Creating a sense of community around a website

A community is a group of like-minded people. You are probably part of several different communities – the town/village where you live, the place where you work or study, a group of friends with whom you play sport or other hobby activity, and your church fellowship.

A community of people usually has most of these characteristics:

• shared interests
• shared values
• shared problems/enemies
• mutually supportive
• intimacy
• physical face-to-face interaction at specific times

A virtual online community shares most of these characteristics except the last. Time and location are no longer relevant. And because you are online, you can share as much or little of yourself as you wish, without being judged.

The Web's unique properties – a pull medium with interactive two-way capability – gives the opportunity for this sense of belonging and relationship which is a deep human need.

Community online within evangelism

Some evangelistic websites lend themselves to creating this sense of community. The Gospel most easily flows when there are shared interests and relationships. A single 'cut and run' exposure to the Gospel is not usually effective. To echo Willowcreek's ethos, an evangelistic website should be "a safe place for a dangerous message", and should "create space for non-believers to come and investigate the radical claims of Christ at their own pace."

To have a sense of community, a website needs to be welcoming and non-condemning. It must meet people where they are, and demonstrate an understanding of their feelings and problems. They must feel that they somehow 'belong' to the site, and can also offer their own feedback and opinions as well as receive advice.

In other words, the website must be sticky and encourage return visits.

Belonging

Options which help visitors to feel that they belong:

• The webmaster must not be anonymous, but a real person, with picture and personal story online. Then visitors feel that they know and can identify with him or her.
• A regular newsletter can keep people in touch – Women Today Magazine produce one specifically for non-Christians..
• Two-way discussion lists or online bulletin boards give people the chance to share opinions with others in the circle of influence of the website. Note that there are practical minimum and maximum sizes for these options. A discussion list on which there are less than 20 people is unlikely to generate meaningful discussion.

A discussion list containing more than about 200 people can generate so much discussion that its size will be self-limiting because people will leave when the email load becomes too great. On the other hand, bulletin boards do not usually generate significant discussion until site visitors reach about 2000 a day.

A chat room may require an even higher number of visitors to be a viable addition to a site.

Letting them contribute

A site which permits visitors to contribute content is potentially building community and a high level of trust. Reality Check explains more of this strategy.

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