All the latest features, and the best of the old to boot: as of today, nak.org, the website of the New Apostolic Church International, has been completely redesigned. A lot has happened, not only in terms of design, but also under the hood.
Visitors looking for all things official have indeed found the right address at nak.org: here they can find all the official statements of the Church leadership in their authoritative formulations. “New content, new text, more offers, and a new look”—that is how the most recent announcement summarises the relaunch: large, expressive photos, and precise information about the Church can be found under the categories of Faith, Church, Community, Media, and About the NAC.
“The thing that most distinguishes NACI’s presence is definitely its international character,” emphasises Church spokesman Peter Johanning. “No other church website offers such a global overview of activities and events on all continents. And all of this is offered in four languages: English, French, German, and Spanish.”
Better searches, more results
In addition to the exhaustive Catechism of the New Apostolic Church, the more accessibly designed Catechism of the New Apostolic Church in Questions and Answers has also been made available for the first time ever. And the glossary NAC from A to Z illuminates specific aspects of daily life in a few succinct lines. The full range of this information is stored in databases. In this way, users can conveniently search for content and filter their results. District Churches can incorporate the offer on their own websites as well.
Even with all these innovations, nak.org still offers content that has been tried and tested: for example, the church finder, which boasts information about local congregations in some 50 countries around the world—and is constantly growing—or the archive of announcements that goes all the way back to the year 2000.
Early to explore uncharted territory
The NACI homepage has already existed since 1997. Back in those days, Amazon had only been online for a few short months—and purely as a book merchant. Google only saw the light of day another half year later. And it was still another seven years before Facebook opened up its pages to the world.
The fact that the New Apostolic Church was among the early birds is due to the efforts of a handful of young computer science students from Germany and the Netherlands. They managed to convince Church spokesman Peter Johanning, who was appointed in 1996, of all the possibilities the new medium had to offer, and worked with him to develop the concept. And Chief Apostle Fehr needed no convincing at all to approve the plan.
The mother of all NAC sites
It was on 17 April 1997 that nak.org went online. It went on to become the mother of all subsequent branches of the New Apostolic Church on the internet. Naturally, there had already been some private initiatives to maintain a homepage or even provide mailing lists prior to that, but this homepage was the Church’s first official presence on the web.
Since then there have been two major interventions with regard to nak.org: its relaunch on 1 August 2006 brought new content and a modernised layout. And the launch of nac.today on 1 January 2015 reinforced its function as the Church’s official announcement medium.
Two forms of media, two points of view
Ever since then, the division of duties has been clear: nak.org is the official website of the New Apostolic Church International. It provides authoritative publications such as announcements or teaching texts. Its function is to communicate information and the official positions of the international Church leadership.
On the other hand, nac.today is the online news magazine of the New Apostolic Church International. Every weekday it offers New Apostolic Christians and other interested readers material that is worth reading and knowing. The magazine helps tailor content to the needs of the user, and explains background information. It also functions to bring the different worlds of the Church’s membership closer together.