Why Create a Forum for Your Church Website?

Discussion forums are a program you may add to a website that keeps various discussions going 24 hours a day. They allow visitors to post questions and allow others to respond. The communication does not take place in real-time like in a chat room, but has much greater flexibility. Visitors can participate in the conversation at any time. All the "threads" of the forum (various questions and responses) remain on the website so future website visitors can either join in the discussion, or read the thread for educational purposes. These conversations can provide many other, and sometimes unexpected benefits to your congregation.

Reduce time answering administrative questions, with an interactive FAQ

These would be more useful than standard church FAQ web pages because they truly interact with the visitor. These questions will remain forever on the website until you remove them, so if you instruct web visitors to use the forum search and see if their question may be solved, there is a great chance they will utilize it.

Forums bring more traffic to your website by creating more opportunities for your pages to rank in search engines

Suppose you and I are discussing on the forums where a good place would be to have a wedding. You explain to me 10 reasons why your church would be a good spot. 3 months later, a person is searching on best spots to have a wedding in that same town. They way they phrased their question matched up with something we said and that person ends up reading the same top 10 list. They contact the church and even become members a few weeks later.

Forums allow opportunities to build relationships between the church and its members, and the members themselves

We talked about the convenience of church forums. I may not be able to meet up with everyone to discuss the sermon in more depth during the week because of conflicting schedules, but we can carry on the discussion via the forum where people may contribute at any time. Discussion forums also allow people to be more personal and even allow for integrating multimedia like pictures. Forums also provide another point of contact wheras they may never otherwise meet. An example are multi-site churches in the same metro area. Members may never meet in person if they attend different sites, but may find common interests and build an offline relationship from one that starts online in a discussion forum. Churches can also request feedback from their members (e.g. what do you think about the new children's ministry activities?)

Forums improve the ability to share information

- Prayer requests in the church? Maybe the church is too large to share them out loud, and some people are too shy to share them with another person, physically. A prayer request thread in a forum is a perfect opportunity for people to make requests any time of day. Another opportunity is by sharing events scheduling. People can ask for clarification on items and you just answer once for everyone.

Forums encourage repeat visits

If you have interesting discussions and some lively participants, the discussion forums can often become one of the most popular points on a church website.

Often the most difficult part of starting a church website forum is figuring out how to set one up. There are a few packages available commercially, but most require technical know-how and (often expensive) programming and customization.

Fortunately, WebMedley offers a church web forum as part of their church content management system. Imagine being able to set up an entire website with all the newest Internet features with a few clicks of the mouse. Your biggest challenge wouldn't be trying to find programmers, but rather just concentrating on what you want to say to your community. Our website packages are unbelievably affordable and come with a full array of video and email support to walk you through the process.

Try WebMedley's church website forums today

WebMedley is also offering a 45 day free trial for a limited time, so you can test out the website builder for your church. We even have design templates so you can get a site finished in days or weeks, instead of months (or more). Sign up today for the free trial - no obligation to keep it, but we are sure you'll want to.