Discussion forums on Church Site

[rjwalker]

I've tried a couple of times to get discussion forums going with our web package/site, but few seem interested

I'm beginning to think that the community created through a forum isn't a perceived need within a "formal" congregational community

Our church has about 450 attending at 3 services, and many active Sunday school classes, bible studies and small groups

Anyone have any observations of experiences witha forum within an established ""mainline" church?

[prochlea]

I've been involved in small groups at church that have their own message boards using things like yahoo groups, and our church has a facebook group. Those can be useful for easily sending out information.

It seems to me that it is something that could be useful if you had defined topics... at least at first. You would have to direct people what to post about first, to get some discussion going.

Personally, I like forums that cover a broader audience, like CMN, because you get to hear from a much bigger range of people.

[kbob]

There needs to be a perceived value in going to the site at all. Maybe follow up notes, or have a topic related to each week's sermon as a starting point? especially if you have fellowship groups of some kind that can focus on that.

Having other areas available for forums or chat when sending members of the congregation to the website might then lead them to start participating slowly, building of time...might be worth a shot anyway.

[rjwalker]

Thanks all: my first attempt was for the planning team for our, ah, "post modern, edgy, Wed night service."

Lead balloon

Our current message theme is on prayer and ther book "Living Prayer" was given out to all.

I set up the forum, passed out the link to staff, hoping to get some discussion going before going public to the congregation.

Another lead balloon.

FWIW: http://tinyurl.com/2u8rtn

Namaste

[pwright2]

Yeah, my experience is that ANYTHING online based will only be successful with people who like online based stuff. And that is not really a large percentage of the total congregation. Those of us who use things like CMN are sometimes deluded into thinking that there are a lot of us.

The guys at Creative Synergy had a session where they talked about using blogs for scheduling volunteers. I thought it was a brilliant concept. I've tried it with the AV crew and with the deacons. Lead balloon with the AV crew, who are at least technically oriented. Deacons are using it some but mostly because I do all the real work of posting schedules so they mainly use it as a calendar with comments.

I think we are still ahead of the adoption curve.

-----Paul-----

[Brupock]

Just looking to see if there were any secret anwers to this topic. We just recently set up a forum on our church website and yes the response has been pretty non existent. Maybe we need to try to be a little more focused on the topic starters. I don't know...

[LeAnn B]

I believe the secret is to get people involved and then remind them to stay involved. We have that initial surge of activity but then people forget about us and stop coming back. I think the key is to have it set up that users get an email notification to let them know there is a new topic or a reply to their post. It keeps it fresh in their minds and keeps them coming back. At least in theory I haven't executed it yet.

[Pastor Tim]

Originally Posted by pwright2

Yeah, my experience is that ANYTHING online based will only be successful with people who like online based stuff. And that is not really a large percentage of the total congregation. Those of us who use things like CMN are sometimes deluded into thinking that there are a lot of us.

This is often a problem with us tech-types. We have a calendar on our church web site and most of the church have and use Internet access for various things, but I can't get them to check the calendar to see when events are. I can't even get the lady who does our print calendar (who does a lot of on-line stuff) to check it to get accurate information for the printed version.

I think there is, among a lot of "church people" a feeling that technology is somehow just not quite appropriate for dealing with the things of God.

Pastor Tim

[hoferchr]

I have really been struggling with this, too. Our church website (ascensionfdl.org) runs on Joomla 1.5, and we do have a discussion board, but it is only accessed by signing in to our website via "My ALC" with your Username and Password. The general public cannot see this. To date, I have set up many discussion topics, but there just hasn't been much interest in using it...but I think there's real value in having the available. We use the discussion component Kunena (formerly FireBoard) downloaded from the Joomla Extensions website.

Our Web Host (Host Monster) has tools available via Simple Scripts to install discussion boards with a few clicks of the mouse. This really appeals to me (because upgrading is SUPER SIMPLE, and they look really nice!), but at the same time this would be yet another Username/Password for people to remember because we don't have any single sign-on experience on our website (we already have a login for our main website and our blog site).

I would be curious to know what others are doing and how they get people engaged in discussions.

[mickmel]

I've struggled with the same thing. I eventually came to realize that people were having their own discussions online, and go to to them, rather than trying to force them to come to us. I found about 25 "groups" on Facebook already formed, and a decent percentage of the church on twitter (~30%), so I just started promoting those. Being active on Twitter, setting up some church "Pages" on Facebook, etc. It's worked quite well.