Church’s Website Is Important to Your Leadership

Having a website for your church is not enough.

Your church must have an effective and well maintained website to fully take advantage of the digital marketing landscape.

In fact, I could argue that having a slow or outdated website might be a bigger detriment than not having a website at all. 

If your church is going to bother being on the internet, you owe it to yourself, your congregation, and your community to do it the right way.

Believe it or not, properly maintaining your website has an impact on your church’s leadership.

What does website maintenance mean?

To effectively maintain your church’s website, you’ve got to actually understand what that means.

Think about your website like a part of your physical church building. It’s not enough to simply purchase the property and allow it to waste away. You’ve got to spend time cutting the grass, running the air conditioning, paying the electric bill, and occasionally giving it a new coat of paint.

In the same way, your website needs regular attention and care. Specifically, that can refer to:

• Checking to ensure that the information displayed—like your address, phone number, and staff listings—are still accurate.
• Occasionally adding new content (perhaps in the form of blog posts) so the most recent update isn’t from 2009.
• Keep an eye on any comments or form submissions that come through your site. It’s occasionally spam, but don’t risk ignoring real people who reach out to you.
• Fixing or removing any broken links on your pages. Don’t feel like you have to check those manually—there are automated tools for that.
• Regularly update things like plugins or templates on the backend of your website. Failing to do so leaves you vulnerable to hacking.
• Watch your website’s speed, which can often slow down if you aren’t careful. And people don’t want to wait forever for it to load.
• Backup the content of your website in case something bad happens.

These are just a few of the most crucial steps in healthy website maintenance. It impacts both the publicly visible (front end) and internally-facing (backend) parts of your website. But either way, it impacts your church’s leadership in a number of ways.

1. People rely on the website for information

A website’s advantage is that it acts like a communications hub for your church.

You control the information displayed there, so you can fully leverage it for any communication. However, a cluttered and broken-down website is difficult to find information on. Even worse, it could have wrong information that is misguiding people.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a good test of this because it changed nearly everything for us. Did you take the time to update your website to reflect that change? Are people from your congregation and community able to find reliable and updated information about the current state of your church on your website?

If you aren’t actively using your site to communicate clearly about your church, it could actively be working against you and undermine your leadership. Don’t let that happen.

2. The website impacts your church’s growth

When used well, your website has a direct impact on your church’s outreach and growth.

Most people will visit your website before they come to your physical building. That was true before 2020, and the pandemic has made that even more the case.

Church goers not only expect to be able to find out about your church online, but also they’ve come to expect to be able to worship through online platforms as well. Failing to upkeep your website will leave you falling behind in technology.

An effective church website can grow your organization’s influence. An ineffective website confuses potential visitors and doesn’t give them a good impression. Unless you’re actively maintaining your website, you could be losing out on opportunities for growth.

3. Maintenance is good stewardship

Just like with your church building, you shouldn’t let your website sit idle. It’s not enough to launch online and then ignore its status.

When you first launched your website, you hopefully spent time and resources to intentionally create a website that would help grow your church. All of that energy and money went to waste unless you’re willing to regularly invest to keep it fresh and focused.

Good website maintenance doesn’t have to be restrictive time-wise or financially—even for a limited budget. The biggest reason churches neglect to do so is because they don’t realize the full value of web maintenance.

But when you’ve built an important platform—even a digital one—it’s your responsibility as a leader to maintain it and steward it as a valued resource.

4. Your website a reflection of your church

Your church’s website is a reflection of your organization and its leadership. 

If the website is outdated and unusable, it shows you don’t place a priority on people seeking to learn more about you online. If it’s unclear and confusing, it shows you don’t have a complete grasp on your church’s messaging.

It’s important to take the time to invest into your website because it’s usually your church’s first impression on people. A website is an opportunity to build a strong brand, or ruin a brand. Just like your physical worship space, its quality speaks to the quality of your leadership.

What does the state of your church’s website currently say about you? 

How can you handle website maintenance

There are endless online resources for keeping your site updated, but it requires time and a level of technical knowledge. Luckly, website maintenance is not something your church has to figure out by yourself. 

Plenty of web professionals and organizations can do this work for you. Coincidentally, I happen to work for one such company, called GreenMellen. We’re a local marketing agency that works with businesses of all shapes and sizes—including plenty of churches and nonprofits—to create a brighter web.

If you want help getting started with website maintenance at your church, feel free to reach out to me at robert@greenmellenmedia.com to find out how we could potentially help you out.

***Brian’s Comments*** This was a guest post written by Robert Carnes.  Robert is incredibly gifted and has even done significant work on this site.  He is also the author of The Original Storyteller: Become a Better Storyteller in 30 Days.  If you need help with writing, editing, marketing or web development, connect with Robert.  You will not be disappointed.

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