Question of the Week: How Could Google Help the Church?

You don't have to look far to see that churches are already using many Google products. The  small groups kiosk at the church I visited this week had an attractive display of groups, each with an accompanying map -- created by Google Maps. Likewise the church's website offered me a map to find  them, with the small credit that it's powered by Google. This church, as many others, also uses Google Alerts to learn of local  newspapers, blogs, or other online materials that might mention the church. Both Google  services are free.

There are many other Google products thatI've seen other churches use. This includes Google  Images, Google Talk, Google Calendar, and Google Analytics.

So . . . which NEW product could Google create that would be a help to your  church?

Warren Bird, Ph.D., is Research Director at Leadership Network, and co-author of 19 books on various aspects of church health and innovation.

Comments

[Bill Reichart]

A couple of ways that Google could help the church.

Add a good Contact Management System. Yes, it is integrated into gmail, but it isn't very mobile (i.e. syncing) nor is it significantly customizable.

Also, it would helpful to figure out easy ways to design widgets for iGoogle that could be used as a church's dashboard to monitor certain success criteria.

[Lon]

- more sync/offline integration of current products

- local search for house churches

- local search for volunteers to connect with church's and social services

- a social bible wiki - community developed browseable and searchable commentary

[Marcella]

Would love to see a social networking setup capability on a church by church basis, allowing folks to subscribe to a monitored environment for networking, service opportunities, and even dating within that church or other subscribed-to churches, ability to post a profile, as well as help wanted or help needed ads for service opportunities... also a portal that could collect podcasts and video of worship services of all churches who want to participate in the portal, so a person can go to one site to download/listen to several churches sermons... put church events, workshops, and conferences online, let us subscribe to your conferences and have a reduced price for e-content if we can't physically attend a conference... and the list goes on and on.