I have just come across a discussion started by Michael Boyink suggesting that web designers should not work for free when it comes to creating sites for churches because that inherently means that the organisations that the work is done for do not value it.
Because when a church gets a website for free, it evidently has no value. Things with no value get replaced or reimplemented on a moment’s notice, on staff whim, or as soon as the person leading the effort is called away.
The comments on this piece numbered 85 when he closed commenting, and on Church Marketing Sucks comments are still coming in, so it is obviously a topic that people have strong opinions on.
The criticism around this says that the website creation should be a gift without reservation to the church and what they do with it is their business, but this misses the point of the article. Churches that invest nothing in the original design and building of a website are not likely to invest the relevant resources ongoing to develop compelling and relevant content for the site.
And when someone else offers to take over the site, the old design is too easily abandoned (as it costs nothing) and replaced, when in fact the time spent on the redesign could have been better used on content. Michael Boyink suggests that churches that pay for the site in the first place are more likely to commit the relevant resources to get the most out of their investment.
Church website, communication and networking ideas 
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18 July 2008 at 6:55 pm
Anonymous
You, sir, got the point! 😉
Boyink
1 August 2008 at 2:50 am
Anonymous
AMEN, AMEN, AMEN!
I could not agree more. My professional, family and personal time have been taken advantage of more than once by churches with a hand out who ultimately didn’t need a web site after all. They didn’t know what to do with it once they had it and they just demanded more and more of my time to run their illigitimate technological “rat race”.
How in the world am I supposed to want to pour my time into anything that doesn’t value my energies and time any more than that. I know ther’s some guy or gal out there reading this spiritualizing the issue to shame me with some rhetoric language. Please, don’t waste the brain cells.
After all, most churches just need a website to show off to their peer buddies in ministry so they can only be 9 years behind the culture rather than 10. Trust me church, the culture we’re called to minister to is not impressed by our lame excuses for web sites that do’nt have them in mind to begin with.
If the church wants to be serious about ministry online they need to start listening to and valuing (paying) the people God is sending them who know how to get them there. It ain’t a guy/gal that spent 4/5 years holed up in a seminary. We wouldn’t ask our pastor to work for nothing would we. Oh, wait, based on what most Pastors make churches do that to them they too.
Exasporated
5 August 2008 at 7:07 pm
christophermiller
It’s amazing what can happen if you pay for something vs having it as a gift. Chuck Swindoll tells the story of his dad buying a new set of tires. When it was a gift he took terrible care of them and burned rubber whenever possible. When they were out of tred he went back to his father and his father said he needed to buy the next set of tires so he learned to value the things he had.
Value is that special word we’re looking for. How much Value does a church put to it’s appearance to the community? a ton. Here’s my suggestion to those working in the creative field and want to give to their church: Charge the church your regular fee minus a noticeable discount like 15-20%. That’s your your duty. Now if you want to gift the remaining 80% when the project is done, that’s fine but don’t make the deal contingent on that 80% being given back. Don’t let your right hand know what your left hand is doing. Don’t tell the church staffer you’re working with know that the money is going to be given back either.
It’s tempting to get accolades for doing a good deed like this. When we get credit like this we may become prideful. On the other side, it would be a potential stumbling block for the church staffer – knowing that the money he/she spends will just be returned is just tempting him/her to bad stewardship.
If you charge the discounted amount, the value is seen by the staff, the church books will show that the money was payed out and future budgets will reflect this as well.
27 August 2008 at 11:31 am
scott gould
My experience is that with the value also comes the more important thing: using the site.
It is shocking how many church websites are out of date, maintained by a volunteer, who, despite their good intentions, simply cannot keep on top of things. If a church pays for its website, then it begins to look after its website.
6 September 2008 at 11:34 am
---D0m41nt1Cl3R---
Building websites can be a tricky thing, especially since the newer church plants cannot really afford decent development work.
I take great delight in supporting them as best as I can initially with my limited talents and efforts and then teach/train 2 or 3 members of the church to update it regularly and only call on me with more technical issues.
I do not expect those churches to get it right, and if my first meager contribution move them to move towards a new site development then I am satisfied that I led the way in wetting the appetite. If the site becomes stale, then sadly so, but still – a Kingdom presence in the big WWW.
I salute each one of you who contribute to God’s presence on the internet. Does not matter how good or bad the site. I hope your efforts have an eternal award. Not just for yourselves, for for those that stumble on your humble site, and whether good or bad, a seed is sown for the future. Who knows the outcome . . . .
Blessings…
—D0m41nt1Cl3R—
30 September 2008 at 1:03 am
Jeremy Davidson
I am the webmaster for Arrow Heights Baptist Church in Broken Arrow http://www.arrowheights.org and one of the things I was hired to do was to help the church redevelop the website. They had had a website up for about 6 years when I came and had only redesigned it twice within those two years. Within the first six months of my initial website redesign we went from 70 weekly unique visitors to a high of 7,000. We have recently redesigned the site again and implemented a CMS so that more people could contribute to the site.
The hardest part of my job has been in getting the staff involved in contributing content to the site. The staff tells me that the website is important to them, but they refuse to believe that it is more than a glorified brochure. Getting them to add fresh content is like pulling teeth. I continue to provide articles on the importance of fresh content and teach during staff meetings on how to update their blogs on the site, but it has been to no avail.
They seem quick to criticize the design, but do not add value to the site. I think of the analogy of teaching a man to fish. Our staff seems to only want to eat, not to learn to fish. We have a great CMS that is very easy to use and all of our assistants know how to update it.
I agree that when the staff is not concerned at all with the user experience of the site that there is little value. If the staff isn’t thinking through the site and how it represents them and their mission they are missing and great opportunity and not getting connected with the opportunities available to them.
The majority of our visitors tell us they come to the church after spending time researching online. That should tell us how important the site.
Then again, how important is the site to your members? We have an invite a friend feature built into our site that is not getting used. Maybe the site isn’t valued by our members, because it is not valued by the staff.
What have you guys done to try to get the staff onboard with adding value to your website?
2 October 2008 at 12:44 pm
David
Thanks for all your comments. Good points.
@Jeremy. I think we can all agree with your point on staff not always contributing or investing time in content. But this is not just a problem with church websites, as we have the same problem with the website of the small accountancy firm that I work at. Trying to get people to buy into the idea of the potential of the website is hard and when the man/women at the top is not sold on the vision, then no one else will be.
6 October 2008 at 7:44 pm
Warren Reynolds
Great Comments!
I believe a website can be a valuable resource for churches to use. It can create lots of interaction among members, and a way to get new members to their church. Take for example ChurchTag.com This site is free for all users, and free for the churches. It provides a way for members to blog to each other and view maps/service times. There are other features as well.
A good church needs a good website, but it is easiest when maintained by the members/users of the church/website.
16 January 2009 at 5:26 am
Steve
It has been my experience that the hardest part of helping churches put a website together is how long it often takes for the church to give you the information they want on the site. You can wait weeks for information that ought to be provided in a day or two. This process is worse if you are providing the service for free. If there is some modest fee involved it seems like the information is more forthcoming.
31 March 2009 at 5:58 pm
Doug
I see the point some make about paying for church websites. Take our situation into consideration. We wanted someone to design us a website and then teach us how to run it. We hired a former member to build it in Frontpage($850). Finished it and it looked ragged. Still does.
Hired another ($370)to tune it up. Did a few things but we spent most of our time installing updating the programs. We still are having problems as we want to upload sermons and do a little other tweaking to make it right.
Now am I looking for “free” help? At this point I have to because we are out of allocated funds for this project. I did not start out this way but am in that shape now. What about this?
12 April 2009 at 7:13 pm
Matt
Doug,
I’m a developer for a large corporation but firstmost a believer. I’d like to help (for free). Your server is Linux/Unix based and I’m accustomed to Windows but I could still help. The last website I worked on was http://www.nv-m.org. Once developed, I handed it off to someone who was wanting to learn web development (so some of it is a bit “off” design wise). I created the functionality of uploading sermons, calendar management, dynamic content, the overall design and more. I can’t promise that I could do the exact same I’m used to ASP.Net and you have a Linux server, but I could definitely give you help on having online sermons and such.
If you are interested, email me at xizwyck[a]gmail.c0m. Please replace the odd characters with standard email ones (to avoid spam).
Thank you.
23 April 2009 at 2:57 am
Tabernacle Baptist
A pastor friend of mine talked to the director of a certain Christian childrens’ home. This home for troubled teens received financial support from various churches, but also charged the parents of the children. At first he thought he was “double-dipping” but he knew the amount he charged was nowhere near enough to cover expenses. So, he asked him about it.
The director, who is a preacher himself, explained the reason and its similar to the logic discussed here. I’m not familiar with all the details but evidently, when he started this ministry, he didn’t charge a dime. The children would come, many of them would get saved, or at the very least have dramatic changes in their attitudes.
The problem was, when they went back home, the parents often took very little interest in their spiritual conditions. They treated them like they were “fixed” now, no maintenance required, etc. Naturally, this burdened him and to make a long story short – he started charging the parents a fee. He said the results were impressive. The parents seemed to be more interested in what it was their kids needed, how they needed to conduct themselves, etc.
Again, this story is secondhand, but I can see the reasoning behind it. Sort of like a parent whose children get piano lessons for free vs. one who has to sacrifice.
Well, that’s my 2 cents.
God bless
Jason Elder
30 May 2009 at 3:25 am
chuch media
I don’t think it is wrong to charge for webdesign. Especially if they want something that takes considerable amounts of work
27 August 2009 at 9:31 pm
familymeet
Churches should offer to pay what is fair.
If some devotee wants to offer free service, that is another matter.
A religious institution should be willing to give – not just take.
DM
23 September 2009 at 8:54 am
Juan Carlos Berrios
In this case and from experience, a web developer needs to charge at least the minimum. If the church or customer cannot afford the full price of a site, then, I suggest the minimum especially if the church is still growing or is low in membership.
When I have done FREE SITES to other folks (church people) it is not appreciated or valued. When I see this, I really get frustrated since it wasn’t a couple of hours of training a developer received. Therefore, applying a price is the most correct way for the customer to value YOU as the developer and value the design they receive.
Juan Carlos Berrios
23 September 2009 at 6:21 pm
m@
My opinion, it’s a case-by-case basis and what God leads one to do.
But generally speaking, since most churches operate like a business (i.e. collecting money for services), then they ought to pay for the services they desire.
11 April 2010 at 1:22 am
Steve
A good church webmaster is a wonderful thing. If a church is blessed to have someone that is qualified and willing to volunteer, great. If not, the church website is important enough that a webmaster should be hired.
20 July 2010 at 1:04 pm
Bon Mark
Sometimes it would matter if we place the issue in a different perspective.
When doing the web for a church or as an organization it will be good to let them pay for the web, no question. The website domain is for a fee, the hosting is for a fee, why not for the labor cost? when church members can always contribute for the fees.
There are also free domains, free hostings, and we can offer for a free set up.
But is not about the fee, it is about the objective of the website. Are we putting up a website to blow a horn to the whole world about our church? or is it for a purpose to reach out to people and use it as as opportunity to share the gospel? or to reach out to people around the world to inform them of our services and how they may be able to avail so that they may also benefit from the church outreach and be blessed.
For developers, we take them as business when we see it’s for business, yet we can take it as charity work if we mean charity, many developers will be very happy to be of help to many churches considering the right intention.
When everything works well and finances in the ministry is good why not share the blessings to the working team as well? But again this should never be the main issue. It should be the intention to preach the gospel the intention to reach out – that is of foremost importance. Just find the right people with the right objective for the right ministry.
God owns the ministry, he provides the right people to carry on each job for His glory!
God bless everyone visiting this site.
19 August 2010 at 10:58 am
Richy
When everything works well and finances in the ministry is good why not share the blessings to the working team as well? But again this should never be the main issue. It should be the intention to preach the gospel the intention to reach out – that is of foremost importance. Just find the right people with the right objective for the right ministry.
Richy
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yeah
13 January 2011 at 7:25 am
Bara' Web Design
A great read! I can relate to many of these points, working with many Churches myself. It’s good to hear that others feel and go through similar experiences to myself 🙂
I love working for Churches, I’m currently working on http://newlifeuniting.com and it’s very fulfilling to enable local Churches to become a little more relevant.
30 September 2011 at 10:06 pm
Cheap Church Websites
Great article… There are plenty of “free” site builders out there is a church wants to cut corners. But so so true if a church isn’t willing to pay something… anything… then they probably don’t value the website enough to actually warrant the use of one for their ministry… running a website isnt for everyone. Any one can build one but will it be effective?
9 December 2011 at 12:35 am
St. Catharines Church Web-padawan
I’m just diving into the world of web development. My first project is my church’s website. They were looking at porting it to a new template as the old one was getting stale. I was looking to play around with web design. It was a perfect match. I don’t expect to get paid out of the deal because I’m a newbie. This is my learning ground. I’m thankful that they’ve given me the chance to do it.
From Boyink’s article, he made the point about how many people will be lead to Christ because of the shrubs? How many people will see a church with run down landscaping and turn around and not attend? The samething for a website. This is the online presence of the church. You can tell a lot about a church by what it’s site looks like. Then again, some sites won’t do a church justice. This is a good reason why a church should excel in all areas.
If you’ve got any advice making a good church website (our is http://www.bethelstcatharines.com), let me know.
~Cheers
23 February 2015 at 3:30 am
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