Redeemer’s website/blog, 2x2virtualchurch.com, is about to log its 40,000 unique visitor in its 30-month history. We’ve grown from 2000 visitors our first year to 13,000 visitors our second year and are well on our way to surpassing 30,000 visitors this year.
2×2 has grown by offering content. Our editorial mix is one third about Redeemer’s unique ostracism from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Being quiet only fuels the notion that it is OK to treat congregations this way. We have to speak out.
Another third is devoted to commentary about the future of the Church, which we think will suffer less from member apathy than from a failure of church structure to adapt to modern times. Still another third—and the third that drives traffic—is our resource offerings geared for use in small congregations (most congregations).
You see, first and foremost, we are a church, a people shunned by the church of our heritage, but a church all the same.
2×2 begins each week with two resource features: 1) an object lesson geared to adult learners but often adaptable to all ages and 2) a study of art or poetry/prose that is spiritually enriching.
Seven hundred readers find our spiritual content every week as unique visitors. Another 200 follow our content through social media.
We have other features, too. We have written extensively on the topic of social media and the church and have gained national and world recognition. In the topsy turvy world of the 21st century we are beginning to be noticed locally, long after readers from far away began following us.
We respond to people who write to us and have formed an interesting network of Christian alliances all over the world—impossible 20 years ago. We believe this ability to connect directly will change evangelism forever. Geography will become less and less important to viability.
Our exploration of social media has been self-guided—brand new territory for everyone. The church is very slow to realize that using social media will spark the transformation they seek.
We have used no gimmicks in growing our following. No contests. No email opt-ins. No special offers. We just plod along as volunteers with no budget, figuring things out for ourselves.
As we enter 2014, we will begin exploring more methods for intentionally growing a church website and following as a mission model.
What holds Redeemer back is the strained relationship with the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod, who, hungry for our property and endowment funds, stopped seeing our congregation as children of God. We were an obstacle to their goal of taking our property.
We tend to be no better than way we treat the least among us.
If your church is exploring internet outreach and would like to learn from the 2×2 experience, let us know. We are always ready to share.
Meanwhile, we will spend the next two months establishing some hard goals for our 2014 ministry, which continues in spite of four years of locked doors and lawsuits as our only connection to the church which took $2 million of property and cash assets, reasoning that they had better uses for our resources. They have spent the last four years mowing the lawn of a locked church.