but now that CSS is universally accepted, life is a whole lot easier. So let’s talk about CSS.

CSS stands for Cascading StyleSheets. As the name implies, CSS establishes a stylesheet which will tell the web browser how to render your page on the screen. So let’s make this very simple page look pretty, shall we? Check out this code for master.css:

html, body {
     background : gray;
     margin : 0;
}
#page {
     width : 978px;
     margin : 0 auto;
     background : rgb(255, 255, 255);
     position : relative;
     font-size : 10px;
     font-family : verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
}
#banner {
     background : url(/images/banner.jpg);
     height : 150px;
}
#nav {
     width : 150px;
     float : left;
}
#nav ul {
     list-style : none;
     padding : 0;
     font-size : 14px;
}
#sidebar, .floatRight {
     float : right;
}
#sidebar {
     width : 200px;
}
h1 {
     font-size : 20px;
     font-weight : normal;
}
.clearAll {
     clear : both;
}
.footer {
     font-size : 6px;
     text-align : center;
}
.well {
     overflow : hidden;
}
.widget {
     display : block;
     height : 100px;
     margin-bottom : 10px;
}
.well {
     padding : 0 10px;
}

My guess is that a lot of this will make sense for you once we understand the #’s, .’s, and {…} stuff. Quite frankly, CSS is supposed to be fairly easy to understand. So here’s what you need to know:

• You can probably already pick out the different sections of this CSS. Each of these blocks has a common form. The first part is a selector. This tells the browser what element(s) the directions are supposed to apply to. Then, inside the { and } you have a series of rules. These tell the browser what to do.
• Looking at the selectors, you can see plain tag names such as html and h1. Rules in these blocks will be applied to every element of that type on the page. So a selector of html will apply those rules to all html elements on the page (remember, there should only be one, though!). And a selector of h1 will apply to all the h1 children on the page.
• You can also see selectors that start with # (e.g., #sidebar, #nav). The rules in these blocks will be applied to elements that have the given id. So, if you want to apply rules to <div id=”nav”>…</div>, you can use the selector #nav. Please note that only id’s should be unique on the page. So you shouldn’t have more than one <div id=”nav”>…</div>, etc.
• You can use selectors that start with . (e.g., .floatRight). These rules will be applied to elements with the appropriate class attribute. So, if you have <div class=”floatRight”>…</div> you can apply CSS to it with .floatRight. What’s cool about this is that a bunch of different elements can have class=”floatRight” and the same rules will apply to them all.
• While we’re on the subject of class, an element can have multiple class names. Check out <div class=”clearAll footer”>…</div> in the HTML code. The rules for both .clearAll and .footer in the CSS will apply to this element.
• You can apply the same rules to different types of elements at the same time by separating multiple selectors with commas. Thus, the selector #sidebar, .floatRight will apply the float : right; rule to both the element with the id sidebar and any elements with the class floatRight.
• Speaking of float, that may be the one rule that isn’t immediately self-explanatory. Float refers to the way that an element will relate to the rest of the page around it. In essence, it tells the browser to wrap things around this element as though it is floating on one side of the page. In the case of the .floatRight class, that means that these elements will appear on the right-hand side of their parent, and the rest of the page will flow around to their left. Or in the case of the #nav element, it means that it will appear on the left-hand side of the page, and everything else will flow to its right.
• You can get more specific with your rules to affect only certain subsets of elements. So, for instance, with the selector #nav ul, the rules will only apply to the list in the #nav div, shutting off the bullets and removing the indent. The ul in the .well div will be left unaffected.

I know, that’s a lot of stuff to remember. So let’s play with it, shall we? If you went out and found the tools we talked about in Part 3 of this series, you should have already installed the Firebug add-on in Firefox. I hope you’re using Firefox right now because we’re about to put Firebug to work. Check out the page we just built.

Once you’ve got the page loaded in Firefox, you can see that it doesn’t look too bad at all! Not bad for just a few minutes of reading! And here’s where it gets fun. If you right-click (or ctrl-click if you’re on a Mac) on an element, you can select “Inspect Element,” and Firebug will appear to tell you all about the element you were just pointing at. So, for instance, if I point at the “Get Directions” link in the menu to the left, a pane will appear at the bottom of my window with two sides to it. On the left, the element will be highlighted in the structure of the page. And on the right, I can see all the CSS rules that are currently affecting that element (you may have to hit “Style” to see this).

Even more fun, I can alter the element and its CSS rules simply by clicking on what I want to change and typing in a new value or removing it completely. To try it, mouse over the font-size : 14px rule in the style side. To the left of the rule, you should see a little gray indicator appear that you can click to cancel the rule. Do so, and watch the menu get smaller. Or find the <div id=”nav”> tag and delete “nav” from the id. To reset the page, simply refresh the page and start over again.

So there you have it, you built your first webpage. From here on out, you can spruce it up with more and better images, or make it dance with a little Javascript. If you want to do this, or just learn more about the stuff we’ve done and/or web development in general, there are a number of excellent tutorials and resources on the internet. I personally learned a lot from Webmonkey when I was getting started, and although the site went on hiatus for several years between then and now, it still has a lot of good stuff to say. And the best part is that they make learning some technical stuff a little more fun with amusing narratives and such. I would suggest starting with an HTML tutorial, followed by a CSS tutorial. And then, you will want to take a look at a Javascript tutorial.

But for right now, I think we’re done. I mean, after all, you’ve got enough to get started with a simple web presence, anyway. The only thing I have yet to tell you is this: a couple months ago, I was speaking with the pastor of the church I grew up in. Last year, I had built a website for them, and a few months back, out of the blue, this pastor had received a phone call from someone in another state. A friend was getting out of the local jail in a few days; the caller wanted to know if the pastor could help him. Long story short, ultimately, the man has become involved in the church and decided to give faith a try. That’s awesome, and it is a testament to the pastor and congregation, to be certain. But the caller who initiated the whole thing got the church number off their website. That’s what this is all about: creating opportunities for you and your church to minister to the people around you.

And if there’s anything I can do to help you do that, please don’t hesitate to shoot an email to me at jgeerdes@debraheightswesleyan.org.

So let’s get started.

The first thing we’re going to do is pull out a piece of paper and brainstorm to figure out who we are, who our website’s primary audience(s) will be, what we want to put out there for everyone to see, and what our users will expect and/or desire to see when they come to our site. Maybe your church has a mission/vision statement, ministry philosophy, organizational flowchart, etc. That’s great. You’ll want to have that stuff handy because that’s the stuff that you want to communicate, and your website should reflect it all in the way it’s organized and built. If you don’t have it on hand, you’ll want to sit down and figure it out because you can’t build your church’s website until you know who your church is and what it’s called to do. Once you’ve got that in order, you want to sit down and think about your target audience, also known as your community. Are they rich or poor? Is there a particular ethnicity to them? Well educated? Home owners? Families? Young? Old? All of these questions need to be asked because they will affect everything from the pictures you use to the content you post to the functionality that you’ll need to offer on your site. And remember, at this point in the game, EVERYTHING is possible. Don’t limit yourself by, “Oh, well, we can’t do that” because chances are you can! If you like, I developed this worksheet to help me work through this process. And if you want to see what I came up with for our church, you can download my finished worksheet.

Now that you’re getting an idea for what kind of stuff needs to be on your site, it’s time to start thinking about a data structure. Basically, this is a map to locate all the stuff that will be on your website. Think of your website as a commercial district. The best place to be is right on the main drag. Being a door behind that isn’t terrible, but two doors off the drag, people start to thin out. Your data structure, then, should have the most important information that users are going to be looking up front, one click off the front page. More detailed, less used information can go two clicks down, and so on and so forth. Start working on your data structure now because it will affect other portions of your design, but don’t worry if you’re not ready to finalize it right now.

Once you’ve finished thinking about all of this stuff, you’re ready to move on to the actual appearance phase. When I design a layout, I like to have something to go off of, usually a logo. So when I began dreaming about this site, I sat down and started sketching logos. The trick, I have discovered, is to just sketch. Fast. And keep sketching until something jumps up and hits you. I did three renditions in less than ten minutes. I then picked two and moved to Inkscape, tinkering until I came up with what I had actually envisioned for both. Finally, I picked the one I liked most and sent it to a handful of people to get some thoughts. When the comments came back, I tweaked it just a little bit to satisfy the most consistent suggestions. And to the right, you can see what I finally came up with.

With logo in hand, you’re ready to do some layout. Usually, I start on paper with boxes and colored blocks representing different things. Again, the objective is to sketch fast and furious until you find something that really says, “Hey!” This might take ten minutes, or it might take ten days. As you go, you’ll want to make sure that you’re marking up your layout sketches so that you can remember what you’re thinking will go in each area. That way you will be able to make your mock-up look as realistic as possible, and more importantly, you can know what kinds of functionality you need to develop between now and the time that you actually deploy. Once you have a layout that you like, it’s time to start laying it out on the computer. Generally, I use Inkscape to flesh out the layout and play with colors. And as I create the layout, I do so with a few basic rules that you’ll do well to obey as well.

• Of late, I’ve been designing with an XGA (1024 x 768 pixel) screen in mind, but it’s always important to remember that you’re not guaranteed that your user will see that whole space for a couple of reasons. Number one, the browser has scrollbars and borders which steal real estate. Number two, if some people leave their screens at default resolution (which we know they do), Windows XP users will only have 800 pixels in width to work with. And number three, you have no way to guarantee that the user will have their browser maximized, so you could be dealing with a window that is actually much smaller indeed. So I usually make the page 980 pixels wide and assume that the user will need to scroll to see the right-most portion.
• Grids are your friends. Inkscape provides a little feature called guide lines. Essentially, these allow you to create a grid to guide the layout of your site. This is important because the grid allows you to develop a balanced, modular design. And also because the more irregular your page is, the more markup you’re going to have to write. That means your html files will be larger, and it will hit performance later. Usually, I set up a grid with four or five columns and assume that the right one or two columns will be off the screen for lower-resolution users.
• Pictures are a double-edged sword. Choose them wisely. This is true because, while pictures can bring an element of beauty into the design, they also increase the time it takes for a user to see and actually use your website. A few things to remember when it comes to pictures are: there are different formats for a reason. Get to know the strengths and weaknesses of gif, jpg, and png formats. Force yourself to crop and resize pictures to fit the space you’re trying to fill. And make sure to utilize compression when saving your images. Also, of special note for a church website, please make sure to remember that your church is not about artsy stuff, pretty scenery, or even your church facility. It’s about people. Make sure your pictures focus on people, too.
• Always remember that, at the end of the day, users who come to your website are looking for content. Truly, content is king, and nothing about your design should distract from that. In fact, you should do everything in your power to highlight content, especially stuff that’s fresh and new.
• Don’t be afraid to start over.

With these rules in mind, I sat down and started sketching. Because I like to think that our church is pretty simple (in a good way), and the logo that I designed earlier has what I like to think of as a  clean feel, I decided to minimize the pretty pictures on the site and go instead for an exceptionally clean layout. I came up with a series of possible layouts, which I’ve scanned at left to give you an idea what I’m talking about. If you follow the link to the full-size version, you’ll find that I made sure to label key parts so that I could know what I was doing when I went back, even days or weeks later.

I chose to expand on the third in the series, and so created this in Inkscape to flesh out the details of the design. When I showed it to a couple of people from the church for input, though, the response was rather underwhelming. One person suggested sending it off to a graphic designer friend for tweaking. And my wife said it looked a lot like another site I built recently.

So it was back to the drawing board. This time, I picked the last sketch on that page, and this is what I came up with in Inkscape. A few things to note are that the black boxes represent pictures. On the right-hand side, the gray box will be a static map that users can click to visit an interactive map where they will be able to get directions and more. And below that will be a handful of key links for prospective guests, recent news, and upcoming events at the church.

And there you have it: a design for our new church website. In the interest of full disclosure, it did take me several days to write this post. And it actually took a couple of weeks to work up a design, solicit some feedback, and so on and so forth. But actually, to be honest with you, I would rather make sure that the site is designed right here and now than build the rest of the site out only to find out that the design was terrible.

Speaking of building the rest of the site, now that we have our design, it’s time for the part that I like best: building the site itself. We’ll get started with the heavy listing in part 5.