New Media Ministry’s Friday Showcase is a weekly highlight of outstanding church ministry website designs. We take a deeper look at an individual website and highlight things that the site is doing well, and places where we think that they could improve. Our goal in providing this weekly resource is to give you ideas and inspiration for your own ministry website, as well as to help keep you up to date with what is out there in the digital ministry landscape.
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Introduction
In this week’s collection, we are going to take a look at a new resource website that was just launched last week by the folks over at LifeTeen: CatholicYouthMinistry.com. Their website, http://www.CatholicYouthMinistry.com, is the new home for numerous tools and resources provided by LifeTeen. Matt Smith, Director of Internet Ministries for Life Teen, explains in this video that in ministry, “you can’t give what you don’t have.” The goal for CatholicYouthMinistry.com is to provide a variety of resources to people involved in ministry so that they are always prepared to minister.
Form and Function
The new launch of CatholicYouthMinistry.com is a complete redesign as well as a complete renovation and addition to what was previously known as ym.lifeteen.com. The site listed many of the same great resources included in the new version, but they were hard to find and access. The new design of content and the organization structure really permits much simpler use of the website.
If you’ve been following our Where Do I Start? series, you’ll know that last week, I wrote an article about why I think you should use WordPress in building websites. Apparently I’m not the only who thinks this way as LifeTeen built the new CatholicYouthMinistry.com website using the WordPress platform. I think they did this for a few reasons. The first being that it’s free, which anyone in ministry loves. Another few reasons goes along with reasons they highlighted on their site when they announced their launch:
- Easier Access to Resources
- Better Blogs
- Better Jobs
- More Interaction
This list in a nutshell describes WordPress exactly. I think it was a great move on LifeTeen’s part choosing WordPress to power their new website. It allows for content to be published very easily and efficiently, but it also provides a much easier way for end users to come to the site and find exactly what they are looking for quickly without getting lost.
New Media
One of the things I like about the new CatholicYouthMinistry.com website is what I think they will be utilizing a lot, and that is video. LifeTeen recently joined Vimeo, and they have slowly but surely been using that to handle their video content for the last few months. I am a big supporter of Vimeo, and am glad to see LifeTeen using them as well.
Another thing I really like is that the new CatholicYouthMinistry.com is placing a huge emphasis on blogging. LifeTeen has assembled a strong list of about 35 contributing authors that they feature on their site. Blogs are beginning to become published regularly, and cover a variety of topics. I think this will really serve them well, along with readers of the website. It will allow people involved in different aspects of ministry to come together and voice their opinions and experiences in the hopes of helping others. This is relational ministry at it’s finest.
Conclusion
If you are involved in Catholic Youth Ministry, I think it would serve you well to check out the site that LifeTeen has just published. It already has a tremendous amount of resources, and will continue to grow in the future as more and more content is provided.
If you’re interested in learning more about LifeTeen and their approach to Catholic Youth Ministry, head on over to Lifeteen.com and read through their resources. It is a great program. I grew up in it, and still serve as a Core Team member today to help others experience the same that I did.
