Redeemer’s 2×2 Website Surpasses 5000 Visitors
Redeemer’s experimental congregational web site just tallied its 5000th first-time visitor.
Little Redeemer reaches more people every week than most large churches reach on Sunday morning.
Redeemer started 2x2virtualchurch.com in late February 2011.
The site was started as a mission vehicle when Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod (SEPA) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America seized our property.
Redeemer knows that small churches are capable of big ministry. The internet seemed to be a perfect vehicle for a congregation with no church building.
By the end of summer 2011, 2×2 had only a few dozen visits. We were posting sporadically — a few times a month.
We began posting daily.
We focused on three strengths of the congregation: Social Media, Children in Worship and Multicultural Ministry. The site also includes commentary on issues facing many neighborhood congregations today.
We learned to create content with others in mind.
We write interdenominationally, but we don’t hide our Lutheran roots.
We link to other related sites and engage in conversation in other religious forums—all things encouraged in this new communications medium.
Statistics guide our content development.
At Easter we posted a short play, written and produced by Redeemer a year before our doors were locked. It was downloaded 150 times. We responded to this interest by posting a Pentecost resource for small churches.
Much of our traffic comes from our ongoing exploration of Social Media topics.
Our Multicultural series did not attract as much attention, but it was reblogged — linked from other sites—more often. This tells us that there is intense if not broad interest.
Several seminaries posted articles from our website for discussion. One of our recent posts was broadcast by a retweeting engine.
We now have more than 80 followers who subscribe daily via Facebook, Twitter or direct email feed. An additional 30-80 visitors per day represent every state in the Union and more than 70 countries with just shy of 1000 visitors a month. As that number continues to grow, we expect to have between 12,000 and 20,000 readers by the end of our second year.
Our highest international traffic comes from Canada, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Belgium, South Africa, and Australia. Traffic is growing in the mid-East and Africa.
There are interesting, inexplicable spikes in readership. One day we had 26 readers in the Bahamas! The very next day we had 16 readers from the Netherlands.
We hear regularly from small mission congregations in Pakistan and Kenya and support one another with ministry ideas and prayer.
We are encountering Christians from many denominations — some of them represent very large ministries. We learn of interesting projects and try to help by providing links. A college student in Texas, who has created a ministry recycling VBS materials, gets a few daily visitors from 2×2 links.
Redeemer may be one of the most active and growing congregations in Southeastern Pennsylvania—even if we are shunned by our own denomination. SEPA justifies its actions in East Falls with accusations of lack of mission focus. There is no lack of mission focus at Redeemer. We are just using a very wide-angle lens!
We will be glad to make a presentation to SEPA Synod Assembly on our growing experience in web ministry. Just contact us!