Comments on: Follow-up: bad church web design inspired by bad theology

By: Yewtree

Yewtree — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:40:08 +0000

Depends what you mean by bad theology. Personally I think Arianism is good theology, but not as good as Unitarianism

My take on this would be that if you’re the kind of group that likes to assume that everything about the Divine is known by their particular group, and everyone else is wrong, then you’re unlikely to have the humility to take on board ideas about good web design, standards, etc.

By: salguod

salguod — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:36:22 +0000

Thanks for the clarification. I understand your thinking now – the cause and effect is not bad theology leads to bad web design, it’s that the type of reasoning & thinking that can lead to poor theology is the same mindset that can lead to poor web design. Makes some sense, though I’m not sure there’s a real strong correlation there.

I’d dissagree with Stuart, however, in that the reverse doesn’t need to follow. It’s a thought process and mindset issue, and sound thinking can lead to poor theology and poor web design too. Thankfully, we can repent of both. Besides, a church built on solid theology can hire any knucklehead to do its web site.

As far as the other two points not getting any attention, these are much more fringe positions. As I pointed out in the last post, many mainstream denominations and even the Nicene creed support baptism for salvation. Not nearly as many support labeling the SDA as a cult or that man has no sin nature.

By: Stuart

Stuart — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:28:23 +0000

The only thing I have to say is that for your argument to have full validity, then the opposite must also be true. Ergo: good designed sites = good theology.

It doesn’t hold up for me – but then maybe that’s because I haven’t been fully immersed

By: jdb1972

jdb1972 — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:02:05 +0000

Actually, holding SDA to be a cult used to be a very mainstream position. Up until after WWII or so, the SDA church held to Arianism. They also were traditionally exclusivist and sectarian, drew doctrine largely from one individual regarded as a prophet, had Millerite (failed mid-1800s apocalyptic “prophet”) roots, etc. It’s only been in the past few decades they’ve integrated more with evangelicals, both doctrinally and in practice.

What constitutes a cult is often in the eye of the beholder. Great Britain ruled Amway to be a cult back in the 1980s, IIRC.

One thing many of these that you’ve mentioned have in common is that they’re either personal sites or sites for small churches. As I said in my previous post, it’s easy for me to tell a 60-70 year old preacher that his personal site (with hundreds of articles) needs to be ported over to a CMS; when I look at the difficulties this 35 year old programmer has had porting his personal site (and his church’s site) to Joomla over the past year, though, it makes me personally a bit more reticent.

By: Rich Brown

Rich Brown — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:31:09 +0000

Well then, if I can try and gauge where I think you were going with this – we should take our design responsibilities seriously. If Dean has noticed this connection, surely many in the world have too. We wouldn’t want someone to get the wrong impression about our website (sound as our own theology might be) and, because of poor design, consign our church to one of the fringe examples given here.

By: Does bad theology induce bad church website design? » Heal Your Church WebSite

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:43:48 +0000

[...] 10Jul08Â – after you’re done here, check out the follow-up article entitled ‘Follow-up: bad church web design inspired by bad theology.’ It might clarify some concerns or questions you have – or it just might make ya all the [...]