Aims of our church website

Church websites can be weird things.  Take a random tour if you don't believe it.  Since our first foray into an online presence in the mid 1990s we have held to a number of aims.  Some of those are listed below, on the left.  On the right are a few suggestions and resources for other churches wishing to develop or review their online presence.  We have not got it right, but we get enough feedback to know we have not got it entirely wrong. We are always learning, and if you have any constructive comments do please send them to us (see contact form below).

The aims of our website include...

• Not to pander, talk down or entertain 
  We're speaking to intelligent people, many of whom find the church a poor answer to life's questions
• To give a flavour of our Christian community
  We are a collection of very diverse people and constitute 'the church' both when we gather and as we disperse during the week. The church is not the just the building, not just the clergy, not just 'services'
• To appear serious, adventurous, welcoming and human
  Serious not in the po-faced sense, but that we take the human adventure seriously; that we take the message of the Gospels seriously; that we take Christ seriously. Welcoming because many of us have felt outsiders in one way or another, and we know many of you do also.  Human in the sense that we like to challenge the stereotypes of 'religious' people (none of us here think of ourselves as that) and to affirm the place of fun, humour, mutual support and care and of our growing and learning together.
• To invite others who wish to, to come along sometime and join us, to see if this is a place they may gain from knowing and being part of.
• To be a dogma-free zone but a faith-in-action rich one.
  

Now, we don't manage all this all the time.  But that does not stop us from trying.  We hope our website helps describe us truthfully. If you have useful comments about it, please send them using the contact form below.

Basics for church websites

• You need a 'domain' - that's a web address - and someone to 'host' it, and a way of building your website. After years of using Dreamweaver (serious web design programme) we now use a brilliant, user-friendly, cost effective (even free) option. Use the contact form below to ask us for details.
• Keep the site up to date.  If the 'latest news' is last Christmas's services and it is Easter or beyond, you've lost the plot.
• Not everyone is good at writing interesting copy.  The church website is not an extended 'Vicar's Letter'.  Find talent within the community and use it.
• Think of your visitors and their needs and interests. Avoid being churchy.
• Address the human condition (that's what we think the Gospels do). Avoid the twee, sentimental and sugary. And go light on images of stained glass windows.
• Don't make it clergy-centred; don't disenfranchise the laity; don't use the language of hierarchy ('Senior Leadership Team' - where do we find that kind of talk in the Gospels?)
• Need inspiration of the 'what to avoid' variety? Google 'worst church websites...