The Internet is today’s gold standard for communication in the United States. Nearly everyone uses it to communicate and seek information. But who has time to set up a website and maintain worthwhile content?

On average, 79 percent of Adventist churches in North America have no Internet presence at all. Of the remaining 21 percent that do, barely half have updated their content within the last six months.

The Pacific Union is making significant strides in this area, thanks to the help of a new software product called netAdventist. This powerful framework uses Internet technology to empower each local church. netAdventist combines localized Internet content from the local church with live streams of information from the global Seventh-day Adventist Church. This creates a link between each local church, its surrounding community, and a world of Adventist information. With netAdventist, anyone can:

• Watch the Hope Channel and 3ABN

• Listen to LifeTalk and 3ABN radio

• Access HopeTalk.org for Bible studies in over 40 languages

• Watch Mark Finley’s media series, “Unsealing Daniel’s Mysteries,” and use the online study guides

• Ask questions using BibleInfo.com, integrated within the site

• Use the multi-version, multi-language web Bible to search Bible texts on a wide range of topics

• Read global church news from Adventist News Network

• Access NAD content such as:

• Family First—for singles, couples, grandparents and single parents

• Hope Generation—written to youth, not about them

• Staying Young—taking care of one’s self physically

• View an auto-generated Google map with standard zoom and satellite views to the local church’s location

• Check union and conference news and events, which are updated regularly

• Sermon-sharing feature so people can watch or listen to local church sermons via mp3, video downloads, podcasts, or other methods

• Church calendar to post local information, such as sermon titles and sunset times, as well as conference and union events

• Post and update local church news easily

• Design and organize the site with an effortless drag-and-drop interface from a customized dashboard

• Membership-specific polls—local members can respond and view results

• Online church photo gallery for members

• Full security encryption for administrative functionality and membership records

• Prayer request module—members and visitors can submit prayer requests and choose to have them forwarded to the church prayer chain

• Church information sharing uplinks—link with area churches so that when a church on the list updates its site, that church’s information is updated on the local Adventist site, too! Promotes communication among area churches.

• Statistical tracking to see how heavily each area of the website is being utilized

• Unlimited data storage and streaming

netAdventist is available in both English and Spanish. The program is available as a low-cost monthly subscription—a one-time $200 setup fee and a monthly subscription fee of $35 on an annual contract. However, the Pacific Union voted to fully subsidize the setup fee and pay for three months of the first year’s annual subscription — a $305 value. Several conferences are adding additional subsidies. But hurry! This subsidy is only valid for churches that sign up before June 30, 2006. Visit www.netadventist.org or call TAGnet at 800.9TAGNET (982-4638) for more information.

The critical concept that will make the difference in each local church website’s success is the blend of global resources and local church information. This strategy puts the local church at the center of content choices—it’s a local church tool.