Hopesprings Community

GO TO THE SITE

Hopesprings is a new community of Christ- followers in the Slate Belt area of Pennsylvania, made up of everyday folks who are learning to simply follow Jesus as honestly as we can, and grow in our capacity to love God, and others well. This is reflected in their mission statement- The Most important thing: Loving God, loving others.

As they were getting started they asked me to help define their identity and make their mark on the web.

Hopesprings just bought a old firehouse with thick wooden floors. They want to build it out and remodel the space to include a worship space, kids area, and coffee shop. The space and what they want to do with it were the inspiration for this site.

Once we had their identity in place, I moved to the site and tried to incorporate all of the organic, rugged, hand crafted elements of the new logo and the new building. Inspired by a previous version the Kaleo site, the team at Hopesprings requested several of the same features in this design. Of course, never wanting to visit the same place (design wise) twice, I managed to keep what they loved about the old Kaleo site while still creating something new.

To keep the site from feeling to dark and lonely, the Team at Hopesprings was able to snap a few photos for me and send them via email to incorporate in the site.

This site is built around a content management system that allows even the church secretaries to update the site through a secure, web based back-end. The site also includes and events calendar.

WoodsEdge Kids

GO TO THE SITE

WoodEdge Church is a growing, thriving church in the Woodlands, Texas area. They are just about to go multi-site via video feed in at least three campuses. In the mood for upping the anti, they decided to launch a brand new Kids Ministry site and guess who got to build it…me.

This was another project in cooperation with Dunamis Media. For this project, we wanted to capture the essence of children’s ministry but personally speaking, I wanted to do something different. They gave us a logo and creative license to build the site we would like to see. The logo included a rainbow so right away I was thinking color, bright, day time, and outdoors. Their church is called “WoodsEdge” and they are located in a woodland setting (in Woodlands, TX…go figure) so I thought, “What if we could get shots of kids outdoors possibly with trees in the background to allude to the ‘edge’ of the woods?”

Once they saw the mock up they said this:

We love the site… That little girl is on the cover of our Handbook, so it is perfect for the website.

Who knew?! We must have been on the same wave length when searching for imagery.

As with most of my sites, I try to focus on simplicity. If the site is not easy to use, than it is kind of self-defeating right? But it should look beautiful too. So I went for both, making sure the content was search engine optimized, easily accessible and well formatted while the shell that wrapped it was dynamic, detailed, and top notch.

Since the launch of this site, WoodsEdge church has asked Dunamis Media and myself to begin conceptualizing a new site for the church.

This site is built around a content management system that allows even the church secretaries to update the site through a secure, web based back-end.

METRO LiVE

GO TO THE SITE

Metro Bible Study ran from 1995 to 2005 as a Bible study on Monday nights for young single adults to grow in the Word of God. During that time, biblical and relevant messages were delivered by a number of speakers such as Dave Edwards, Scott Crenshaw, Gregg Matte, Matt Chandler, Ben Stuart, and Voddie Baucham. Musicians such as Watermark, Caedmon’s Call, Robbie Seay, Matt Brouwer, Smith Band, and many more kick-started their music careers leading worship for Metro Bible Study.

In 2006, Metro Bible Study returned on Thursday nights as METRO LiVE — a summer-long event for all young adults (married or single). Incorporating the same passionate worship and Biblical teaching, METRO LiVE continues this summer to engage young adults in the Word of God.

For this site, I teamed up with Dunamis Media. Together we created a new identity and wanted to carry that new identity into the site. We wanted to convey the “LiVE” feel but maintain a gender-neutral tone. Organics were my first choice but as I worked with the singles ministry staff at HFBC, Houston’s First Baptist Church, we decided to keep things with in a live performance, on-stage, live show feel.

The microphone logo is a throw back to early metro days when a microphone was a key element in their identity.

This site is built around a content management system that allows even the church secretaries to update the site through a secure, web based back-end.

e-LifeSite Splash

GO TO THE SITE

The work I am doing for e-lifesite.com is kind of classified but, I will tell you this, there will be much Flash animation, and all of it will be focused on evangelism and spreading the gospel.

Pastor Brian Runge and I worked together back at St. Mark Lutheran and since have gone our own ways. Recently we reunited and are working on e-lifesite.com. Pastor Runge is working on content and I am animating like crazy so, in the mean time, a splash page. Enjoy.

CGS Splash

GO TO THE SITE

CGS is a church in Lynnwood, Washington. Tim, the new pastor at CGS, contacted me to see what I could do for them in the way of a new identity and a new site. We worked on the logo for quite some time. So, in the mean time, we have launched a splash page with the purpose of inviting people to their worship service and then tell them the site is on the way.

Here is a mock-up of what the new site might look like:

The splash page design is based on a standard template I built and use with a lot of my clients prior to launching their new sites.

St. Philip Lutheran Splash

GO TO THE SITE

St. Philip was a church I was involved in during high school so, I kind of have a soft spot for them.

They are a church in transition so a new identity was my first assignment. With that done, they needed a new site.

As we speak, they are laboring away on a marketing guide I use to help churches focus their marketing efforts. So, in the mean time, we have launched a splash page with the purpose of inviting people to their worship service and to tell them the site is on the way.

The splash page design is a standard template I built and use with a lot of my clients prior to launching their new sites.

What’s Between the MySpace?

GO TO THE MYSPACE

To work along side whatsbetweenthesheets.com, I put together a MySpace page dedicated to the series.

I asked several of the Kaleo myspace friends to help promote the series by using web banners with cut-and-paste code on their sites, blogs, and MySpace profiles. We made a simultaneous effort on Facebook using the events feature and the word spread quickly.

Within the day, we had several hundred new visits to the website and A LOT of positive feedback.

What’s Between the Sheets?

GO TO THE SITE

Between the Sheets was a sermon series at Kaleo Houston in the book of Song of Solomon. So yeah…we had the sex talk.

Knowing this series would draw interest, we pushed hard to promote this series as much as possible in every sphere of influence that we could.

This site was at the hub of all of our communications. Our flyers, posters, bring-vites, press releases, and even our MySpace was built and designed to get people to this site. The site was built to get people to the series. This two-step approach might seem a little too complicated…I mean, why not just go from flyer to Sunday morning right?

We wanted peoples’ permission to market this series to them. We wanted to make a connection and get them to make some kind of mental/emotional/spiritual investment in the subject matter. We wanted to ask a lot of questions. If we just put out flyers that said, “Don’t sleep in…sleeping in is for sinners…come to our church…” we would have lost them.

A visit to the site was the start of that investment and permission for us to tell people all about the series and invite them to come hear it. It worked.
We didn’t see an explosion of growth but we did see more new visitors every week.

The site attracted A LOT of attention across the internet as well — some bad, but mostly good. There were a ton of people who blogged about it and a lot who were glad that the church is finally willing to talk about sex (not that that is all Song of Solomon is about but that’s the part the church has avoided).

I wanted to push the envelope visually and I believe I did…as far as I ever will too. Finding just the right image was difficult, especially since most stock photo sites do not have the same “discretion” you might hope they would. So I set up our own photo shoot.

I pulled together models, set up lighting, and set the stage to capture the image that would define the series. Once we had an image, we built the rest of the campaign around that.

Since the goal of the site was to get people to theGathering to participate in the series and then to perpetuate the marketing effort, I limited the site to five pages. Three of those pages are dedicated to informing people about the series and inviting them to come. The other two pages are devoted to spreading the word through an online press release, high-res images, web banners with cut-and-paste code, desktops, and downloadable PDF posters.

This site is built around a content management system that allows even the church secretaries to update the site through a secure, web based back-end.

Calvary Chapel of Katy

GO TO THE SITE

I met Mark Martinez, the pastor of Calvary Chapel of Katy, while working at the Apple Store. His wife was toting a baby and he was toting a new church. They came in to purchase a mac (YES!) to help with the church publications.

We exchanged contact information and when they were ready to work on their site they gave me a call. They bought the template for this site and were having a lot of trouble customizing it to fit their needs.

Originally, the site was designed as a portfolio. I was able to swap out text, images, logos and alter the layout to fit their needs. I also organized the source file to make it easier for them to update on their own since the budget for this new church was low.

Kaleo eMail is in Your Inbox!

GO SEE THIS WEEK’S eMAIL

eMail has been a vital way of communication for Kaleo. It is non-confrontational, non-intrusive, and there is no pressure. Those are great conditions under which to communicate.

I employed a locally hosted, FREE, really smart, HTML email list system to communicate the week to week at Kaleo. Users are able to subscribe, unsubscribe and are required to opt-in prior to receiving emails. Kaleo has been able to communicate with a much larger audience, and for much cheaper, than direct mail, home-visits, phone calls, or any of the other forms of mass communication.

With the current email template, the idea was to follow the feel of the website. I also wanted to keep things simple and give priority to certain communications. This template includes three spots for articles (others can be added pretty easily) each including imagery.

I have tried to prioritize communications at Kaleo. So, in regards to the email, I’ve highlighted one major article per week and then made room for two smaller, less important articles, and then cut everything I could so it would not distract from what’s most important. I have found this to be very effective.