c. 2000 Religion News Service
Survey: Web Sites Crucial to Church Advertising Success
WASHINGTON (RNS) People who use the Internet to “shop” for a church home will likely be turned off by a poorly produced church Web site, while a slick, interactive site could help draw new members in if a church invests the right resources, say the authors of a new study.
A group of students at Hartford Seminary surveyed individual church Web sites and compiled questionnaires. They found that churches that invest in up-to-date Web sites do a better job of catching the attention of would-be churchgoers.
“A poorly done Web site may be more of a detriment for a church than no Web site at all,” said Scott Thuma, a professor at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.
Thuma said the sample of 63 church Web sites was not scientifically representative of all church Web sites, but said the study highlights the growing importance of a church’s presence on the World Wide Web.
Of the Web sites surveyed, Catholic parishes represented 26 percent, Southern Baptists nearly 16 percent and nondenominational congregations 13 percent. The remaining 45 percent were a mix of evangelical and mainline Protestant, Jewish and Muslim houses of worship.
Most of the churches surveyed _ 75.8 percent _ rely on Web-savvy members to create their Web sites. Nearly half of the Web sites were the idea of a lay member, while pastors pushed their churches onto the Internet 30 percent of the time.
Fifty-six percent of the Web sites were operational within two months, and in half of the cases, a committee or task force helped set up the site. Just under half _ 43 percent _ said their sites were aimed at a public, non-church audience, while only 7 percent said their sites were geared toward their own congregations.
Thuma said the most important aspect of a parish Web site is that it be comprehensive, easy to use and interactive whenever possible. That is especially important for people who use the Internet to find a new church, and for young people, he said.
“Increasingly, your Web page may be the only glimpse people ever have of your congregation,” he said. “At least spend as much time and money on your site as you would on your congregation’s landscaping. Plant something on the World Wide Web that will attract, not detract, from your church’s mission.”
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Russia’s Jewish Leaders Condemn Gusinsky Arrest
MOSCOW (RNS) The arrest Tuesday (Dec. 12) in Spain of Russian media tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky is being roundly condemned by the Russian Jewish Congress, which he heads and funds.
Charged with fraud in Russia, Gusinsky was arrested shortly after midnight in a villa he owns in the southern Spanish town of San Roque by police acting on an international warrant.
“The Russian Jewish Congress, its presidium and rank-and-file activists throughout the country greeted the news of RJC President V. Gusinsky’s arrest with shock and indignation,” read part of an announcement released Wednesday by the Moscow-based Russian Jewish Congress.
The Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, a Washington-based human rights monitoring and advocacy group, also condemned the arrest, hammering Spanish police for doing the bidding of “Russia’s corrupt criminal justice system.”
Spanish law enforcement officials were acting on a request from Interpol, the international police agency of which Russia is a member. Russia’s prosecutor general had requested last month that Interpol arrest Gusinsky, who fled Russia in June shortly after being released from jail on a different set of criminal charges.
The executive director of the New York-based World Jewish Congress, Elan Steinberg, had asked Interpol to ignore the Russian request in late November, citing what he called the “political” motivation behind the case.
Gusinsky’s respected and popular NTV is the largest independent television network in Russia. Unlike government-controlled outlets, NTV consistently offers critical coverage of the Kremlin and the Russian military’s lackluster campaign in Chechnya.
Since former KGB colonel Vladimir Putin took office as president in May, Gusinsky’s holdings have come under consistent attack in a series of investigations into alleged fraud and asset stripping.
There is no evidence that Gusinsky’s role as president of the RJC is playing a role in his current predicament. But the media tycoon’s fate is likely to have a large impact on the RJC, the oldest and largest secular umbrella organization serving Russia’s Jews, who number at least 400,000.
According to RJC director Alexander Osovtsov, Gusinsky provides between 25 percent and 30 percent of the RJC’s annual $8.5 million operating budget.
One prominent Jewish leader, Zinovy Kogan, said the RJC will continue with its humanitarian, advocacy and educational work with or without Gusinsky.
_ Frank Brown
Orthodox Rabbis Rebut Call for Shared Control of Temple Mount
WASHINGTON (RNS) The nation’s Orthodox rabbis said a recent statement by 101 rabbis calling for a shared Temple Mount in Jerusalem is an “anathema” to Jewish teaching and joint control with Palestinians would “fly in the face of Jewish tradition.”
In a joint statement from the Orthodox Union and the Rabbinical Council of America, the country’s Orthodox wing of Judaism repudiated a Dec. 7 statement signed by Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist rabbis that said Israelis and Palestinians should share control of the Temple Mount. The site, held sacred by Muslims and Jews, is the main sticking point in the stalled Middle East peace talks.
The Orthodox rabbis said it wasn’t until 1967, when Israeli forces recaptured the disputed Temple Mount, that all faiths were granted access to the site.
“It is only under Israeli rule that members of all other religions have enjoyed full access to their shrines, a right that Israelis of all faiths were brutally denied between 1948 (the year of Israel’s founding) and 1967,” the rabbis said.
The Orthodox rabbis put the blame for the current hostilities squarely on the Palestinians, who they say mounted “orchestrated attacks” on Jewish worshippers and wish to limit access to the holy shrines.
The 101 rabbis who signed the first statement quoted the prophet Isaiah, who said that the site of the ancient temple “shall be called a house of prayer for all people.” The Orthodox rabbis said the other rabbis were misreading Scripture.
“This passage, in context, clearly states that it is the Jewish temple that is to be open to all to worship God,” the rabbis said. “When King Solomon said that `also the gentile’ may pray in the temple, it is the Jewish temple that was built on the Temple Mount to which he was referring, not to a temple shared with any other faith.”
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Lockerbie Church Appeals for Aid
LONDON (RNS) It’s a small church in the Scottish Borders serving a congregation of only 73, and it urgently needs repairs. Originally the work needed was estimated at about $50,750, but detailed examination has pushed the figure up to some $87,000. So far the congregation has raised $36,250 by its own efforts, but to keep the church open it needs to raise more than twice that in total.
All this might seem quite unremarkable, part of the story of rural depopulation and the struggle the Church of Scotland has to maintain its presence in the remoter areas of Scotland in keeping with its call and duty “to bring the ordinances of religion to the people in every parish of Scotland through a territorial ministry.”
But the kirk (church) is at Tundergarth, just three miles east of Lockerbie, and it is here that much of the wreckage of Pan Am flight 103 came down on Dec. 21, 1988.
The cockpit landed literally a stone’s throw from the kirk, several of the 259 victims are buried in the churchyard, and the session house in the church grounds has been converted into a memorial room visited by several thousand people each year.
There has been a church at Tundergarth since the 16th century at least, but the present church dates from 1900. The roof is leaking, the window frames and gutters need repairs, and the bell tower has been fenced off because of the danger of falling debris.
Tundergarth is also a parish looking for a full-time minister. It is linked with three other parishes, but even so the linked charges can offer their minister only 60 percent of the normal stipend.
However, the current shared minister, the Rev. Allan Ross, regards it as vital that a Christian presence be maintained.
Though it is a small parish, Tundergarth has created its own Web site (http://lockerbie-tundergarth.org) explaining the parish’s predicament and appealing for help. Ross said he thought it important the congregation had already shown its determination to keep its church by raising so much of the money needed before appealing to a wider public.
_ Robert Nowell
Pope Pays Surprise Visit to Small Religious House in Tuscany
VATICAN CITY (RNS) To the surprise and delight of a handful of priests and novices, Pope John Paul II paid a surprise visit to a small religious house on the seacoast of Tuscany, it was disclosed Wednesday (Dec. 13).
“Look who’s here,” a Vatican security official told the priest who answered the door at the Monastery of the Presentation on the peninsula of Monte Argentario shortly before 6 p.m. Tuesday (Dec. 12).
Reporting the visit, the local newspaper Il Tirreno quoted one novice as saying, “It was the most beautiful Christmas present of my life and for everyone in the monastery, which has never been visited by a pope before.”
The 80-year-old Roman Catholic pontiff, who has kept to a rigorous Holy Year schedule despite the debilitating effects of a neurological ailment, drove about 120 kilometers north of Rome for the visit, which lasted only about 40 minutes.
Leaving the Vatican without alerting Italian security forces, he traveled in a four-car motorcade with his Polish secretary, Monsignor Stanislaw Dziedzic, and a small Vatican security force. Before his illness, John Paul sometimes made private skiing trips in the mountains near Rome, but he was accompanied by Italian security.
“The pope has a special devotion to St. Paul of the Cross to whom the monastery is dedicated, and he wanted to make a Holy Year visit here, his secretary told me,” said the Rev. Ottaviano d’Egidio, superior general of the Congregation of the Passion. St. Paul of the Cross was the founder of the 280-year-old order.
John Paul prayed in the chapel for 20 minutes, asked the superior general questions about the monastery and its novice program, and chatted briefly with the priests and novices.
“Before leaving, the pope signed our visitors’ book,” d’Egidio said. “I offered him tea, but he refused with thanks, explaining that he did not have time because he had to return immediately to Rome. He asked me how many kilometers it was to the capital.”
_ Peggy Polk
Egypt Bars Production of David and Goliath Music Cassette
(RNS) Citing allegations that Israel has used excessive force against Palestinians in the ongoing violence in the Middle East, a senior government official in Egypt has nixed production of a children’s music cassette that included a song about the biblical tale of David and Goliath.
“Presenting this subject now is not in line with the Egyptian social and political stance on the Palestinian uprising,” said Madkour Thabet, head of the predominantly Muslim nation’s Audiovisual Censorship Authority.
Thabet’s objections came despite the stamp of approval the album earned from the Coptic Christian Church in Egypt, which represents about 10 percent of the country’s 65 million people, the Associated Press reported.
One popular Egyptian magazine praised Thabet for preventing “a scandal.” The magazine, Rose El-Youssef, said Egyptian children who listened to the cassette tape would have been taught about “Israel’s glories.” The magazine also claimed the tape “bluntly refers to the superiority of the Israelites.”
Though Israel’s first peace treaty with another Arab country was with Egypt, relations between the two countries have been strained. Recently Egypt has expressed its disappointment with Israel’s role in months of violence between Palestinians and Israelis, and last month it recalled its ambassador from the country.
Quote of the Day: Ann Pettifor, director of Jubilee 2000 UK.
(RNS) “Debt cancellation is no longer viewed as an issue of charity, but as one of justice. It has given millions of people the competence and confidence to challenge elites in both the north and the south. The world will never be the same again.”
_ Ann Pettifor, director of Jubilee 2000 UK, commenting on this year’s campaign to erase foreign debts owed by poor countries. Pettifor’s organization will close its doors next year. She was quoted by Ecumenical News International.
DEA END RNS
