Church Web Site Design
I know I haven’t written much lately. Frankly, the next few months are going to be pretty busy for me, so these lulls may become more frequent.
One of the projects that is going to keep me busy is a web site design for a new church. We’re still in the very early planning stages for the site, which means that I’m still looking for innovative ideas and inspiration.
It occurred to me that many of y’all have been around church, for better or for worse, and most of you are pretty web-savvy. I wondered if you might help me brainstorm a little bit. If you have the time, I’d love your thoughts and feedback in a couple of general categories:
- If you were looking for a church, what would you hope to find on a prospective church’s web site?
- If you go to church, what features on your church’s web site do you find to be useful? What features do you wish they’d offer?
- What are examples (with URLs) of church web sites that you think are successful? And for what reasons?
- With the growing popularity of blogs, rss, tagging, etc., what are innovative ways that a church might better use its web presence as a ministry tool?
If you don’t feel comfortable leaving a ripple (or if you have a huge list of URLs and you’re having trouble getting through the old spam filter), please feel free to use the email address on the sidebar under “Toolbox.”
13 Ripples from “Church Web Site Design”
unk says:
January 11, 2006 at 12:01 pm
these may be no-brainers, but you asked
I would want to know their perspectives on religion, Jesus and what ideas (ideals?) they teach. Baptism is one item that quickly comes to mind.
definitely would want to see an up-to-date schedule of services and other events held at the church.
Online versions of sermons would be useful, including discussion points.
Churches always have many groups, such as a men’s group, women’s group, youth group, etc. Individual blogs for each group would be interesting and would allow for constant discussions instead of having to wait for the next formal meeting.
Tim Jarrett says:
January 11, 2006 at 1:01 pm
I spent some time thinking about this several years ago and made a few notes at the time. Briefly, the points that unk raises pretty much cover it, with a few exceptions.
First, logistics. If you don’t have directions, parking information, worship schedule, and up to date information on events in the church on your site, I’m not going to visit. If I’m looking for a new church in a new city--particularly if I’m looking at multiple denominations--my first choice is going to be the churches that respect my time and interest as a visitor on the web as well as in person.
Second, ideology. As I mention in the link above, there are certain issues, such as support for gay marriage, that are essentially litmus tests for me. I’m willing to entertain a church that says “I’m conflicted about these issues” but not one that indicates that large groups of potential church visitors and members are unequivocally going to hell. I’m probably a bad Christian for making litmus tests about where I worship, but honestly I would rather attend a church whose positions I support.
Third, community. I want to see evidence of lots of groups being active within the church, particularly in music. I also want to see that the church recognizes how to support an online community, whether through blogs or podcasts or just having frequently updated content.
My church, Old South in Boston, does a few things right on its site (podcasts, directions, sermons, statements of faith like the one at the bottom of the home page) and many things wrong (stale content and confusing URLs chief among them).
Jim says:
January 11, 2006 at 2:01 pm
The following information should be so obvious it’s nearly impossible to miss unless you’re using Internet Explorer 5.2 for Mac…
Some brief statement (one short paragraph at most) that characterizes your church.
How do I find you? - with directions that have the address (including city and state—a lot of churches link to maps and such and it’s hard to find out what city/town they’re actually in).
When should I show up? (service times of course, but there ought to be office open & closed hours, and maybe even a facility map with clickable labels for offices and such with a “print this map” feature). People used to get lost in my old church all the time, they even get lost in my current church which is much smaller).
Who are you? (staff bios with pictures and email addresses).
A sitemap and search this site feature so I can find everything else.
I’m going to dissent on the doctrinal stuff. Personally, I think too much doctrinal information front and center is a huge turn off. Put it on there, but don’t make it front and center. I’ll find it, believe me.
Another thing I’m ambivalent about on church websites is event calendars. These are usually hideous and uninterpretable unless you’re already an insider. I’m sure they are needed although I’ve never used one, not for a church that I’ve visited or belonged to. One exception: my friend’s church in Pittsburgh has a calendar system and they used it to post daily information about my buddy’s youth ministry mission trip last summer, with prayer requests specific to each day of the trip. That was cool. If you’re going to do a calendar it should be like that. I’ll email you the link to that site.
Above all: simple, interesting, and beautiful design. And no flash!
Liv says:
January 11, 2006 at 3:01 pm
1. I’d hope to find a statement of faith. It particularly bothers me when non-denominational churches refuse to put up a statement of faith; even if you aren’t affiliated with a mainline or non-mainline denomination, you ascribe to a particular theology. I’d also hope to find a mission statement-- how does the local church perceive its role in God’s salvation history? I’m personally also interested in the demographics of a church, but I haven’t a clue as to how that could be conveyed tactfully, etc. (and by “demographics” I’m speaking specifically of racial breakdown, social/economic class breakdown, gender breakdown, married/single/family breakdown). For example, I’m no longer really comfortable in a “college” church, where the vast majority of the congregation is 18-22. Also, I’d like to get a sense of what the worship style is like-- high church? low church? contemporary? traditional?
2. The most useful feature of my church’s website are its list of organizations with which its affiliated, and the missionaries and missionary organizations that it supports. I wish they’d offer small group locations/times.
3. I like Redeemer Pres (NYC-Keller)’s website (just redeemer.com I think), but that church is like a well-oiled machine. Counterintuitively (and I still do like the website), I’m almost wary of its slickness, though. Catch-22, I suppose.
4. When I was in Boston, Highrock Church (can’t remember the precise URL) had links to its own web forums, and the blog address of congregants. Very useful. There was definitely a web community presence at that church, though.
Scott says:
January 11, 2006 at 5:01 pm
I’ve always thought that a church forum/bulletin board would be a great idea. It would give introverts (such as myself) a way to connect to other members of the church without having to, you know, talk to them.
Brandon says:
January 11, 2006 at 9:01 pm
I’ll be honest, I haven’t read anyone else’s comment, so I’m flying blind in that regard. Please have grace on me for this!
That said, here’s my list:
Information about where the church is physically located. Being a big believer in parish ministry I suppose this is a personal preference more so than a need, but I think a website that sort of defines the physical location a church serves is important for a number of reasons. First, it lets people know where the church is located (i.e. a map). Second, and more importantly, it tells the prospective attender / member to whom this church might appeal.
How is the church involved in its community? What events or ministries does the church have within that physical location.
A statement of faith. And, I think just coming out with the truth here is most helpful. If you’re a Calvinist predestination believing church, tell it like it is. If you’re a Weslyan church, tell us what you believe in that regard. Honesty is cool.
Kind of related to the statement of faith, what are the churches’ committments or emphases. Is street evangelism something every member will be expected to do? Will members be encouraged to take part in short term missions?
Worship style. I’m kind of a believer in the CSS flowing out of the worship style, if you know what I mean. If you’re a traditional liturgical church, you can still have a hip website, but it shouldn’t be the same website as a place like Mars Hill Bible Church
This is probably the most underutilized church web feature, but I would say that the place should have some outlet for online community. Of course, this depends greatly on the church. If we’re talking a congregation of 80 year olds...having a WordPress CMS installed for the members may not be the best use of bandwith. Perhaps, some sort of forum software like phpBB would be good...though I wonder about the conversational ethicality and benevolence of forum software--it sort of breeds contempt, and God knows there’s enough contempt running around at church without adding another avenue.
Book, music, and movie reviews from members. Again, depends on the congregation whether this is feasible or not.
Calendar of events.
That’s all for now, but I’ll sleep on it and get back to you.
Brandon says:
January 12, 2006 at 8:01 am
What happened to my list tags!!!
Oh well, assume that there are numbers for each paragraph break. Sorry about that.
zalm says:
January 12, 2006 at 11:02 am
Thanks for your feedback, folks. It’s been helpful. If you have other thoughts over the next few months, keep ‘em coming.
I might not get into the details until much later, but I should probably stress that by “new church,” I mean one that does not yet exist. So some of the suggestions you’ve made won’t really even be possible until sometime in the future. But this has been a good reminder that I’ll need to keep the site flexible and scalable so it can evolve as the church does.
Brandon… for what it’s worth, I think the issue with your list tags is that the comment list is actually a big ordered list that’s been styled not to show the numbers. That style is probably inherited by any ordered lists that appear within the comments. When I have more time, I’ll try to add a style that overrides that inheritance. So it’s not you… it’s me.
Update: Nope. I just looked at the code. It’s not either of us. It’s Wordpress. For some reason, it doesn’t allow the list tags. Oh well.
Dustin DeKoekkoek says:
January 12, 2006 at 1:01 pm
My church, Mars Hill Church in Seattle, has a decent web site with all the information that you would need. The navigation is a little tricky, though. We also have a password protected members site that has forums on many different topics from Theology to Prayer Requests to Music. Our member’s site is also our directory and has classifieds, a private messaging tool, an online tithing tool and is where many announcements occur that you would normally see in a church bulletin.
Here is a screenshot of the member’s site (I have removed member’s names).
Dustin DeKoekkoek says:
January 12, 2006 at 2:01 pm
Here is the missing link for the screenshot
LotharBot says:
January 12, 2006 at 10:01 pm
I like a lot of what Pete said. (You can see my response in his comments, though it wouldn’t surprise me if you’ve already read that.)
What’s on your church website depends very much on what you call “church”—the website should reflect your values as a church. I’d say a church has to be focused on God, so they should have a reasonable amount of theology (ie, studies of what God is like) and praise (ie, passionate reflections on how good God is) on their website. A church is a community of people who love one another because of God, so fellowship should be presented or encouraged on the website (whether in the form of directions to local small-group meetings, a discussion forum or chat room, or something entirely different.) A church should be about doing God’s will, so information on serving the poor (through church ministries, local charities, etc.), missions trips, and so on should be present. There should also be general logistical information like where and when your church meets, who is on the staff (paid or volunteer), how to get in touch with various people, etc.
All of these things should be available, and it should be clear how to get to any one of them at a glance. Probably front and center should be a short description of what your church is about (a mission statement) and a description of how to join in whatever meetings or activities you do as a church (directions, a forum link, etc.)
LotharBot says:
January 12, 2006 at 10:02 pm
Also: the website should have a clean and uncluttered layout (so people can find the information they’re looking for), and should be technically sound and easily accessible even to those with lower-end hardware or restrictive security settings. I can’t stand church websites that crash my browser, take forever to load, display improperly because I don’t have the latest flash player installed, rely on browser “features” I disable because they’re a security risk, or look like they were made by a fourth grader using Angelfire in 1995.
m_333 says:
January 13, 2006 at 8:02 am
As a jaded nonbeliever most churches give me the willies, but I stumbled across this site for <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.covinavineyard.org/">Covina Vineyard</a> a couple of weeks ago, and the design is great…
It’s warm and inviting, the natural look is comforting. It’s not in your face or over the top. I actually didn’t realize that it was a religious site for a few seconds. If I were in the market to be saved I might consider this church.
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