One of the most popular posts on the Talance blog has been my list of my favorite church websites. I’d like to revisit the topic with five techniques on these killer church sites that we use in super fast and easy congregation websites.

The City Church

http://www.thecity.org/

The City Church has a nice website no matter how you cut it, but what I love is the Latest Message. It’s a frequently updated sermon you can listen to from the homepage of the website or download to listen on your iPod later.

Generation Church

http://generationchurch.org/

Officially, Generation Church is part of the aforementioned City Church, but what they’ve done is smart by not shoe-horning their entire congregation into a one-size-fits-all website. Instead, they launched the hyper-cool, widget-laden Generation Church site for their youth ministry while keeping a more conservative site as the flagship.

Houston NW Church

http://www.hnw.org

The Houston NW Church site is a little too cool for school, but I really like their “Find Life Here: What To Expect at HNW.” They’ve forsaken the About Us page and decided to instead create a kind of users’ guide for new visitors right on the homepage.

Stonebriar Community Church

http://www.stonebriar.org/

People read websites from left to right and from top to bottom. Stonebriar has learned the lesson well by putting the most important information in the top left corner of the page: Service Times and Location. No chance of getting lost or mixed up with this.

Kaleo

http://kaleohouston.com/

This website is ultra simple – it’s just a blog using a standard, open-source theme. But what’s good is that Kaleo is remembering that a website isn’t a phone directory listing; it’s a tool that you can use to connect with congregants. Pastor Bill is a great blogger and explores themes front and center with anyone who comes to visit. If only he’d turn on comments, it would be all the better.

If you’re at a congregation and are having a lazy Friday like I am, take about three minutes and fill out this survey from our good friends at the Center for Congregations in Indiana. They’re doing important research into how congregations are using social media. Can’t wait to see the results, especially since Talance just wrapped up a similar survey among nonprofits in Massachusetts.

My article posted earlier this week alludes to how many Christian organizations are grasping new technologies as a way to boost their ministry. I think it’s a new idea for many Jewish organizations, which I report are slower to cotton on to technology.

I came across this post on Church Marketing Sucks (a blog with a lot of good advice), which I think outlines the way many churches think of themselves. It’s called What Every Non-profit Can Learn From a For-profit (here’s the PowerPoint slide show), but it’s a Christian camp company.

Some might find it a capitalistic view of growing a ministry, but this presentation still represents a forward and growing way of thinking. Some interesting thoughts about how to use business principles in a spiritual setting.

If you have some extra reading time, check out this article from PBS called “Church 2.0: Does a Congregation Know More Than the Pastor?” from the great MediaShift blog. Excellent view on how churches are grasping Web 2.0 technologies.

I just submitted my article to The Jewish Daily Forward on how Jewish nonprofits are faring with Web 2.0 technology. The short answer: they’ve got some catching up to do.

An interesting idea came up during my research. I was asking Rabbi Hayim Herring from STAR (Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal) if he had thoughts about why Jewish philanthropies are slow to jump on the Web 2.0 bandwagon, especially when some Christian organizations are maybe better thought of as Church 2.0.

He said, “Historically, we are a people of the book. We are not a people of the byte.”

Do you think Jewish organizations are slow to pick up on technology because they’ve got their noses in books? What’s your take?

You can read my entire article in the Forward’s special issue on Giving on June 20.