While in the online news world “pay walls” are the topic of the day, in the non-secular sphere some churches are thinking about “prayer walls.”
At least, those that are early adopters in steepleconnect.com, the latest development of eSolve Solutions, a Latham web company owned by Guy Cortesi. Part website, part social network and part donation plate, Cortesi said the idea was born when a church in the Binghamton area was on the hunt for a new website.
A congregant of the church, Adam Smallcomb, partnered with Cortesi’s son, Timothy, in getting things started.
“We decided to take it a lot further,” Guy Cortesi said, adding that once they got under way, it became clear there was an untapped market for a robust, easy-to-use, affordable web presence for churches.
“We found that in like 60 churches, there might be 30 that don’t have a site, or have a minimal site,” Cortesi said. “We also found that most of them aren’t being maintained, and if they are being maintained it’s a lot of work.”
Churches that join steepleconnect (there are three right now, but Cortesi hopes to add more, including Capital District houses of worship) get their own corner of the website that integrates a lot of features Facebook users might be familiar with. There are places for full-featured calendars, blogs and general information about a church. There’s also a way to make a secure donation to the church and even to share podcasts of the sermon from each week’s worship.
The Rev. David Murphy, of Valleyview Alliance Church in Vestal, said the website has been a useful too for his church in many ways. Even serving as the guinea pig for the development of the system and putting in money up front, it’s been cheaper than getting similar features out of website built privately from the ground-up, he said.
A dynamic web presence has also resulted in people showing up for Sunday worship, and staying.
“Most of our shopping is done online now … people are doing that for ministry as well,” Murphy said. “People are unlikely to just do a cold call to a church nowadays.”
For those who already belong to the congregation, Valleyview’s site on steepleconnect offers a digital directory of church members (which also saves the church the cost and hassle of printing one) and a way to donate online. That’s ended up being used often, especially by younger people who don’t carry checks or cash.
“It has increased our giving at the church and really helped us recover from a deficit at our church. A lot of people traveling through the summer, they’re not giving to the church,” Murphy said.
A feature that programmers are now working on is a “prayer wall,” said Cortesi, which would allow members of a congregation to post calls for prayers to a central board. Members out of the area or unable to make it to worship could keep up on goings on in this way, and also save church staff the hassle of putting together email bulletins.
Churches can pay $35 per month or $350 per year for use of the steepleconnect system, which includes eSolve Solutions helping with setup and support. That’s more than setting up a free presence on Facebook, for instance, but Cortesi thinks churches will see the value on going into a system targeted at their needs.
“Some churches spend $2,000 to have somebody build [a website] for them, and they can’t really change that. It costs them a lot of money to maintain it keep it up to date,” he said.
That’s good for small churches that want a foothold in the digital world. Opinions on the necessity of an online presence are bound to vary, but for Rev. Murphy it’s required in the present and the future.
“Our older congregants will get older and they will eventually die. The younger people and families we’re trying to draw into the church are trying to use technology more and more as their principal mode of communicating with the church,” he said.
Learn more about steepleconnect.com and take a virtual tour at the website.
