3 Parts of a Great Church Website — Part 1 | Truepath

“What’s your FCF?”

No, this isn’t some mysterious bit of technical code to worry over. Actually, FCF is an idea — a reason why you do ministry in the first place. As such, it’s an important piece to consider in your organization’s communications.

Coined by teacher Bryan Chapell, FCF stands for Fallen Condition Focus, an important lens through which you can view ministry and your messaging — but it applies more broadly too.

Why do I mention this? Because identifying your target group’s FCF can become a key ingredient to your website theme as well — especially your main page or “banner” — which is the first thing people see when they visit your site.

Let me explain.

Know People

Essentially, the main idea behind FCF is that the people you’d like to reach are broken — just like us. That shouldn’t be too much of a surprise; just turn on the evening news for 5 minutes and you’ll see numerous examples.

While the details of each person’s brokenness are different, we all share something of the core issue. That is, we all are broken:

• relationally, on the vertical plane: we’re at war with God, wrestling (like Jacob) with him to receive his blessing.
• relationally, on the horizontal plane: we sin against each other, resulting in broken marriages, families, work relationships, etc.
• as we experience a multitude of sufferings and griefs, to which we all can relate

As much as we might want to wear rose-colored glasses or make a special class for “the really bad,” we can all relate to those 3 core realms of brokenness. In each area, we are debtors to grace.

This is one reason why Scripture is so multi-faceted: God has given us an entire volume of stories — all with broken people — so that we can identify that the struggles are common.

We have 150 Psalms so we can hear a full range of emotional human “processing.” And ultimately, we can look to a Redeemer who came to address our deepest need (our sin/FCF) with his life, death, and resurrection: “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

If we miss this central reality, we will minister in self-righteousness, and potentially veer off into distortions such as the “prosperity Gospel” (name it and claim it) or any version of hope that puts us in control.

Ministries that do so only do damage — to themselves as well as those they claim to help.

Shouldn’t your ministry make that clear — that your church or para-church ministry is meant to be a “hospital for sinners,” a family of authentic “wounded healers” — in short, a place of hope? (If this isn’t the case, then begin by praying for a recovery of the Gospel of grace and revival in your own heart, that you might become so!)

Make Your Heart-Theme Clear

Now, we can apply these same ideas to our church website. To illustrate, here’s a site that typically does it well: https://thevillagechurch.net/) With the headline, ‘It’s Ok to not be OK,’ The Village Church taps into one particular manifestation of brokenness: our tendency to pretend, to wear masks, and possibly hide behind a veneer of niceness.

This headline provides a perfect path to the Gospel because it opens the door to the good news that our true righteousness isn't earned — it’s a complete gift.

Without this intentional focus of connecting to the FCF — in this case, that we all have self-salvation projects in our hearts — the church’s mission and message will be lost. It can easily become a lecture hall that does “50,000-foot flyovers” of “good behavior topics” and never address the heart — a group of “religious people” that addresses problems superficially or “lightly”- like the prophets and priests spoken of Jeremiah 6:14:

“They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.”

Of course, there are many FCF’s to talk about — if we’re willing to pray for the eyes to see it. It’s all around us, and in us.

So how does your Church website do in connecting to people at the level of the heart?

Truepath’s vision is to empower Christian organizations and businesses to take full advantage of their online presence by providing affordable and best-in-class applications and dedicated, live customer support. You can reach us at (760) 480–8791.

Originally published at https://www.truepath.com on May 5, 2023.