Central Church
As part of my role with Forge, I get to sit with Church leaders wrestling with how to orient their Church around mission. I find it stimulating, challenging and exciting.
This year I have been spending time with the leadership team at Central Church in Wollongong. The transition stream of Forge has had the unexpected progression of having the leadership teams of two churches sign up for the forge transition stream in 2007. Usually only one leader does the program - this is problematic in that what they are learning, discovering and experiencing is then having to be translated back into their leadership team setting. It is way more powerful for leadership teams to do this thinking, and dreaming together. We are seeing this at both Central and Urban life.
In both Churches, who come from very different heritages to my own - I see the same struggles and questioning of what it means to be the people of God in community today. It seems so basic to say it, but our missional context is so different to other missional contexts of the past. It is these differences that mean the hard work of thinking/struggling/discussing what it means to be people of faith today is so critical.
I am inspired by some of the conversations and action that is occuring at Central and Urban life and can’t wait to hear and see more.
June 22nd, 2007 at 4:21 pm
I hate to say it…(well…I don’t hate to say actually..I’m having a bit of fun saying it) but this website http://www.forge.org.au/ looks like it’s straight out of the Happy Clappy Christian Life Centre Book Of Website Creating… complete with a link to ‘resources’…and mandatory photo of white middle-aged heterosexual husband and wife (our pastors have nice clothes and smile so you must come to our church and live an amazing and awesome life like we do).
The only thing I couldn’t find was the ‘donate now’ button.
June 22nd, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Hi Lance,
You seem to be quite angry at the church why is that?
June 23rd, 2007 at 11:09 am
I think it’s a good ad for certain audiences, but it’s definitely an ad that pushes my buttons (and I know other people have had a giggle at it too)…but I think that’s kinda ok, since I’m not really the primary audience for that advertising. I think the ad will do what it needs to do.
June 23rd, 2007 at 12:50 pm
LOL! Lance we say “Partner”….
Can you suggest any sites to look to make it not appear like one out of the “Happy Clappy Christian Life Centre Book Of Website Creating”?
Bec, as the designer of the Alongsiders ad - constructive criticism is more than welcome! Let me know what would make it better.
June 23rd, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Neal - I just find it really cheesy, not edgy at all.
That might be ok, depending on your audience. I don’t know who the ad is supposed to appeal to - my guess is that the ad is going to pretty effective in attracting those that need to hear the Duncan’s message most. Those who will have a giggle at the ad are likely to already be familiar with the Duncan’s, and will go or not go to that gig irrespective of what they think of the ad.
I’m not a fan of the banner on the Forge website - it looks like you’re typical megachurch banner, with the smiling couple on one side, the damaged hands, the white curly thing (sorry, not a designer!!!)…even the font screams megachurch! But that’s not a bad thing if that’s the crowd you’re trying to appeal to!
I think it’s the photo of the Duncan’s - it’s a very posed, very happy clappy photos - maybe something more serious and academic would attract me more!!
That probably says far more about me than it does about your design! Again, the image you choose will depend on your target audience, and I suspect that’s not someone like me, because I’d go (if I was in Melbourne) irrespective of the advertisement!
I quite like the Not For Sale website - http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/WhoAreWe.aspx
It doesn’t scream “activists only!!!”, but it’s not overly cheesy either (especially the photos of people).
Sorry…none of that seems very helpful!!
June 23rd, 2007 at 1:50 pm
“Can you suggest any sites to look to make it not appear like one out of the “Happy Clappy Christian Life Centre Book Of Website Creating”?…”
The trick is to care…while looking like you’re too cool to care.
In these situations I generally fall back on ‘what would Jay Bakker do’..and ‘what would Bono do?’
http://www.revolutionnyc.com/
http://www.u2.com/ (refresh for new page pictures)
Beyond the page design…information is presented in plain type for people to easily read.
To be honest…I can’t even read the Alongsiders ad on my browser ..because it’s not a PDF where can you zoom in on the small white type on the black background to read it…so I’ve got no idea what it’s about.
http://www.forge.org.au/content/view/96/
June 23rd, 2007 at 2:02 pm
The revolutionary nyc site looks good, but it’s not very user friendly - I hate those splitscreen websites where you can only scroll half of it. So clunky to use!
June 23rd, 2007 at 2:32 pm
Thanks for comment about the Alongsider’s ad…. fixing it.
Any sites that are online community ?
June 23rd, 2007 at 2:36 pm
what sort? forums? blogs?
June 23rd, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Both. Besides promoting our states and events, we are in the process of building the site into an online community where people can share resources etc as they strive to be incarnational and missional in Oz.
BTW - I really appreciate your post and your work Phil. I know that you are woking hard and that the Transition stream is making a huge difference. Bless you!
June 23rd, 2007 at 2:57 pm
I’ll have a think Neal…
Phil - in case it isn’t clear from my posts above, please don’t think that my views of the advert say anything about my views of the event!!
June 23rd, 2007 at 4:36 pm
“Any sites that are online community ?”
Ummm… http://www.signposts.org.au
June 23rd, 2007 at 5:06 pm
Lance - true, and while I like “hanging out” here, it’s not the best design I’ve come across. It’s difficult to search for a start!!
June 23rd, 2007 at 5:49 pm
I’ve found the best way to search Signposts is to use google’s advanced search… and specify to only return results from the site http://www.signposts.org.au
June 24th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Not providing such a service when its the best available is bad design
There are only two things that I really dislike about the current forge web site, barely any text on the main page. and the use of numbers for all the page url’s, although many places do that (wordpress is an exsample of a good use of urls, dates should be in numbers, post names should be words)