Searching for a church should be easier…

Over the past year, we have known this was coming…Our son would graduate from High School and move off to college. I could write a lot about this but I will start here. Several weeks before my oldest son left for college he said, “Dad will you help me find a church to go to once I get moved to Savannah” and with a smile, I said, “of course.” The truth is…this made my day!

So how do you look for a church when you live a thousand miles away from the location that you are moving to?

Let me give you a hint it’s the exact same way you would look for a church in the town you live in… GOOGLE.

Knowing that he was living in the dorm. Knowing that parking is limited in Savannah. Knowing I wanted it to be convenient as possible for him to attend. Knowing that he wanted a church where he could meet other college students and honestly knowing the style of church he would want to attend, I set off on my search.

If you do a quick search on Google you will find over 100 churches on Google (I actually stopped counting at 100). But that was not my first search. First, I searched “churches near SCAD” (Savannah College of Art and Design). This did change my search results some but I was still left with a lot of questions. So, I followed it up with a search, “Churches with college ministries in Savannah GA.” There was one church that showed up in both searches. Actually, it was the only church that showed up in both searches. So it grabbed my attention and I started looking into this church.

There were several things that I did next. First, I visited their website. I read as much as I could about the church. I looked at the picture asking myself if there was anyone at this church my son would relate to. From there I jumped over to their Facebook page and listened to several of their services that they had streamed online. Admittedly, their website didn’t answer my questions or give the best first impression. Their service was ok (I know I was judging them harshly).
(I will discuss our visit soon. Sign up to get it in an email)

This led me to a continued search for a list of churches my son may want to visit and that I could recommend to him. I finally had a list of a handful of churches to visit. Here is the issue…Amy and I were only going to be there for one Sunday. Which one would we take him to?

Now let me back up for a minute. As I mentioned, my son was moving from Texas to Savannah, Ga. to attend SCAD (His dream school). SCAD has somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000 students that attend. There are a few other colleges there as well.

Here is my point…

Is your church website serving as a missionary?

There are 15,000 people just at SCAD moving to town. Many of those looking for a church and many of them are in need of God.

How Is your church using its website to reach people?

Only one church consistently showed up in any of the types of searches that I was doing. After doing a deep dive on this one church they were just lucky there was no intentionality about it. It does not have to be that way!

There is something called SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Your church can and should show up in searches.

People are searching…
Churches near me.
Churches in Savannah, Ga.
Churches near SCAD
Churches with a college ministry
Churches with a youth ministry

This list goes on.

People are searching for…
Is God good?
I can’t sleep.
I am all alone.
How to deal with grief.

I could keep going.

Churches need to be about using their website as a ministry tool. Even a missionary that is always awake ready to point people to your church and a loving God that sent his Son to die for their sins.

Finding a church should not be so hard! The truth is…It does not have to be. There are 8.5 billion searches on Google every day. That is where we go when we need directions. It’s where we go when we have questions. It’s where we go when we are looking for a church. Your church website should be there when searches are made. 

Your church should be at the top of the list of what people are searching for. Doing so can change so many lives.

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