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Sep
1
Written by:
host
9/1/2009 7:00 AM
 Last week I encouraged you to think about how and where you can share your news, publications, class handouts, and so on online. Today, let's think about the flip side: when should you keep things off of the web?
There are no "standard" rules, so you will need to develop your own as a congregation. Here are a few guidelines to get you started. You probably will not want to post...
- Photos of children or youth, unless you have explicit written permission from parents. As a "Safe Sanctuary" practice, if you do include photos of young people on your website, consider identifying them only by their first names.
- Images that are poor in quality. Not only does this refer to images that are poorly framed, out-of-focus, or clearly outdated (bad clip-art, anyone?), but it also includes images that could reflect poorly on your programming. As a friend reminded me, don't post "...images of VBS or other activities where all you see is kids running around."
- Newsletters that are more than a month or two old. Many congregations keep newsletters online far too long. Honestly, who wants or needs to read the old news? Two months of newsletters is certainly plenty, with a link to the newsletter editor who can be contacted if back issues are truly required.
- Email addresses that are correctly formatted. Rather than print email addresses as name@mailhost.com, printing them like name [at] mailhost.com reduces the chance that the address will be picked up by spammers who "troll" for valid addresses.
- Bad financial news. 85 percent of potential visitors will find you via the web. Do you really want them to see the news from the finance committee that you've been running in the red for three months? If you do feel it is important for existing members to have access to this type of information, you can put it in a part of the website that requires one to log in to view it.
- Handouts with quotations, song lyrics, charts, etc. that you don't have permission to reproduce, and graphics you haven't created or purchased. Respect the rights of copyright holders.
- Information intended for a tiny subset of your congregation. Use email, not the website, to share documents or other information with just a few people.
- Directories of your congregation members or a subset thereof, such as the youth group. You can put information like this in a private area for members that requires a password, but even then you should only include the info of those who have "opted in" to having their data shared.
- Anything that could be construed as supporting a political candidate. Announcing that you are having the city council or mayoral candidates come to an adult Forum Class for a dialogue is OK; a practice of inviting only one candidate can be used by the IRS against the church to revoke its Qualified Charitable Organization status.
There is a tendency in some congregations to assume that everything possible should go on the church website, but this is most definitely not the case. Always ask yourself these questions: What information does a visitor need to see? What impression will this make? How can we make sure it's easy for a potential visitor to find on our website? If it's not likely to be of interest or value to a visitor or individual looking to get more involved in the life of the congregation, give strong consideration to leaving it off of your website.
~ by Tim Gossett
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