A “sleeping” project with a wide reach.
One of our projects is running a website where we list all the International Churches in Europe. Nothing more, nothing less.
Why did we even start this website?
During travels across Europe, we found that it can be quite difficult to find a Christian international church in the countries we visit or where we (temporarily or not) live. Sometimes, you’re actually surprised at how hard it is to find a church (online)… the website is outdated, the church no longer exists, the website is still up, but the church isn’t anymore, and so on… 🙁 Sigh. You can complain about it, but you can also do something about it!
So, a few years ago, we created a website where we list all the churches we’ve found for expats, students abroad, immigrants, refugees, or anyone visiting a country during their vacation.
Setting up the website took a few months of serious work, and we often asked ourselves: why did we start this? What a huge hassle, and will anyone actually use it? Will it be a success, or was it just months of work for “nothing”?
Now that it’s up and running, with around 230 churches listed, it takes little time. Once a year, we go through all the churches we’ve listed to make sure everything’s still accurate, and new initiatives either sign themselves up or update their info. If we spend an hour a month on it, that’s a lot. In terms of costs, it’s also a relatively inexpensive project—just a few hundred euros a year, and that’s it. Pretty easy project, right? So easy that sometimes we nearly forget about it for a few months when there are no new registrations… Sometimes, it feels like the project is asleep. But it’s not.
In the past 12 months, between 500 and 850 visitors came to the site each week. That’s at least 70 per day!
An average of 70 people per day searching for a church to visit in a (for them) foreign country, and through our initiative, they were able to find that place. Where they come from is also fascinating to see:
You can literally see the countries they come from and where they are currently (temporarily or not) living in the lists. Yesterday, 132 people visited the site to find a church.
Not bad for a “sleeping” project, right?
And what kind of project makes you think, “Hmm, that’s quite a bit of work, should I start it or not?”
Here’s a little encouragement: start it! Don’t wait, just do it! Because you’ll often be surprised at how much impact a small project can have. In just one year, we’ve reached over 30,000 people this way! So, what are you going to set in motion today?
