Curious about the history of ForMinistry? It was a notable initiative that provided free church websites in the 199-Year History of Innovative Bible Outreach by American Bible Society: “Launched ForMinistry.com, a service that provided websites at no cost to churches and ministries to encourage them to lend their voice on the Internet “
And, on a personal note, it was a program for which I worked for about 6 years myself. It closed its doors and went offline in November 2013.
Here’s an excerpt from the closing announcement posted via archive.org:
Notice of ForMinistry Transition
Dear ForMinistry Editors:
An important decision has been reached after prayerful and careful consideration about ForMinistry.com. After over a decade of serving the church in web ministry, ForMinistry will permanently shut down on October 31, 2013.
This decision was not reached lightly.
Since 1999, the ForMinistry platform has offered free web-building services to thousands of small-to-mid-sized churches. We removed cost barriers for churches interested in exploring this new online frontier and also provided inclusion into a larger online church directory. American Bible Society enabled more than 180,000 churches to benefit from these free resources.
However, the market has changed and today numerous choices for web-building providers are available to meet these needs. They range from free to fee-based offerings depending on the array of features desired; we believe that these tools are better placed to keep pace with ongoing changes and serve the needs of the church community.
American Bible Society has decided to defer to the current market leaders and focus its resources on other Bible engagement efforts. Refocusing our energies as we transition this service will enable us to forge new ways to serve the church — investing in innovative digital efforts needed by the church today.
orange asian man 