I built my church website, and that's where it normally ends for me. I can't also be the person expected to update content on the websites I build. That's left up to the pastors, presidents, DCEs, volunteers, church secretaries, or (in rare cases) media managers. However, for my own church, I volunteered to add Pastor Rick's Friday Morning Musings. Luckily, I can add it from anywhere, including when I'm on a trip to Madeira Beach with the family.

A lot of people with whom I work think of website content updating as the worst possible annoyance imaginable. I can see that if you don't understand how to add an article or how important that article is to the church.

Here's how easy it is: I get the email from Pastor Rick; I copy the text, I open the church website and navigate to his page; I hit the New button to create a new article; I paste the text; I hit Save.

The new article appears as the top link on the page. Pastor Rick could have done it, but he's happier just sending out the emails, and I get a chance to volunteer. From anywhere.

My son was a little sick on the family trip, so I had to stay at the hotel while my wife and daughter went for a walk on the beach. Instead of watching ESPN or local news, I spent the time updating the church website. A year after posting many of the articles, they tend to have about 400 hits, or nearly one click per day. That might not seem like a lot at first, but I've now added around 50 articles, each of which get around one click per day. After 10 years and another 400+ articles, the numbers are pretty impressive. Just to be conservative, we’ll say 40 articles per year at 300 hits per article per year. 1,200 hits for this year. 1,200 + 1,200 for next year. 1,200 x 3 for the year after. And so on. After a decade, some of those original articles will be at 4,000 hits on their own, and the whole website will have well over 50,000 hits total.

Since Pastor Rick emails this article to church members, we can assume a lot of the hits are non-members. Even if those people aren't Lutheran or Christian or local, they can still be affected by the words. In fact, a church website's purpose is just as much aimed at these people as the church members. The content of the website is what brings new people to the site, and most of our churches are looking for new people to show up, even if it means checking out a Lutheran Church in another city. Even if it means finding a Christian Church of any sort elsewhere. If a church or a church synod gets just one new member from those posts, it’s a win. But hey, if you don’t think 50,000 hits over a decade will get your church some new members, then let the other church down the block do the work.