A while back I wrote a blog post on the often cited quote, “Preach the Gospel always, when necessary use words,” which is attributed to St. Francis of Assisi.

The blog addressed a difficult and challenging relationship of Christian proclamation aka word vs demonstration aka deed.

One inquisitive reader raised the following questions:

1) Jesus seems to prioritize his teaching ministry over his “deed” ministry at various points (e.g. Mark 1:35-39, 3:7-19, 4:1-2 and the parallels in the other synoptic gospels).

2) Jesus seems to describe the ‘self-sacrificial’ life of following him to ‘adhering to his words,’ and doing so is for his sake (which is equated to the gospel’s sake) in Mark 8:31-38.

What do pastors do when Sunday morning is barreling down on them and they realize they have absolutely nothing to say from the pulpit?  Women-in-the-pulpit theology aside, I’m awfully glad I will never be a pastor. The burden to create life-changing sermons week upon week must weigh on a man, especially if he is naturally a shepherd, a hand-on-the-shoulder guy, or just rhetorically average.

Inspiration is a tricky cat. If you believe in the Holy Spirit—and I do—you want to believe that God can zap our intellect, give us supernatural insight, and use his Holy Scriptures to shape our teaching. Yet I’m pretty sure God didn’t deem sacred the seven-day cycle of insights, where the Holy Spirit punches his time clock at certain intervals just in time for the church secretary to print the sermon title every Wednesday for the church bulletin.

Some might think the two crafts have very little in common... But I will be the first to disagree. After co-creating Clover as well as having the privilege of attending Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley with Francis Chan as the teaching pastor, I have realized the common DNA that makes great websites and great preaching. Drum roll please...

Caring about your audience.

I know, I know... You've heard it before. Maybe in seminary or from a mentor. The crazy thing is that, for as easy of a concept as this is, very few people actually do it. This is why sometimes in services you find yourself disconnecting with the pastor and thinking about what's for lunch or who's playing the football game at 1PM.

You'll see the same disconnect when browsing websites poorly created. So often in the web world we have programmers or designers who fancy a certain design style or web language, that when creating a site for a certain audience, have failed to ask the question "What is the best way to communicate to my audience?".

I have been reminded of the discipline of designing and programming for your audience for the past 6 years or so since attending Cornerstone Church and sitting under Francis' teaching. Each week Francis conveys the Word of God clearly, concisely, and in the language of the people. He jokes that he's the Dr. Suess of preachers. Maybe it's time there were less PhD's in pulpits and more Dr. Suess'.

I propose the same for website design. It's time that websites are created for people, not programmers. This begins with asking the question, "How do I communicate best to my audience?" Unfortunately, in both preaching and design, our own tastes and bents have a nasty habit of popping up and distracting us from our ultimate goal of communication. But know that when all is said and done, even if nothing is said beautifully, it is still nothing. So keep it simple, and remember your people.