Why Have a Website

a ministry for independent, Baptist missionaries and pastors - Acts 8:31

About Us

Why Have a Website?

It is always good to start with a reason for doing something. Websites take time and money, and we are called to be good stewards of both. Consider these reasons for investing in a good, quality website as a missionary or for your church.

To Help Accomplish Your Goal - Whether you are a missionary or pastor, you have a goal. If you are a missionary on deputation, you have the goals of raising all of your needed support, gaining prayer warriors to team with your ministry, informing believers of the Gospel need around the world, and maintaining good communication with family/friends/churches back in America. If you are a pastor, you desire to make Christ known to your community through your church, disciple believers, and shepherd your flock. Each of these goals can be assisted through having and maintaining a website. The remaining list will help elaborate on this.
To Inform Others Without You - You still have to do your work by calling, mailing, or talking with folks, but a website will not be bound by your schedule. Whether you are awake or asleep, a website can be working for you to get your information to other pastors (for the missionary) or for other prospective church members (for the pastor). Many people will search online for a new church once they move into a new area. They are looking there, why not let them find you? We have personally had a number of pastors contact us as missionaries because they found us online.
To Save You Money - You may be thinking, “You just said it costs to have a website.” That is true, but it can save you money in the long run. Missionary, how much does it cost you to send one packet to a church? Once you add in the paper, ink, design time, prayer card, envelope, postage, and possibly a DVD, you can end up spending over $1 for each packet you mail. (For this reason, consider usually mailing packets to churches after you’ve called and they have requested one.) Mailing five packets in one month will equal the cost of having a website. More and more pastors will accept your web address in lieu of a packet. You may also cut back on the number of prayer letters you mail out to individuals or churches if they have access to a prayer letter in PDF through your website.
To Save You and Others Time - When talking to a pastor on the phone, a missionary with a website provides immediate access for the pastor to his information. The pastor does not have to wait for snail mail to look at the missionary’s doctrinal statement, goals, and even ministry video. Some pastors have been able to make a decision to schedule a missionary before hanging up the phone due to instant access to the missionary’s information via a website. This means one less article of mail for the church secretary to go through, one less stack of paper on the pastor’s desk, and more time to focus on other needs. Pastor, if you would like to minimize the number of phone calls and packets, consider having a website for your church. Before calling a church, I try to find them online, look over their doctrinal statement, youth group, music, Bible version used, and gather their philosophy of ministry. It takes time to do this “homework,” but it will save you and the pastor the time of finding out later whether you are a “good match” for each other. Websites can also filter out visitors to your church that may have been wolves in sheep’s clothing.
To Minister to Others - Whether it is a page on your website that gives the Gospel, links to helpful websites, printable resources, or sermons, a website can provide several avenues of ministry that were previously available. Shut-ins and those sick at home can now watch live church services at home on the Internet. Previously, a church would have to rent airtime on a local television channel to do this, which was beyond most church budgets. This website you are looking at is just another example of ministering to others through this technology.

While there are reasons TO have website, there are also reasons NOT to have a website. If you are a missionary going to a restricted-access nation, you need to stay under the radar as much as possible. If you are in this category, DO NOT have a website. Also, if you do not personally have any of the reasons listed above, then do not bother to have a website. Once again, if you have any additional comments, please click on the “Feedback” icon to the right and help make the information here even better.

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