Your church website: it’s WAY more important than you think!!
People will literally uproot their whole family and move across states to go to the right church, based on your church website (they usually visit the church in person first). I know, because I’ve done it a few times!! 😊
I remember even driving an hour and a half each way just to go to church when I lived in an area without a biblical church. Yes, church is THAT important! 💯
A successful church website encourages people to visit their church and get involved. Most people do research before visiting churches, in order to save time going to the wrong kind of church and with so many options, you really need to cross all your t’s and dot all your i’s!
They WILL visit your website and make decisions based on what’s there and what’s not, so you want to make sure it’s spot on.
There are certain things you MUST include, things that you may have missed or overlooked when putting your site together and it’s time to fix those blindspots and make your site GREAT, one that glorifies and honors God as well as shows the world what your church is all about!! 🎉
Here’s 12 marks of a successful church website, everything you need to include to make people want to move to your area just to come to your services!! ❤️
12 Marks of A Successful Church Website
Use this as a checklist to go through and see how your church’s website can improve. Did you miss anything? Does anything need to be added? Deleted? Changed? Do you need to revisit certain areas and brush up with new information? Doing a once over on your church website once a year will keep things fresh and accurate!
1) Sermon Videos
You absolutely have to have your sermon videos online.
The more church functions you can put online, the better!
👉 However, I would encourage you NOT to put pictures of your congregation online. There is no federal law against it but it is against internet laws and some people will not even go to your church if they see pictures of the congregation online, knowing that their privacy is not upheld.
You also, by internet laws, have to get permission from every single person whose face you show online. If there’s a visitor, how will you get that permission and if you try to get that permission, will it not make it awkward and make them want to leave? You ARE however, allowed by law to show images of the congregation, so long as no one can make out the face of a person. So, if it’s blurred in the background or something like that, it’s okay.
Showing your congregation online is not something you want to do, not only from a legal standpoint (you can be sued very easily and can face public claims of invasion of privacy, defamation, and violation of public rights), but also because it makes some people feel very uncomfortable, feeling like they may show up online in unflattering pictures.
It will keep some people away from your church and yes, it will also attract attention-seeking people. You do not want attention-seeking people in your congregation and with having the photos online, it attracts them. So many want to have their face lit up or do the right things within the church body (serving, playing musical instruments on stage, etc.) because they know their picture might/will show up online as those who serve, so they do it for the fame and glory of themselves.
These are not good motivations to serve our Lord and all attention-seeking people should be rebuked. If they continue in their sin after having been rebuked, through prayer and much love, they must be removed from their position in order to keep the church pure and clean.
So, what do you do if you already have pictures of the congregation online? I would personally delete them. If you have a live stream or show your services online, be sure to not show your congregation faces in those videos. The backs of people are fine, according to law, you can’t recognize their face so it’s okay, but showing faces from people in whom you do not have permission from can very well lead you into much, much trouble!
We need to be very honest here with each other. There are those who seek to destroy God’s church, God’s people, and anything having to do with Christ. If they see that you are doing this, they may go to your church just to get pictured and then follow suit legally with the intention to destroy your church and God’s holy work. There are evil people all around us. We truly live in very evil days and we MUST protect ourselves from the enemy who seeks to destroy God’s kingdom here on earth. Demons who literally scout out Christians to try to take them down daily. Be aware (1 Peter 5:8).
Those who are on stage singing and playing musical instruments, be sure you have their written authorization to show them on camera for live stream’s, etc. Taking someone’s word for it is not enough. You should get it in writing to protect yourself and the church.
With all the legality of things taken care of, you want to have your sermons BOTH on YouTube and your own church website.
Showing live streams on YouTube is best because it attracts a LOT of people and does the promoting for you (for free), however, even if you just put the replay of your live streams on YouTube later, that is okay too, but if you’re trying to get new people in your doors, YouTube overall is a MUST! I cannot stress that enough.
However, before you put anything on YouTube, be SURE that your church services are godly and glorifying to Christ. Any attention-seeking musicians, singers, or people acting in a negative way that reflects badly on your church should not be on camera (or performing at all really, as we want to display the church of God to God holy and blameless, above reproach as our gift offering to Him).
Things like lighting, harmony of singers, etc. should all be well taken care of as well before putting them on YouTube. I have a great post about all the things to consider here before putting them LIVE on YouTube.
2) Clean, Clutter-Free Presentation
Do you know that even things like the fonts you choose on your website read to others what kind of church you are? If you are a traditional old-timey type of church, older fonts are your style. If you are a more modern church, modern fonts will be your direction to go. The fonts and design should reflect the kind of services you have.
Outside of fonts, your church website should be clean and clutter-free. Don’t put a ton of unnecessary stuff on there so people get lost or overloaded with images on the homepage.
You want clear, concise, direct information and images that make people feel welcome, comfortable, and at home. Lots of white space is a GOOD thing – don’t feel the need to clutter things up. Just put what’s necessary and keep it well organized and easy to navigate for a great user experience.
3) Service Times and Locations
You want to make sure to put your service times and locations on your site in a very well-seen place. Some people will visit your site just to look up what time you start and that’s it. So you want to give them that information very quickly. Others will spend days on your site, researching every angle of it. You need to cater to both sets of people.
A warning though…
For all activities that are not held at the actual church location (think: home Bible studies, special events, etc.) you should NOT put the locations of those events on your website. You can mention the city of where it’s held, but putting the address of say a home Bible study would be an invasion of privacy to the group hosts/leaders.
You SHOULD make it known that those services are available though. People hop online to see if there’s a home Bible study and what activities are offered. Even your current members will do this to get more involved in your church or to know who to talk to, to get more information from.
4) Statement of Faith
Your Statement of Faith IS…THE most important thing you put on your site. It’s so important, I even have one on MY site (it’s here)! 😊 While I’m not a church, I do lead others for Christ and they need to know what kind of leader I am, what I believe, and my background.
People will read your Statement of Faith to determine if it lines up with God’s Word and if you have similar beliefs as them. It’s not just about picking a church out of the list of churches online. It’s about doing our due diligence and researching each and every one of them to find a church that fits our needs and that is a Biblical, Christ-centered body of believers who lives out what they preach.
5) Leaders Page
Your leaders page should include pictures and bio’s of all Pastor(s), elders, and leaders. You can also include church staff (think: office aide). This is very helpful for a number of reasons. One being, many people will quickly search this page to see your views on women in leadership. If you have a female office aide, this is just fine, but if you have a woman Pastor, it’s not Biblical.
Another reason people will look at this page is to get to know and recognize the leaders in the church before visiting. It makes them feel more comfortable having recognized certain faces. They will try to get to know the leaders, their background, etc. in order to know if they relate to them and if the leaders are qualified to lead them.
We are always to be like Bereans, searching out the Scriptures for truth and error and determining the difference between the two. That means doing research to make sure those in authority over us within the church are godly men, qualified and knowledgable in the Scriptures to lead, marked by the qualifications set forth within the Word of God (1 Timothy 3:1-13, 1 Timothy 4:11-6:2, Titus 1:6-9, 12 Marks of an Effective Ministry Leader)
6) Daily Devotionals
A really great thing to have on your church website is daily devotionals, but you need to know your audience. Most of the people reading daily devotionals are new converts (people who are in the milk stages of Christianity, which is where we all start out as believers). Having a daily devotional for this is important in order to grow them up into mature, strong believers.
A daily devotional focuses on ONE jewel, or nugget of truth, each day, so that at the end of a year, they’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons. Daily devotionals are designed to encourage, so they should be very inspirational, and they are oftentimes more practical than teaching straight from the Bible.
Right now as we speak, I’m currently working on transferring all my daily devotionals from my emails to this blog. It’s something that I’ve been wanting to build up on the blog for over a year and now seems like a good time to do it, so look for those to be posted over the next couple of months. ❤️ When originally posted (to my newsletter list over the years), everyone absolutely LOVED them so much! They were SUPER popular, and I’m really looking forward to spreading the gospel more and getting all those devotionals seen by more people, instead of just showing them once and shelving them forever.
Remember, the goal of any church is to feed the flock and to build up and edify the saints. You want to do that through your sermons, of course, but people digest things in different ways.
Half of the population are those who learn by hearing (think: sermons) and those who learn by SEEING (think: reading a blog post). You want to have both options available so that no matter how a person learns, you’re teaching them the Word of God and instilling in them a love for Him. Whether it be devotionals or blog posts, you should have SOMEthing that is in written form to serve the other 50% of the population!
7) Blog
In addition to your daily devotions, having a blog is also a great idea. You can have some elders in your church write blog posts as well. You can start off by answering common questions or by making checklists for people to line their lives up to. You can even turn sermons into 10-point blog posts to teach that way too.
Another great idea is to put the sermon transcripts online. Again, 50% of the population learns by seeing!
The point is to teach and to give the people some things to do DURING the week. Not everyone can make it to a home Bible study, due to work, schedules, etc. but EVERYONE CAN read a 10-minute blog post every single day. And you’ll have some people want more than the Sunday gatherings, Wednesday night Bible study, and home Bible studies. They are spending time with God each and every single day and absorb a lot of information because they want to grow fast and be as perfect as they can be, here on earth, for their Lord and Savior. 😊
This is a way to feed the flock in addition to your weekly activities and sermons in person. Both your current members and new followers will love to read these things and get more involved in your church.
Even if you are not able to consistently stay up on a blog and do it weekly, you can put a lot of information there, as past articles, that people can read (if you go that direction, just be sure to not put any dates on the blog posts so they are not outdated very quickly).
The cool thing about blog posts is that you can edit them and add to them over time. I am CONSTANTLY (like, every day) adding to my blog posts things that I’m learning or verses that I’ll come across here or there. I quickly go to my blog post and add in the verse I learned about or see somewhere or add information to them and over time, they just get “beefier”. 💎
There’s one post this week, that I’ve updated already three times! 😆 I was talking about sheep and I keep finding more verses that apply and it’s really fun. We’re all, always in a state of spiritual growth and having the ability to adjust and add to our writings is really helpful.
8) Necessary Pages
Outside of all of the previous things to put on your church website, there will be many other pages that are necessary. These pages include…
- Ministries/program offers – depending on what the family dynamics look like, people will need to know if you have offerings for a youth group, kids groups, VBS, men’s group, women’s Bible study, church activities, etc. They will want to know what type of activities are available for them to get involved in for their entire family.
- When services start – It’s great to have a page of this, so that people can quickly and easily get to it, but this information (at least your Sunday morning service(s)) should be in large text on the homepage, easily found there as well.
- Map to where church is – This will help others be able to quickly see where you’re at to determine if they are able to attend your services or not.
- Your foundational beliefs – This page should include things like your beliefs, mission, vision, purpose, etc. You want people to have a good grasp of what you believe and who you are as a church body.
- Info. on church membership – those within your flock will look to see how to become a member of your church. This is where they find all the necessary information in order to join your church. Is there a process to it? What does that process look like? Who do they talk to within the church to get started? Is there a membership class they need to take before they become members? When does that start (dates, times, etc.)?
- Donate/giving page – if people like your church and your website is good, they will donate to your church and support you, even if they’ve never visited or they are in a different state. Having a donate/giving page is vital because people WILL support you through that way. Even some church members will prefer to pay online (Matthew 6:3).
- Bible reading plan – this is a way to help others stay in the Word of God each and every day.
- What to expect – people want to know what they’re getting into before they go to a service. This helps them feel much more comfortable their first time visiting.
- Events calendar – this is all the events in a convenient calendar to show people what’s available if they come to your services as well as for current members to keep track of their activities throughout the week.
- How to be saved – we always want to be thinking in terms of saving souls for Christ. Sharing the message of Christ with an intention to see others become believers is the call of every Christian, not only for churches (Matthew 28:19-20).
9) No Broken Links
It’s important to go through your website every year and fix broken links. Google sees the broken links and will ultimately stop sending you traffic if you have a lot of them, so cleaning up your site each year is a must in order to keep in good standing with search engines as well as for the user experience.
10) FAQ’s
Having an FAQ section or FAQ page is such a great thing to do. It’s so helpful to people interested in visiting your church. There are so many questions that people can have and you should update this page frequently with the questions to help people get fast answers and to learn more about your church.
Some questions could include…
- What kind of church are you? – a great answer could be something like, “We are a Bible-teaching, non-denominational church”. Your denomination is important to list.
- Where is the church located? – your physical location and map
- Can I begin a men’s or women’s Bible study mid-stream or do I need to wait until the beginning of the next one? – visiting mid-stream is best to offer your congregation
- Is there childcare for the Wednesday women’s Bible study? – or childcare for other services you hold
- How do I register my children for VBS and how old do they need to be to get enrolled for VBS? – giving them the link to sign up, listing out VBS age groups, and what a parent should bring for their child(ren) to VBS is great too
- Does your church offer premarital counseling? – such a great thing to offer to avoid divorces!
- Does your church offer marriage counseling? – marriage is SO vital. Satan is on the rampage to split marriages up as it is a picture of Christ and the church so offering this to your flock is so important!
- Do I have to utilize nursery and Sunday School for my children? What if I would like them to sit with me during the service? – allowing the parent to decide is best
- What safeguards do you have in place for my children’s welfare in your services? – a great answer could be something like, “Every worker in children’s ministry goes through a thorough nationwide background screening. Every child is digitally checked in with a nametag before being dropped off in a class. Children birth-third grade are released only when the parent/guardian presents a “parent receipt” that matches the nametag number for the child.”
- What kind of groups do you offer at your church? – some groups to consider offering that are not as common as say the women’s Bible study or men’s discipleship program are: biblical counseling (people learning to become biblical counselors), adoption, dealing with divorce, grieving with hope, marriage, managing your money, premarital counseling, sexual purity and integrity, cancer support, families facing addiction, special needs, the Bible in historical context (watching Ray Vander Laan videos as a group and discussing them).
11) Contact Info.
You definitely want a contact page (with FAQ’s on that page as well) with a form for them to contact you on.
You also want your clear email address and physical mailing address on the page as well.
It’s also a good idea to place your contact email in the footer of your site as people will look there for it.
12) Social Media
Social media is a great, and FREE, way to promote your church. Some people will follow you on the platforms that they love most and being on those platforms will help you reach more people. Just make sure, as you join multiple networks, that your main photo and descriptions are all the same so it’s easily recognizable and consistent throughout all the platforms.