Google has been a blessing from above for the evangelical community and it’s provided many of us (if not all?) great products to use for our lives and ministry work.

But sometimes it backfires.

For example, I saw this great article about how “Teenagers are learning valuable social and technical skills online” and was excited to jump in.

But what I immediately saw after about 5 seconds was this conflicting and contradictory advertisement by a Christian boarding school for troubled teens, and this frustrated me enough to blog about it.

Now I’m all for advertising, but only if it’s leveraged wisely, thoughtfully, and strategically.  And if you’re going to give up control of your advertising with the Google-monster, you’d better be aware of the plentiful shortcomings.

Technology is great, but it’ll smack you in the face if you aren’t careful.  Defending your brand, not the mention the “brand” of the Church is important too.

Image from Tom Andrews [Flickr]

And this isn’t just about the readers, either.  It’s about the organization!  That website was on the top Digg-list for a while, meaning that it received more hits that day than probably the life of the entire website.

That means, among a number of other things, that valuable advertising dollars were wasted because they weren’t reaching the intended target audience.

Especially in this economy, you can definitely afford to do a little more thinking about it… because wallets are tight everywhere.

So do it for yourself.  Let’s all be a little more careful when we seek to use technology for our ministries and organizations.  Make sure you know what you’re getting into.

It’ll save you time, money, resources, heartache, and potential embarassment.

Cheers.