If you’ve been following along, you were encouraged to consider what content you could put on your home page to show your most important and neglected audience an engaged, warm, outsider-friendly welcome to your church.
When someone comes to your website, you have about 5-10 seconds to connect with them, or they are gone.
So that top section of your home page is it. That’s your first impression to everyone. It’s what used to be called the “above the fold” section. Outsiders aren’t going to wander around your website and look for things that make sense to them.
This is one of the things to consider for us Reformed folks. Often, we want to make that main section what’s most important to us–Reformed, OPC, Confessional, etc. And then we put things for the outsider somewhere else. That’s backwards. We want to encourage you to think about putting the clearest expression of your gospel commitment and hope for outsiders more prominent and understandable as that first impression. And put the distinctives clearly available in proper places for those looking for them. This will be challenging for many of us. That’s Ok. But let’s think about it.
We want to share 3 front-page styles of “above the fold” website messages.
1) “Classic Reformed”
This is what we might think of for a typical OPC or Reformed website. We aren’t going to give you examples to not single out any churches in this category.
But in this category, the first impression of that main section of the website focuses on:
-Congregation of the OPC
-Reformed Tradition or Westminster Confession
-Bible Phrases or ideas (that are wonderful) but only meaningful to the insider/initiated, such as “Gospel-centered,” “Proclaiming Christ,” “Him We Proclaim,” and “Bible-believing,” (Nothing wrong with the phrases! The question is can we say the same thing in that space in a way that is more accessible to the uninitiated?
2)Better OPC Examples
Here are some OPC Examples that are good and moving in the right direction…
from: Christ Chuch, Downingtown, PA
from: Branch of Hope, Torrance, CA
3) Outside our Tradition that push us to be more outsider-friendly
We fully understand we may not agree with these churches on various matters and may not even phrase things exactly like the examples, but let’s see what principles are in these specific examples that can help and teach us.
Lastly, let’s bring back the examples from the last post that are more clearly for the outsider and in their language. Would we put these as part of that first impression?
That’s a lot of info and a lot to think about…
Exercise: Create a new “first impression” part of the front page of your website, at least the message and image. If you don’t have graphics capabilities or people, write it out first. If you or someone in the church can make it so you can show leaders and relevant people, have someone make it.
We would LOVE for you to share it with us so we can see what you are thinking! Email to us at opchomemissions@gmail.com or just reply to the email that got you to this post.