“People looking for a church today will use Google before they resort to the Yellow Pages,” Pastor Gordon Keddie, of Southside (Indianapolis, Ind.) RPC, said, referring to the world’s most popular Internet search engine.

Churches all over the world are using the Internet as an outreach resource by creating web sites for their church, blogging about the latest issues, and even putting their sermons online.

Of the 80 churches and mission stations in the RPCNA, at least 58 have individual web sites containing, at the minimum, contact information, dates and times of services, and doctrinal statements. Many of the churches have online calendars and offer various other online services like sermon outlines and sermon audio downloads.

Not Your Mother’s Phone Book

How are web sites affecting the church? Like Pastor Keddie said, many people are finding churches by looking on the Internet.

“Simply having a web presence has led some people to find us when they have been traveling or vacationing in the Ottawa area,” said Pastor Matthew Kingswood of the Russell, Ont., RPC.

Other churches have noticed people finding them in the same way.

“We have had a web site for several years,” said Charles Brown, pastor of the Westminster (Prairie View, Ill.) RPC. “Nearly all of our recent visitors have checked out our web site prior to visiting.”

Joanne Howe, webmaster for Messiah’s Church (North Syracuse, N.Y.), said, “The web site has been very successful in bringing visitors nearly every week.” Messiah’s Church meets in a rented building where they are only permitted to put a sign out on Sundays. The web site is helpful because it pictures the building and gives directions.

A family that has been received into membership at the Rochester, N.Y., RPC made the decision to come to the church after visiting their web site. “When deciding to move to Rochester, finding a good church was central to their decision-making process,” Pastor Bill Chellis said. “The web site allowed them to make the contact that has led to their becoming part of the congregation.”

The Stillwater, Okla., RPC also has a family who joined the congregation after finding them on the Internet. “We’ve found that, as people move, they use the Internet to research a community,” Pastor Bruce Parnell said.

In addition to listing the address and times of services, web sites offer more information that will help visitors to make the decision to come to church. “We are developing a web site that we hope will eventually give a comprehensive picture of the church,” Pastor Keddie said. “And we anticipate that, as this becomes better known, it will be a means of opening up new ministry contacts and opportunities.”

Stillwater RPC’s web site not only offers online sermons, but boasts “26,860 minutes of biblical, Reformed teaching.” Pastor Parnell said they post the adult Sabbath school classes online, which provide teaching about topics from church history to the Westminster Confession of Faith to various book studies. “They provide a great resource for the broader church,” he said.

Some churches also use email to keep the congregation up to speed on the latest happenings. Southside RPC plans to have a calendar on its web site that will send out daily activity reminders by email. The Syracuse RPC uses email to pass prayer requests around the congregation.

Tape Ministry: A Thing of the Past

At least 22 churches in the denomination are offering all or some of their sermons online. (When first researching this story over a year ago, there were only about 15 churches with online sermons.)

“We first started posting sermons as something of a modern ‘tape ministry,’” said Pastor Parnell. “If someone was sick, or in the nursery, or otherwise missed the service, we would post the sermon so they could easily get it later.”

Many churches started for the same reason. “It has allowed time and monetary savings versus copying tapes,” said Brian Young of the Russell, Ont., RPC. Pastor Kingswood said, “It’s a lot more convenient than the old tape distribution method.”

Another reason for putting sermons online is so people visiting the web site will have a greater understanding of what the church is all about. “As a good Reformed church, who we are and what we believe is very much centered on the pulpit and the preaching of God’s Word,” Pastor Chellis said. “Therefore, we felt it was important for people to get a taste of that aspect of our church life when they visit the web site.”

College Hill (Beaver Falls, Pa.) RPC also puts sermons online for people to sample. “By placing a sermon on our web site, this gives [visitors] an opportunity to ‘sample’ our theological perspective and church in an unintimidating manner,” Pastor Anthony Selvaggio said. “It is our hope that they will be drawn by this experience to come and visit our church.”

And people have visited the churches.

“We had one couple looking for a Reformed church in Denver find us on the Internet, contact us, and listen to some of our sermons,” said Pastor Bob Hemphill of the Westminster, Colo., RPC. “The husband is in the military and prayed for a position in Denver, which he received. They moved to Denver, began attending the church, and have become members.”

Pastor Kingswood said that the sermons served as affirmation to the family of a student who was attending their church. “His parents were able to listen to some preaching online and were encouraged that he was getting some faithful, solid spiritual food.”

In addition to people looking for a church, the sermons are listened to by people around the world in search of Reformed teaching. “Sermonaudio.com provides us with a monthly report which states how many sermons are being downloaded and from which state or country,” Pastor Brown said. “It’s exciting to see that people from around the world are listening to the proclamation of the Word as it comes from our pulpit.”

Pastor Andrew Schep of the Syracuse, N.Y., RPC said he has gotten emails of appreciation from across the U.S. and Canada and from as far away as Asia and Africa. “Last Christmas, a family in Egypt that listens to the sermons online sent us a ham to express their appreciation,” he said.

Pastor Keddie also remarked, “We have been downloaded from all over the world—and, funnily enough, had requests for tapes!”

Pastor Dave Long of the Lafayette, Ind., RPC received an email from an elder of an Australian Christian Reformed Church that “was not only listening to the sermons from the Gospel of John, but printing the sermon texts from our web site and reading them weekly from the pulpit during the worship service. It seems that they are without a pastor for a time and these sermons were meeting a preaching need in the congregation.” He said he was happy to have the church use his sermons. “We emailed back and forth several times, and I told him I was very pleased to have the Lord use the Word that way.”

Though most of the churches say there are many benefits to posting sermons online, they also note some drawbacks.

“Not every person is technologically ready to listen to sermons in this way,” Young said.

“The major drawback (and this applies to all sermon recordings) is that sermons are designed to be heard ‘live,’ within the context of the Lord’s Day worship service,” Pastor Brown said. “The other elements of the service—praying, singing praise, hearing God’s law, confessing our sins, receiving assurance of pardon—prepare us to hear the gospel proclaimed. Listening to an online sermon is a different experience. It can still be edifying, but it’s not as powerful.”

Pastor Kingswood agreed. “Ted Donnelly once said that good sermons are like finely tailored suits—they don’t travel well. In other words, preaching that really is ministering to a particular people will have elements that just don’t apply or could be misconstrued out of the original context.”

Kingswood recommends the book Preaching and Preachers by Martyn Lloyd-Jones. “He reminds us that the real sermon is what takes place then and there, with that preacher and those people and the Holy Spirit superintending it all. Lloyd-Jones didn’t think taped or text sermons were real preaching.

“I also remember what Al Martin says about preaching, ‘preach to their eyes.’ Often in the book of Acts, Luke adds before Paul preaches, ‘and looking intently at him/them.’ You can’t do that through the Internet,” Kingswood said.

Pastor Keddie agreed that online sermons should not be a church’s only means of outreach. “This brings worldwide public ministry to every minister and congregation that provides online sermons,” he said. “It is passive, in that it depends on people searching it out. So it ought not to be seen as a substitute for evangelism. But it does mean that in God’s providence the Word can be preached around the globe within hours of being delivered in a quiet corner of the U.S.A.”

Putting sermons on web sites can also be positive for the pastors themselves.

“One main reason I appreciate online sermons is for my own edification and education,” Pastor Kingswood said. “It gives me an opportunity to be preached to.”

“It’s also easy for the pastor to listen to his own sermon and critique it,” Pastor Brown said. “It’s also a very handy benefit to have all our sermons archived on the Internet. It sure beats a box full of cassette tapes.”

In response to even more recent technology, a few churches in the denomination have started “podcasting” their sermons. A podcast is a digital recording similar to a radio broadcast, which is syndicated online, and automatically downloaded to a computer or portable audio player.

No Web Site? No Fear

The time and effort that go into building and maintaining a web site can seem daunting. “It does cost something to set up the web site, and it takes work to maintain it,” Pastor Selvaggio said.

Pastor Hemphill agreed. “It takes some work for our webmaster to organize and post the sermons.”

But, for churches who are thinking about starting a web site, Howe, who has been designing web sites since 1998, said they should do it. Her advice is to make sure everything is spelled correctly and well thought out. “Make sure it’s really what you want to say,” she said. “First impressions mean a lot.”

Howe said the tag words associated with the web site are very important. Words like “Reformed,” “Presbyterian,” and “Syracuse” can be tagged to help people find the page. When the person enters those words into a search engine, a link to the church’s web page should pop up.

Pastor Parnell echoed the importance of tag words. “We want those who are looking for us to be able to find us. If you Google ‘Stillwater’ and ‘Reformed,’ the first link is our church’s web site.”

For Howe, once she built the web site, weekly maintenance only takes about 30 minutes to a couple of hours depending on the type of work that needs to be done. Each week, the sermon is recorded on a digital voice recorder. She brings the recordings home, edits them, and uploads them.

The world wide web made waves when it was introduced not so many years ago. RPCNA churches have jumped on board to help grow Christ’s kingdom and get the Word out about His gospel.

For where to find sermon audio in the RPCNA online, log on to www.rpwitness.com/quicklinks.html.