Promote Your Church Website on Your Shirts: This is not directly about Church T-Shirts, but more specifically about why you should include your church website on shirts when possible. Not just T-shirts, but why not put your website on church building and signs and anything printed.
A church website may be one of the single greatest ways to explain what your church is about, what your church’s core beliefs are, what ministries are available to people and when things are happening at your church. Does your site have a section for the primary ministries that operate at your church, Youth Ministry, Children’s Ministry, Outreach, VBS, Summer Retreats, the church garage sale, and things like this, I bet it does. Obviously then, you want as many people from your church, any new visitors, and people in the community to know what your website is and how to find you online.
So, it seems like such a no-brainer to promote your website. The question is why do so few churches do this?
It’s not a big deal, all we are talking about here is adding your church URL to all of your printed material, like adding your website to the bottom of printed t-shirts and signage. Don’t be shy, putting your website in front of people who can benefit from it is critical. Don’t get me wrong, your website is not going to replace sound doctrine and preaching from the pulpit, or the work the people in your church do by reaching out to those in the community to tell others about Christ. Your church website is just one of many tools; but it’s just so simple and easy to include your URL on the items you are already using why wouldn’t everyone do it?
Potential visitors love to check a website before visiting. He or she may be truly interested in learning more however not quite ready to walk through the doors. Walking into a church for the first time can be very intimidating and I’m sure they would love the opportunity to cruise around your website and learn more about your church. Then when they are ready to make that big leap and visit your church they can have that added comfort, they know who the pastor is and what your church believes and they know if the church meets the basic requirements for them to even consider it.
Parents love an informative site as well! For example, my daughter came home from church last week and asked if she could go to winter camp. “Well, how much is it? When is it? Where is it? Who is going? What will you be doing there?” Lucky for us, our church website is really informative and I know exactly where to go to find the Youth Ministry page that has everything an over protective father needs to know to make sure he is making the right choice for his kids. Anyway, she is going to camp.
Are we afraid of coming across as too pushy? If we print a big website on everything, isn’t that sort of over doing it a bit?
Think about a website on a t-shirt. There will be times when it is best to leave it off, but if the T-Shirt might be used for informative purposes at all I think you should often times include the website, on the back instead of the church name. Yep, replace the church name with the website. For example: Let’s say your church is “First Baptist Church of Riverview” You probably don’t have a website called www.firstbaptistchurch.com, but you could have www.FirstBaptistRiverview.com. Instead of using “First Baptist Church of Riverview” just put “FirstBaptistRiverview.com” this looks so much better plus it serves a vital purpose. Giving folks the opportunity to learn more about your church!
Take this sign for example. If someone drives past it everyday on their way to work how likely are they going to say to themselves, “Hey, maybe I should go to that church I drive past everyday, I don’t know anything about it, but the sign looks great!” Or would someone be more likely to visit the website as a first step and then after they feel confident its a good fit for them take that first step to come visit in person.
A T-Shirt or sign can only communicate so much. In other words, we can’t write our core beliefs on a church sign or the back of a T-Shirt. We can’t put the calendar of activities on the back of a shirt. If we did, who is going to stand there and read it? However, if we just point people to where they can find more information then we are helping them effectively.
(to be totally honest we have printed the weekly summer activities for youth groups)
Take it a step further? This is a different approach, rather than putting your website out where everyone can see it, you can leverage your website by creating a targeted page that people with that specific interest can access by scanning a QR code.
What is a QR code? You know those funky little squares with the garbled looking black and white squares.
QR codes work great on T-Shirts. By scanning the code with a smart phone it takes them directly to the webpage that you want them to go to. On the T-shirt you see at the right, a QR code in the middle of the “o” in “know” is a way to link you to the perfect webpage that can explain how to become a Christian. In this example the shirt is being used as a great outreach tool. By the way, they could have done both. The QR code is brilliant, but the churches website written out below “know” would have been a bonus.
QR codes can bridge the gap from the real world to digital world, while targeting your message with laser like accuracy.
This works great for:
- Youth Group Events
- Youth Group T-Shirts
- Church Outreach
- Inside Competitions
In our modern world, there are so many ways to share the good news, or draw people from the outside into the church, this is just one small way to improve upon what we already do. Ultimately the gospel is shared the same way it has been for 2000 years, building relationships, face to face, one at a time.
