This article was most recently updated in Nov. 2024
Over the past fifteen-plus years, M&R has partnered with congregations around the Middle Georgia region to build and improve their churches’ websites. While few churches built websites in the early days of the World Wide Web, and those that did tended to build simple, single-page sites without many details, those days are long past.
Websites have become an essential tool for churches to stay connected with their congregations, encourage more visitors, provide easier access for people who want to help with or need to benefit from the church’s good works, or even attend services when weather, illness, or other impediments prevent them from being there in person.
Your church’s website is much more than just a front door for people who are looking for a place to worship. It’s a genuine, significant extension of your church into your community and can be just as much a part of your ministry as your music program or youth outreach.
Here are a few reasons why your church needs a website that genuinely supports your mission, informs your community, and connects your people to the church and the world at large.
Your Church Website Helps People Find You
A healthy church grows its congregation through many means. Members invite friends and family. Families increase in size, bringing youth and energy through the doors. Visitors bring new blood and new perspectives.
When people are looking for a place to worship, they frequently do their looking online. Your church’s website can help prospective visitors see:
- How are your worship services run? Are you traditional and liturgical, contemporary praise-and-worship, or somewhere in between?
- Your church’s voice – how does your clergy and congregation express their faith?
- What are your church’s support programs – childcare, senior programming, faith education, and others?
- When are services? Can services be streamed online?
By posting videos of past services, you can even show potential visitors what they can expect from their time with you.
Your Church Website Helps You Help Others
If you have outreach programs, have members who go on mission, or otherwise take on any of the millions of good works people of faith perform daily around the world, your church website can be an incredible tool for increasing the positive impact your congregation has on the world.
Through your church’s website:
- People who want to volunteer to help can find information about your programs, sign up to participate, and connect with others who seek to make the world a better place.
- People who can’t volunteer but want to support your missions financially or with other resources can easily and securely donate to your cause and enable you to grow your outreach.
- People who need the type of assistance you provide can learn about your programs and how they can go about receiving the benefits your programming offers.
Even your congregation’s tithing can be streamlined through your website. In an era when fewer and fewer people carry cash and hardly anyone under 40 can be found with a checkbook in their pocket, accepting secure credit card tithes through your site can help enable people to support your day-to-day operations and outreach programs.
Your Church Website Connects Your Congregation
The internet is no longer just a young person’s tool. It hasn’t been for a very long time now. Nearly everyone’s life is at least partially online now, and for many of us, a considerable portion of our social, professional, and family communications travel through our digital devices. If you want your church to meet your people where they are, it needs to be online.
With an easy-to-maintain, up-to-date site running on a content management system, it’s easy to make your website into a gathering place for your congregation:
- Post updates and changes to the worship schedule.
- Employ social media integrations to encourage members and visitors to connect.
- Provide streaming video or recordings of services to engage with congregants who cannot attend in person.
- Share stories about your church’s clergy, laity, and congregation to build a more robust picture of the people who make up your church.
With a quality website, your congregants can connect with the church around the clock. This connection isn’t just a good thing for helping people make it to church on time or know what the hymns this week will be – it provides your church with an opportunity to give solace to those who need it, even when the building is closed.
Your Church Website Tells People Who You Are
In commercial situations, we refer to “brand” as a company’s identity – its voice, style, and unique value propositions that make it stand above the competition. Your church has a unique identity as well, and your website is one of the best ways to share that identity with your community.
Consider two churches: one is a small country church with fewer than 100 members drawn from a rural community. Most of the members are older adults who have been a part of the church family their entire lives. The other is a large nondenominational church in an urban center with several weekly services, a vast choir and several smaller musical groups, a vibrant youth program, and a young, nontraditional clergy and congregation.
These two churches need very different websites. One can thrive with a simpler site that keeps members updated on goings-on with the church; the other requires a more fully featured site to help a sizable congregation connect and engage with dozens of different programs.
Your church’s website must reflect the reality of your church. When it does, the faithful who find you online and choose to visit won’t experience whiplash when they show up expecting a quiet, solemn service only to be greeted by a five-piece contemporary band with full lighting effects.
Learn More About Building an Incredible Website in Our Definitive Guide to Web Design!
Partners For Your Church Website
When you’re ready to build or improve your church’s website, M&R is here to help. In our years of experience, we’ve built sites for churches, including:
Send us an email at hey@mandr-group.com to get started. We look forward to helping expand your church into the community and connect your congregation with a quality website design.
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