Winners, Daystar churches rank high on the Internet

As the digital media gains more ground in
different areas of human endeavour,
religious organisations are catching up
with the trend. Churches, whose websites
were hitherto dormant, now see reasons
to regularly get them updated, with a view
to building relationships with their
members and active Internet users from
different parts of the world.
Many churches appear to have joined in
the rush to register their presence online
in order to gain the attention of millions of
Nigerians who spend unusually long
hours on the Internet. The activities of
many churches online now make them
appear trendy and up-to-date in the eyes
of members of the public.
A search through alexa.com , a portal that
provides web traffic data, shows that,
among the churches in Nigeria, the
website of the Living Faith Church,
popularly called Winners chapel,
www.domi.org.ng, is the most ranked.
Information on the portal reveals that
visitors to the website, which is ranked
1,182 in Nigeria, view an average of 2.9
unique pages each day. Visitors to the
website from Nigeria also account for
51.8 percentage of the total patronage the
portal receives, while Internet users in
Tanzania accounts for 22.7 per cent of
total visits to it.
Besides, the church, which streams it
messages live from the portal, has also
embraced the use of various social
networking sites as it integrates social
media with spiritual life. Its social
accounts, opened in the name of the
pastor, also garners dozens of followers
on a daily basis.
Its Facebook and Twitter pages, at the
last check, commands a following of 13,
965 and 19,566 respectively.
Daystar Christian Centre's website,
daystarng.org , follows Winners chapel's
website closely from behind with a traffic
rank of 1, 471 in the country, according to
alexa.com .
Apart from live-streaming its services, the
website has also been turned to a
platform where members can pay their
offerings online with provisions for
anonymity.
The website of the Redeemed Christian
Church of God, rccg.org which ranks in
Nigeria 1,675, is also a force to reckon
with among religious organisations in the
country. The church is also actively
engaging digital media savvy individuals
via four major social media channels:
Facebook Twitter, Google+ and YouTube,
which are integrated on its website.
The Facebook page has attracted a
following of 58, 471 while over 117,000
people subscribe to the church tweets,
which are majorly inspirational quotes
and verses of the Bible.
A tweet from the Twitter handle of the
RCCG, on Wednesday, stated, "Do not be
discouraged by unfulfilled dreams and
aspirations. Remember, dreams don't
have expiration dates.''
The website of another new generation
church in the country, Commonwealth of
Zion Assembly, cozanigeria.org.ng , ranks
next to that of the RCCG. The church,
which also makes use of YouTube to
propagate its preaching, appears to take
Twitter even more seriously.
The church frequently tweets in three of
the major Nigerian languages:Yoruba,
Ibgo and Hausa as it moves to expand its
membership strength.
It is also one of the churches
discouraging its members from making
physical offerings during services. A
message on its website asks members to
cultivate the habit of giving offerings
online via its website.
Meanwhile, orthodox churches such as
Nigeria Baptist Convention, the Anglican
Communion, Methodist Church Nigeria
and the Catholic Church also have online
presence, aimed at expanding their
various outreaches both locally within and
beyond the country.