At Fast Effective Solutions Ltd we have developed a way for churches to produce an inexpensive yet highly effective website.

Our church website was developed after we, as individuals, were asked to be involved with coordinating our welcoming process at our own church of St James in Bishops Stortford Essex – under the guidance of Bishop Alan of St Albans and our own Rector, Bob Payne, we have taken the welcoming process to include enabling people, as God calls them, to find a local church and to minimise the barriers that so many of us experience as we begin to answer God’s calling.

Our criteria for this website were

• People friendly
• Welcoming
• Easy to read and find info
• Easy to update
• Children and Family orientated

One of the major hurdles we encountered with our own church website is how, although we receive many thousands of visitors from 75 plus different countries, our own congregation have taken a while to become used to their own website and treat it as their first port of call for regular info.

We have found it necessary to bring the church together on a regular basis, replacing house groups for that week – to avoid increasing the “meetings” workload.

We run these evenings with praise & prayer topping and tailing workshop sessions in smallish groups to address how we can allow the holy spirit the freedom to work through us more effectively.

This method is highly effective in helping us “own” our own website with info and children’s pictures being regularly updated – and is now beginning to help us reach out more effectively to the broken hearted in our society.

We have found this whole process very exciting.

When we were first approached by another church we looked carefully how we could replicate this whole approach.

Although our church website did cost quite a few thousands of pounds to develop we now have an effective way of putting together a magazine style website for other churches at a moderate cost.

If this might help your church reach out in your area do please make contact.

It is always necessary – if we are to undertake a strategic review with integrity – that we are able to look at the business with emotional detachment – most people find this difficult – few if any can achieve this without the help of someone – who is on their side – yet able to take a critical – from a distance view.

What we then have is a team of two – a business proprietor – who knows his business inside out – and a strategic review specialist – who will know the business outside in.

This might sound simplistic – it is not.

This teamwork is a mighty powerful thing – just one caveat – get the chemistry right – if you do that then you will have the power to transform a business – very, very quickly.

Only with this view of what is within as seen from afar is it possible to start looking at objectives.

In some cases there are problems that need to be dealt with pretty quickly – not necessarily fire fighting – but certainly things that need to be addressed – these would naturally become the short term objectives.

Long term objectives might appear to show themselves but it is only with a strategic review that we can have some certainty of our real business objectives

Many sole traders and small & medium size enterprises simply can not find the time to produce a business plan.

At Fast Effective Solutions we are used to taking concepts and working them through to a clear simple business plan. We are not so good at producing information for venture capitalists – our experience is that we have not got what they want. What we are good at is helping business people understand what it is that they have got and how to make that go forward.

Most of us work very closely with our own business – often with emotional attachment – a business educated colleague is usually better placed to help us stand back and see what we are doing.

To find what we do well – to find what we do less well – to see the real opportunity – to see the real difficulties – only when we can see these can we really set our objectives.

Once we have set our objectives we can start looking at how to join up the dots from where we are now to where we are going – this process helps us identify what the obstacles are and to find the ways of either removing them or simply working around them.

It is always best to find our optimum path and also an alternate path or even alternate paths. Once we take this info and put it together in our business plan we can be certain of just one thing – the business plan is a statement of what will not happen – too many of us fall into the trap of believing a plan is what will actually happen – it is not – it is a guide to show us when we are moving away from our intended path – at that point we can correct our actions – or – if need be – change the plan – to a better plan.

What we can achieve is limited by our own perceptions – Fast Effective Solutions is here to help achieve your goals.