I have been working with church websites since I first became a believer around 1995 and offered to do website work for a large church in Birmingham.
Of course, this was long before churches decided that having a web presence was just as important for them as it was for the local civic center, and the websites that I worked on and helped start back then were nothing compared to what can be offered by a local church today.
A website for a church is important, and its importance shouldn’t be ignored by the congregation or the administration. The baby-boomers may be reaching retirement age, but they use computers now too, and if you want to attract a younger generation of worshipers and potential believers to your church, a website is a must (in my opinion).
An Internet Home is Important for Churches Too
If you have a church, you better have a website too. Even the smallest churches with no budget should be able to find a presence online to take care of all the various tasks that a website can do for a church. Recently I came across an article from Vandelay Design, called 50 of the Best Church Website Designs that shows just how far church website designs have come, and how important they now are in the tech and digital world we live in.
At bare minimum, it can remind visitors what your specific doctrine is, what time the services are, and what you should expect from the worship service and members. When we thought about visiting a new local church in town, the first thing we did was check out their website, read up on everything they had to say on their church, what they believe, who they are and of course when they worship. We visited 3 weeks later based on what we read.
More Than Just Worship Times
A website for a church can be more than just worship times and directions on how to get there. Many churches now offer real time audio and archived sermon messages, blogs on specific topics within the church, and even live simulcasting of their services. All of this is great, but, having a presence is more than just showing the world how pretty everything is.
Coming up, I will explore the details of how the church and the Internet can exist together and reach out to those members and non-members in meaningful ways. It is important to touch the lives of people for Christ in ways that help and sustain, not just put up a sign of when to show up.
3 responses to “Does a Church Really Need a Website?”
Thanks for mentioning my post.
[…] recently wrote a short piece on the importance of a church to have a website, called Does a Church Need a Website? After writing that post, is now acts as a spring board for this topic, so it was kind of strange […]
In my honest opinion churches do not need websites. And neither do businesses, clubs, etc. However, websites have become the newest way to expand and enrich whatever we are doing whether it is drumming up more business or drumming up church members or playing games. The web is the most extensive teaching tool which has ever existed, and wise people use it well. Do we need websites? NO. Are we better off because they exist. YES.