Church Shopping is Brutal: The Church Website
Disclaimer: This post is meant to be helpful to churches, not hurtful. Pastors, leaders, and volunteers, I know it is hard to do ministry right now. I am in full-time ministry too. The struggle is real. You might be one of the thousands of churches that have less these days - less attendees, less staff, less volunteers, less resources, maybe even less hope. If you don’t know where to start or need help, please reach out.
The Digital Doorstep of Your Church
My family relocated to Cincinnati in the middle of the pandemic. We have been hard-core city people for almost two decades, and found ourselves living on 5 acres outside of Cincinnati with no real neighbors. The pandemic, alongside our living situation, significantly impacted our Sunday rhythms. For a while, awhile we tried to talk ourselves into just being online attenders, podcast listeners, and avid Christian book readers to replace church attendance.
One Sunday, our son asked, “Are we ever going to go back to church? I miss it.”
This started tough conversations as returning to church would require us to deal with our church hurt and trauma that the pandemic allowed us to avoid (which I will talk about in the next blog post). But my son wanted to return, so I started searching for churches near us.
As I searched church websites, some made me feel welcomed and curious to learn more, while others made me feel like an outsider and not valued. I realized that there were four pages on any given website that were the catalyst for me to go deeper and add them to the list of churches to visit, or were the moment I exited a church’s website.
Let’s talk about how these four pages tell a church’s story.
Homepage
Staff/Leadership Page
What We Believe
Kids Ministry
Your Homepage Is A Digital Welcome Mat
Your website is the digital doorstep of your church, and the homepage is the welcome mat. Your homepage is one of the best ways to visually tell your story and give guests a quick sense of who you are – empowering them to make a decision if visiting your church is worth breaking their current Sunday rhythms.
What is your church’s homepage communicating? Are you ready to welcome me or are you surprised I stopped by to visit?
The homepages that drew me in had the following;
Had copy that acknowledged I was a visitor, directing me to important info - i.e. I"‘M NEW or PLAN YOUR VISIT pages or buttons.
Actual images of church services or church events where I saw people that looked like me or my family. (As opposed to stock photos from 2006).
Info communicating there is more to their church community than Sunday services.
Easily accessible links to staff pages, what the church believes, and kids’ ministry info.
More images of church community members than the lead pastors. Let me take a moment to unpack this one...
How church leadership is presented digitally speaks volumes about the church culture. I have been in ministry for over 20 years. When I see churches focus their storytelling on the communication skills of the lead pastor(s), I see a platform and not a community. I have found these churches often have a hierarchical approach to leadership, which is often reinforced on the staff or leadership page where only the senior pastor and his family are listed. This is not true for all, but a pattern I see. I have been on staff at mega-churches, pastored a neighborhood church in downtown Brooklyn, and planted an urban micro-church – and in all these scenarios, the ministry was made possible by the giving of time and talent of support staff and volunteer saints. Honor them by including them in the story. It shows that there is a place to belong.
Ways to Improve Your Church Homepage
Do a homepage audit. Is your homepage designed for new guests? Are you telling your story accurately and honorably? Is the service info easy to access and accurate? I can help you with this if you don’t know where to start.
Invest in good photography. I know resources for many churches are low, but I highly recommend investing in having a professional photographer come and capture a day at your church so that you have the assets to have a welcoming homepage. If you don’t have the resources for this, please consider using higher-quality stock photography.
Good Examples of Welcoming Church Homepages
Vineyard Cincinnati: In just a few seconds, I get a sneak peek of the service experience, service times, and images of people of all ages in the community. If I scroll to the bottom they also made it easy to access info about youth and kids programs.
River Hills: River Hills utilizes video to give you a look into their church, but they prioritize the homepage for the new guest. Their team has built out a very helpful page outlining what to expect beyond the often standard one paragraph of copy saying everyone is welcome and you can wear jeans. What I loved is the info that parents would need to make the 1st time visit a win for the whole family.
Church of the Redeemer: The church uses the top banner to rotate through images of the community. Denominational church websites tend to be heavy on information, making it challenging to not feel like an outsider or find the info you need as a guest. Though heavy on content, Redeemer does a good job of making info easily available.
Staff and Leadership Pages
Church leadership is very important to me. This webpage can speak volumes about what a faith community values. As many churches do not have photos of their community, most do have photos of their pastors and leaders on this page.
When looking at the staff and leadership pages on a church website, I was hoping to discover faith communities that look like heaven – with people of all ages, genders, and ethnicities, doing the work of ministry. This is very, rare where I live now. It is what I miss most about living in larger cities.
As a non-white, Hispanic woman, seeing a person of color represented in leadership communicates I will be welcome, and so will my father who is a beautiful shade of brown, and unfortunately gets asked how he stays tan all year by his co-workers since moving from California to Ohio.
I am also looking for communities that have elders for leadership accountability, or eldership represented by age diversity on staff. It creates a sense of safety, longevity, and a place for wisdom to be heard.
I will be honest, I exited many church websites where the only people in leadership listed were the senior pastors, or where the staff and leaders were all white men around the same age.
I have to say – Vineyard Cincinnati’s staff and elders page are some of my favorites. The staff is listed alphabetically (another level of humility), and there is a high level of diversity.
What We Believe
I was surprised by how many churches do not include their beliefs on their website or take the time and effort to write this portion of the website in a thoughtful way. As I was looking for a church, how a faith community approached the Holy Spirit, the Bible, and women in leadership, were top priorities for me.
Whether intentional or not, the order of belief statements communicated to me what was important to the church. I was drawn further into church websites that took the time to unpack their beliefs starting with God, love, or Jesus, before leading with the Bible. I believe in the Bible, read it, love it, have preached from it, and believe it is holy, but before I read it, I learned that God loved me. These churches often took the time to communicate their beliefs in very conversational, easy-to-understand ways.
Here are examples of different churches with different theologies that make their beliefs clear and have put effort into making them understandable.
Kids Ministry Web Pages
Mamas need details, well at least this mama does. There are so many great children’s ministries out there. Our family was looking for a place where our son would be discipled more than entertained, and that would have the patience to love and care for a child struggling with anxiety. I exited church websites that focused on providing kids with over-stimulating services or redirected families to Youtube and Facebook for their content.
Many kids are struggling socially since the pandemic. Providing families with specific details, pics, photos, and descriptions of what happens in a class goes a long way in helping prepare kids for a new church experience. This what to expect page for kids ministry at Northstar Church is a great example of the info I needed.
I reached out by phone and online to over 20 different churches asking questions about their kids’ ministries or services, and only 4 responded back to me. The church that became our home church replied to me via email and the children’s pastor personally called me and answered all my questions. Time and presence go a long way.
When someone reaches out, make sure you respond. Test your website contact us pages, email addresses, and links to make sure you are able to connect with families looking for more information.
Closing Thoughts
Pastors, there are people in your community who need your ministry. Your digital presence tells a story and it can welcome or push people away. Set time aside this week to take a look at your website and listen to the story it is telling your guests.
If you are interested in taking a deep dive into your church’s digital presence or would like a set of fresh eyes on your website, I am happy to help. Learn more here.
What church websites do you think do a great job of welcoming people past their digital doorstep and into their actual in-person communities?