2. Create an online presence for your church
Christine and I were curious to see how many churches have a fully functional website so we typed the name of twelve local churches into Google to find out.
Eight of the churches had active websites, whilst the remaining four had no online presence.
We established that 60% of the sites could be considered welcoming to new parishioners and 75% provided a contact email address.
However, half of the sites were not easy to navigate through and only three of them displayed a calendar of dates and times of services for the coming weeks.
In conclusion, I would suggest that there are some good church websites out there but for the majority, many improvements are needed.
The reality is that a website presence is expected for any organisation, group or business these days, as is the accuracy of the information presented on it.
Christine and I worship at many different churches in the diocese and I always use each church’s website to find out the time of their Sunday service.
One such church site failed us recently though. Whilst it did state the time of the regular Sunday service, the week we chose to join the congregation, we arrived to a locked church.
We discovered later that it was in fact the Sunday for their quarterly joint service, which was held at another church.
This clearly emphasises the need for websites to be as up to date and accurate as possible. Whilst helpful to church members, they should also be designed with those who do not attend church regularly in mind.
Before you consider establishing or refreshing your own website, it’s not a bad idea to look at other similar sites with someone who is not church connected and explore these together.
Then both of you could consider what information is needed and decide the most effective way to present this on the site.