Embracing Technology. Since its inception, long ago in 1821, the Southern Carolina Baptist Convention (SCBC) has actively sought to empower and support its member churches. With continually evolving support systems specifically designed to foster evangelism, missions and spiritual developments, the SCBC has kept in the forefront with its ability to effectively assimilate technology into its core function. The SCBC sees the Web as one of the keys to ministry in the future and is doing everything it can to encourage churches to harness the internet for positive purposes.

As a result, the Convention has opted to implement three components designed to bolster internet-related corporate initiatives. They are first to create a distributed learning network that involves the Web, second to enhance their corporate Web site so that services and resources are available 24/7 and third to bring every church online, either through garnering useful tools from the Convention’s Web site or by creating a church Web site of their own.

To efficiently meet these objectives, the SCBC has built a coalition with ACS Technologies and is working hand-in-hand with them to efficiently meet their initiatives.

“The Convention’s desire is to provide internet tools that complement its church’s traditional ministry plans. Overall, they want to provide the best research, best homework, and offer the best solutions and tools to ensure success at the local church level,” commented Brandon Steiger, web ministry consultant and web services group manager for ACS Technologies.

Empowering Churches. The Convention sees one of its biggest roles as needing to promote the value of the internet to its churches because of the valuable global impact that it can have. Churches need to work together; in fact, they crave communication within their church community. Through the SCBC’s online community network, churches will have a way to communicate with each other, share articles on topics that are universally applicable, and become a resource to one another.

“Reaching people for Christ requires multiple approaches for sharing the gospel,” explains Roger Orman, director of the congregational spiritual development team for the SCBC. “It’s about Web ministry, not just a Web site. The Web is no longer the platform of communication for the future; it is a great communication asset for use today,” he continued.

ACS Technologies has also been instrumental in assisting the SCBC to meet their corporate initiatives by providing a way for churches to move online by way of the SCBC community network. The convention itself is now able to better provide information and resources to churches by utilizing the network to build and maintain its own corporate site.

Online Successes. For example, one of the first major online successes the Convention experienced was registering people online for its annual senior’s convention. They promoted the Web site address in all marketing materials leading up to the conference, and by the deadline date, 90% of all registrants had registered online. Additionally, out of the 90% who registered online, only eight email addresses were from church computers, meaning that the majority of seniors registered from their computers. They were even able to create a special domain address that took registrants directly to the Web page they needed and bypassed the home page that might distract them from registering.

Another aspect that has enhanced the SCBC’s ability to meet the needs of its member churches is the way that it addresses content management. According to Chris Gray, SCBC’s web site manager, “We had prepared one content item that had to do with an upcoming Convention event. A member church called one of our staff members who said ‘hold on just a moment’ and uploaded the content piece to that very Web page while the person was on the phone. Then she told them to refresh the page, and voila! The church was so impressed that they bragged to everyone at their church office, ‘The Convention just designed a Web page especially for me!”

Web Site Development. Having experienced the success of making resources available to churches online, the Convention envisions the natural extension of every church being on the Web eventually. One measure that the SCBC seeks to provide is an online community site where churches can build a Web site within the umbrella of the SCBC’s network.

ACS Technologies Extend Platform has enabled them to do just that. With ACS, churches can help other churches communicate with one another and easily build a Web site without prior knowledge of Web site or layout design. “The Web is by far one of the most effective tools at our fingertips,” states Orman. “When we’re working with churches, we can point them to the Web and help them with their online evangelism strategy.”

ACS Technologies Products and Services Used:
CPMS: Church Planter Management System 5.0

Web site:
http://www.scbaptist.org