church website strategy

Many churches struggle with knowing what to include on their website. Here are seven of the most important pages you need for your church website.

Every week, pastors spend hours preparing their sermons to bring hope to their congregations. Many would-be attendees evaluate a church by first visiting the sermon archives to determine if they feel a connection with the church.

Your church website is a crucial component for both church engagement and outreach. It serves as a central hub for members and congregants to learn about your ministry. It is also the gateway to important information for visitors and community members who are considering whether your church will be their home.

If you’ve ever stood in the cereal aisle at the grocery store, looked at the hundreds of choices, and then walked away without choosing one, then you’ve experienced analysis paralysis. Options are supposed to be good, right? What happens when they become overwhelming?

WordPress is an extremely versatile and well-supported website content management system (CMS) solution. It works for anyone from a small blog to major corporations--and even churches. In fact, nearly 35% of the internet runs on WordPress.

Church Websites have evolved from glorified online flyers, to digital front doors, to spaces where Ministry actually occurs. Today’s hardest working church websites serve to attract and welcome guests, provide clear instructions on how newcomers can join in worship, and accomplish a bevy of ministry-specific goals, such as facilitating online giving, spreading the word about missions, finding classes, recruiting volunteers, live streaming and storing sermons, and offering opportunities to connect with the unique message a church is putting forward. 

The church website continues to be the church's digital front door. As a church communicator, putting good website practices into play will always be resources well spent. While focusing on your own church website most of the time is necessary, learning how other churches present themselves and welcome those who are thinking about attending is a valuable, free learning tool. It also provides insights into how to adapt or learn how other churches solve communications challenges.

Defining the purpose of your website is most likely going to dictate the direction of a lot more than you likely realize. Here is the reality: by now, as church leaders, we know several things. We know that we need a website, it needs to feel modern, and it needs to look attractive. We know (or should know) that it needs to be responsive, that we want it to show up in Google, that we want it to be easy to add events and sermons … the list can go on and on.