Living Open Source

Tony Burgess e-mailed me about his church’s new site, currently hosted at wordpress.com. This has to be one of the best examples of a WordPress-driven church web site, I’ve seen.

It isn’t a fancy web site that will attract people to the gospel; its a living, breathing Christ-centred community.

It shows a church that is alive and presents clear up-to date information about the church and its life. One of the clear advantages of using WordPress (or similar tools) is that it can create a sense of community and activity with very little effort. By simply regularly posting what is happening in the church community, you create a window into your church that shows a vibrant and attractive community. White Oak have achieved this with their site.

WordPress.com is a good place to start if you don’t want to worry about installing WP or mess with themes. But you are confined to the installed set of themes and features, which is why the White Oak site is so impressive. White Oak’s site illustrates that content always wins and by starting out with a site at WordPress.com rather than trying to host it themselves, they have been focused on content rather than geekery.

It isn’t a fancy web site that will attract people to the gospel; its a living, breathing Christ-centred community. Acts 2:42-47 describes such a community, to which people came to join and belong because its life was attractive. The church web site can be a window into this kind of life.