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Back to List of Articles on Internet Evangelism.

Community pages are an amazing strategy for online outreach which very few people are yet using. The concept is to create a site based on the local community – town, local area/county, state, even a small country. The site must offer the best secular links for the community in a range of categories. It must be a genuinely useful resource at this level. But it also contains appropriate Christian links in various categories.

The more comprehensive it is, the more that people in the area will use it as their one-stop local neighborhood site, maybe setting it as a 'start page' in their browsers, and become frequent return visitors. For a more detailed look at the concept, read Frank Johnson's discussion paper Community pages (PDF file – needs Adobe Acrobat to read). This portal concept can also be applied to other subjects.

Use a search engine to check on your town name – you will probably be surprised at how many local organizations and groups have sites which could be part of a Community Portal.

A community site can offer links, news and features, in categories such as:

* local shops and businesses local entertainment restaurants schools and education tourism weather local organisations transport timetables and information women and teens areas health sport spirituality local churches

* religion.

Naturally, the church section links to churches in the area. Under 'religion' and 'spirituality' are links to appropriate sensitive evangelistic pages. Other categories also offer the chance to include evangelistic pages – particularly women, teens, and health, for which there are a number of good resources. Some Christians might worry about the number of secular links compared with Christian links! However, the whole strategy is based on having secular links which really are well-chosen and useful. A good site based on this strategy could become the definitive resource for a town or area – thereby getting potentially thousands of hits a day. The Christian links are there when people wish to look at them, and precisely because they are not preachy and in your face, they have credibility. The page should not 'look' Christian at all. There are many other creative ways that a Community Portal could genuinely serve people in its catchment area and build popularity:

* Feature short stories from local writers Showcase work of local photographers Children's pages and competitions Online games Chat rooms and bulletin boards on specified topics Host announcement pages for local organizations if they don't have their own pages Sales, wants, and swaps bulletin board Local news – though don't overlap with local newspapers if you want their co-operation

* Two-way email discussion lists on matters of local interest
Examples
  • Kamloops Life
    This excellent site, produced in his sparetime by an experienced web evangelist, is a showcase for this approach. Study it in detail. Check the Kamloops explanation of strategy. They may be able to help starting community sites in other places.
  • Tri-Cities Directory – for the Tri-Cities Area of Johnson City, Bristol and Kingsport, Tennessee ( USA). Users can add their own links to the different subject areas. Downham Online
    Community portal for Downham, England. Note the pages on local history, local photos, free classifed ads, local transport; plus the community newsletter. Truth66
    Another way of bringing in local content to an evangelistic site with testimonies. My Grissom
    Grissom Baptist found there was no portal for their area, so they created one using the principles on this page. Greece
    A similar approach can be used for a country page. A Polish outreach team created a multi-search portal for internet cafes, which can carry adverts and links relating to the city the internet cafe is located in – a valuable approach which is proving very successful.
  • A community email newsletter can be part of a community site, or work as a stand-alone project.
This strategy has long been used by some Christian radio stations, who have realized the importance of involvement and identification with the community, and of offering genuinely useful secular information relating to the area. Publicity and promotion
  • Request all local secular sites to link back to the community site in return for their own link. They could be offered a small range of graphics in different colors for the purpose, saying something like: "We are featured on Townville Life, your web gateway to the Townville area." Encourage visitors to make the site into their browser start page, or create a desktop shortcut to it, and explain how to do it. Use a 'tell a friend' form. Send news releases to local newspapers. Ask the online version of local newspapers for a permanent link in return for a free banner link to them. If possible, develop a newsletter which will add to the effectiveness of the site and encourage repeat visits. The editor can commission articles from local residents, feedback, discussion, forthcoming events, competitions – all the ways of making a publication varied and interesting. Offer an attractive downloadable poster which people can print and display. Create credit-card sized contact cards with details of the site. Maybe t-shirts too! Ensure the page is listed in the main search engines, especially those for your country. Learn the procedure for submitting to Yahoo (start with your nearest regional version), Open Directory Project and Zeal.com. Ask local churches to support, pray, provide volunteers, and publicize the site in all their printed newsletters and contact material. Encourage people to set the community page as a start page.
  • Ensure community pages can be found in local-area web searches.
Handling the work One person does not need to do all the work. A big community site can be time-consuming! Here are some ways that work could be delegated among a team:
  • Researching best new links to add Running link checks for out-of-date sites. Software is available for this. Editing a newsletter Replying to email questions
  • Publicity
Encourage people to set the site as their browser start-page If a community portal is comprehensive, it makes an ideal browser start-page. Not all people know how to set this in their browser, so they need clear help. Offer instructions for the main browser versions in current use and don't forget to update them as new browsers appear. There is a script will will set a page as a start-page in a range of browsers, you can see it operating in the footer of this page: how to. There are alternate ways of encouraging repeat visits: · Remind people to bookmark the page and suggest shortcuts for doing this (note how this page does it). · Suggest they create a desktop shortcut to your page. If you wish to give instructions for bookmarks/desktiop shortcuts are on a different page to the one you want them to shortcut, here is a way of doing it. · Other methods of making your site 'sticky'.