My Account

Managing the Church

For council chairs, trustees, and others with gifts of administration

The church website

by Grant Klassen

Church websites are an increasingly important avenue for church communication. They provide information to the congregation and extend the congregation’s reach into the world. Websites can provide the basics, like the church’s address, contact information, and worship times, or they can be much more complex, providing a wide range of content, from worship and meditation resources to children’s stories and sermons. Some content may contain sensitive information that the congregation should keep secure with password-only access—for example, church bulletins, minutes of meetings, membership information, and online discussion forums. At no time should personal financial information be available anywhere on the website. If pictures of children are posted on the site, the children should not be named.

A simple site with a couple of pages can be maintained for no cost; a medium or large church site may cost a few hundred dollars per year, plus initial set-up costs.

Steps in creating a website

Assessment. What is the purpose of the website? What technical skills are needed? There may be congregation members who could work on the website team.
Planning. What is the scope of the content that will be placed on the site? How will the site be organized? Who will determine what information to include, and who will write the content, design the site, and maintain the content?
Writing the content. General information can be posted on the site at the outset and will rarely need to be revised. Content such as bulletins, sermons, and announcements will require weekly updates. Discussion forums and calendars may need daily attention.
Choosing and registering a domain name. The site’s domain name becomes part of the address that visitors will use to access your website. It’s a good idea to keep the name short and memorable. See the Resources section for a list of domain-name registrars.
Arrange for someone to set up the website. If the site will be more than a couple of pages and there isn’t a congregation member who has the required skills, a volunteer or contractor from outside the congregation will need to set it up. Set-up help is available from the hosting companies listed in the Resources section.

Web development tasks

Determine whether the site will be static or dynamic. On a static site, all the content is organized into pages of information that are manually created and maintained, whether the website developer uses Web page software or “hand codes” in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language, the programming language used to create Web pages). A dynamic site runs on content management software (CMS) provided by the host computer. The CMS can have built-in templates that determine how the site looks and a database that stores all the content for the site. Dynamic sites have several advantages. The person maintaining the site needs only a high-speed Internet connection and Web browser software; no special software is necessary. Once the site is set up, very little technical knowledge is required for adding and maintaining information. It’s easy to change the look of the site without entering all the information again. Several people can work on different portions of the site at the same time: while the pastor is updating the sermons, the administrative assistant can work on the announcements.
Choose a hosting option. A host is a computer (called a server) that stores your information on the Internet. It is important that this server be reliable, that it have adequate capacity, and that customer support is available. The server needn’t be local; it can be located anywhere in North America.
Publicize the site. There are many ways to promote the website. You can publicize it in the congregation and local community by pointing to it in the bulletin and printing the Web address on business cards for distribution in the neighborhood. To advertise the site more widely, list it with the Internet search engines named in the Resources section.

Grant Klassen is the Webservant for three Mennonite Church Canada websites. He attends Home Street Mennonite Church in Winnipeg, Manitoba