Your church gets to start the year with hope, new goals, new ideas and a fresh start. As we head toward spring, it’s time to reevaluate how the goals you set are working so far. Did you set goals for 2016? Do you have longer term goals? Are they helping you advance your church mission and the vision you had for your ministry?
If you've done any vision-casting for the next year, you hopefully had some concrete ideas that you’ve been kicking off in the last two months. But if your church website doesn’t match these goals and your vision, your whole community isn’t onboard.
Your church website should look and feel like a representation of your mission. The things you focus your mission around––like service, hope, or outreach––should be prevalent and emphasized on your pages. And if you have a new color scheme or logo, your website should be updated to match this, too.
We’re going to dive deeper into this today to talk about why it’s so important for your church website to always be a reflection of the living, breathing mission of your church.
If I heard about your church from a friend, and attended a service with them that I enjoyed, I would probably visit your website soon after I got home. I would want to see the experience I just had brought to life on the screen. I may not know what it’s called, but I would be looking for a New Here path that I can follow to learn more about what my life in your church family could look like.
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But what if I visited your engaging, welcoming, lively church––only to go back and visit an outdated church website with little-to-no information for me to absorb? What if I admired your logo and slides from the auditorium, but that modern branding is nowhere to be found in your online presence? |
Your church needs to have a united front. Whether it’s your logo, your design, or even just the way you speak to me as a visitor, I should be able to see the streamlined connections between all of your communications.
Action Items:
Depending on how drastically your new vision-casting has changed your mission from previous years, it may be time to rewrite your Mission Statement. Does your leadership team know what's most important to keep your church on trajectory for maturity and growth? Are you all working toward one set of goals, and one vision for your church by living your mission?
If you are, then you need to be sure that your Mission Statement reflects this united agreement. If you believe you might need to rewrite your statement in a more powerful, actionable way, download our free eBook for a step-by-step guide:
Language
Updating your website applies to more than just graphics and visuals: Maybe your pastor says in your services, “This year, our focus is on missions. We will spread our love through the community, around the country, and out into the world.
Your church family is focusing on missions this year. This is the area you want to grow and mature most in the year.
But maybe there’s nothing on your website telling me that. You might have a missions page, hiding deep in your navigation, but if it’s not front and center––emphasized on your homepage rotators, shining through your events page, and jumping at me as a visitor––then I would never know how to get more information on your missions.
If your 2016 vision gets lost on your church website, you need to adapt your language to reflect the heart of your church.