Okay, so this church website doesn’t rock quite as hard as some of the others we’ve looked at, but that’s okay. After all, Redeemer Presbyterian Church is mainline Protestant, and it is on the East Coast. Even their tagline has a formal feel: “Seeking to Renew the City Socially, Spiritually, & Culturally.” That’s so far from Newsong‘s West Coast “…community of misfits…loving people on the fringes of our culture…” that it sounds downright Unitarian Universalist. Still, it makes sense that Redeemer’s website is a little more staid, a little more subdued. I doubt that Presbyterians have ever been on the cutting edge of popular culture. It still has some nice features, though.

Like…they’ve got an iPhone app. More and more young people are accessing the web with their mobile devices, so making sure your church’s website looks good on mobiles is crucial. Even better is having a downloadable app (although why limit yourself to iDevices…as we saw, Newsong has both Android and iPhone apps). More importantly, though, is their “Community Formation” links. Right there on the front page you can connect with Fellowship Groups, Children’s Ministry, Jr. & Sr. High Student Ministry, College Ministry, Congregational Life, School of Gospel Foundations, and Counseling. As I’ve mentioned before, one of the main faith formation functions of a church’s website is bringing people into the church for face-to-face encounters. Clearly Redeemer Presbyterian understands this.

What’s more, if you explore some of those links a little further, you’ll find yourself directed to good things like articles to read, mp3s to listen to, and books to buy from Amazon.com. Also, the Fellowship Groups seem to offer exactly what the Faith Formation 2020 folks suggest: resources to help “regular attenders” practice their faith. All in all, Redeemer’s got a pretty good web presence. And “pretty good” is relatively high praise up here in Minnesota.

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