The About Us page was actually fairly traditional because the pastor had something specific he wanted to appear there. To present a more people-centric flavor, we had a page we called "What To Expect." On that page, we answered a number of questions (in fact, you can still see the content on this church website – http://www.thehighbridge.com/expect.html- I'm pretty sure this is one of the churches that asked us for permission to use the text).

But on the site I'm talking about, above those questions and answers, we had a section called "Who Will I Meet?" When we launched the site, that section had links to 5 other sections of the site, centered around the stories of real people in the congregation – a man who suffered from Hepatitis-C because of drug use in his early life, a former right rear tire man on a winning Indianapolis 500 team (and a former alcoholic), an actor/musician, a 13-year-old girl with leukemia, and a man who spent much of his early life as a devotee of Eastern religions. Each of those people-centered sections included a profile of the person, an interview transcript (most of them were quite long), and a page of links to web-based resources which fit their life experiences.

The idea was not to present religious testimonies, but life stories. So, for example, most of the interview with the 13-year-old girl was about how she found out how she had leukemia, about how she coped with chemotherapy, about her swimming exploits at her high school (she was quite accomplished), about how she was part of the Olympic Torch relay in 2002. Of course, for people who love Jesus, those broader life stories still touched upon their relationship with God. I still remember listening to the audio recording when the interviewer asked her if she was scared of dying. Her answer brought me to tears (still does when I think about it) – she said that she was not afraid because she knew where she was going when she died, but she was afraid for her family because they would have to cope with her death.

Our thought was that presenting that story (eventually, we also wanted to have video clips but we never got there) to people in our local geographic area would hopefully cause those who were young and had leukemia would want to meet her, and that through that, unbelievers would be drawn into the community of believers and eventually commit their lives to Christ as they witnessed the love of Christ lived out within the community.

We also had a section on the home page that rotated various tantalizing questions (and links to the corresponding people-centric sections). For example, one of the home-page elements linked to the section which was about the Indy 500 right-rear-tire man and said this "Do You Love Auto Racing? Click here to read how a champion driver (he wasn't just a right-rear-tire man) finds satisfaction in life through devoting his life to a greater cause." Each people-centric section had two or three such home-page elements in the rotation.

Initially, the stated objective was to interview every person in the church. At first, we chose people who had intriguing stories from a human perspective, but our conviction was/is that everyone has a story to tell and that every person's story can/will provide a touchpoint for an unbeliever in a local geographic area. And hopefully draw them into the community of believers.

If you're interested in more on the idea, you could read these articles on one of my blogs:

Effective Church Websites for Emerging Generations – http://tinyurl.com/b229ma
A Strategy For Local Internet Outreach – http://tinyurl.com/2c7pqw

Hope that helps!

Frank