1. It helps prospective visitors to better understand what topics and themes are being taught and how your pastor(s) teaches.
2. It helps members see and/or hear messages when they miss services.
3. It’s great for SEO.

Let’s go into more detail on benefit  number 3…

4 Ways Posting Sermons on Your Website Helps Your Church SEO!

1) Search engines love fresh content.

When you publish a new page to your website each week with that week’s sermon info on it, you are creating at least one fresh, unique piece of content each week.

2) Social shares improve search rankings.

Each sermon is published on its own URL which can then be shared both by the church and by anyone who listens/watches the sermon. The more shares, the better your search rankings.

3) Rank for specific topics and questions.

People use search engines to find answers to all kinds of questions, including spiritual questions.  Some examples include:

• Why does God allow evil?
• What happens after we die?
• Was Jesus a real person?

Every sermon preached at your church answers questions like these which people around the world are searching for. It’s a great opportunity to give people true, biblical answers to these questions, and help these people connect with your church.

4) Improve rankings for local keywords.

Pastors who are strategic about engaging their congregation in ministry opportunities don’t just make announcements, they preach announcements. What I mean is pastors should be strategic about talking about ministry opportunities in their sermons and relate them to the message.

When you do this, you can improve search rankings for things the people in your local community are looking for like “Vacation Bible School in Springfield” or “Easter Sunrise Service in Springfield” or “Celebrate Recovery in Springfield”

Those are some pretty sweet church SEO benefits, right?

But, you might not fully realize these benefits unless you are posting your sermons in the right way.

9 Ways to Maximize the Church SEO Benefits of Your Sermons

To maximize the SEO impact of your sermons, do as many of the following as possible:

1. Post each sermon to its own page/post.  (Don’t put a whole bunch of sermons on one page)
2. Embed video of the message. (Google loves videos)
3. Optimize the video. If the video is posted to YouTube of Facebook, edit the title, description, category, and tags. Include scripture references, topics discussed, and questions addressed.
4. Embed audio of the message
5. Podcast the audio of the messages
6. Include the sermon outline or notes
7. Include all scripture references mentioned in the sermon and link out to where people can read them on a site like BibleGateway.
8. Include recommended action steps. If any of those action steps include going somewhere or doing something with another organization, link out to their website and include their address.
9. Include links to recommended resources

The bottom line is…

Posting sermons to your church website can dramatically increase search rankings and visitors… but only if you optimize them well.

Looking for a great church website builder with a sermon manager?

A lot of the big corporate website builders don’t have sermon managers built into them.

OurChurch.Com’s WP-EZ Church Website Builder uses the built in blogging functionality for its sermon manager. If you want to take your sermons to the next level, organizing and categorizing sermon audio, video, notes and graphics, check out our premium EZ Sermon Manager.

If you’re interested in having us design and build a new website for your church or help with your  church SEO, we’d love to talk more with you.

Complete the form below (mobile) or to the right (desktop) to schedule a free phone consultation.

Comment and discuss

• Are you posting sermons to your church website? If you are, what benefits have you experienced? If not, why not?

Continuing reading Church Website Builder Tips and Tools

Paul Steinbrueck

Co-founder & CEO, OurChurch.Com

Paul has been the CEO of OurChurch.Com since its founding in 1996, combining his passion for faith and technology to lead the organization.

An accomplished writer, Paul has authored over 2,000 articles on faith and technology, featured on platforms like ChurchLeaders.com, The JoyFM, and his personal blog, LiveIntentionally.org.

Beyond his professional achievements, Paul serves as an elder at Journey Community Church and is deeply engaged in his community through his involvement with the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranch and the Safety Harbor Chamber of Commerce. He is a contributing author of the book Outspoken! Conversations on Church Communication. 

steinbrueck.org

The post How Sermons Can Give Your Church Website Better Search Rankings appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.

There is no standard for capabilities needed to call something “SEO friendly.”

Your search rankings have a huge impact on your church’s ability to connect with people searching online for a church. You can’t afford to just take someone’s “SEO friendly” claim at face value and then find out later – after you’ve built your website – that you can’t fully optimize your website. Your search rankings will suffer as a result!

So, we’ll break it down for you and tell you what to look for.

10 SEO Features to Look for in an SEO-Friendly Church Website Builder

1) Page URLs You Can Edit

Some website builders set the URL (web address) of your pages to something obscure like yourdomain.com/page13.htm which is both hard to remember and has no keywords in them.

Having keywords in the URL of your pages like yourdomain.com/clearwater-youth-ministry/ will help your web pages rank better for those keywords.

2) Mobile Friendly

More than half of all website visitors use a phone or tablet. When a person searches Google from a phone or tablet, Google shows “mobile search results,” which are different from the search results it shows computer users. One of the factors that affects mobile search results is whether a site is mobile-friendly or not. So, make sure your church website builder creates mobile-friendly sites.

3) Title Tags You Can Edit

The title tag of a web page is not visible to visitors but is read by search engines and used on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Some web builders let you to set one title tag for the website and then use that one title tag for every page of the site. This is terrible for SEO! Others don’t give you any control over title tags at all, automatically setting them to “[site name] – [page title]” (also not good).

Make sure your church website builder allows you to set each individual page’s title tag.

4) Meta Description Tags You Can Edit

The description tag is another page element that is hidden from visitors but used by search engines and shown on the SERPs. Like the title tag, you want to be able to customize the description tag for each individual page.

5) Image Alt Attributes You Can Edit

When adding an image to a page, there is special attribute called an “Alt” attribute which is used to describe the image for people who are visually impaired. Even though search engines are getting pretty good at recognizing objects in images, they use alt attributes to tell what the images are about and factor them into search rankings.

Some web builders don’t allow you to set the alt tags for your images. Make sure yours does.

6) Proper use of H1 & H2 tags

The HTML H1 tag is supposed to be used for the title of each web page. H2 tags are used for major headings. Search engines consider the words contained in the H1 tag the most important words on the page, and those contained in H2 tags the second most important.

Each web page should have just one H1 tag and 1-3 H2 tags. I’ve seen some web builders create pages that have no H1 or H2 tags on them, while others have too many.

7) XML Sitemap

An XLM sitemap is a pages that lists all the pages in a website and is specially formatted for search engines. Search engines use sitemaps to make sure they don’t overlook any pages in a website.

Your church website builder should automatically generate a sitemap for your website.

8) Ability to Insert Verification Code

It’s a good idea to connect your website with the Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. These tools provide lots of insightful data and will notify you if there are problems with your website.

To integrate your website with these tools, Google and Bing require you to verify you are an administrator of your website by inserting hidden code in the header of the website or uploading a special file into your web hosting account.

Make sure your website builder will allow you do to verify your site in one of these two ways.

9) Blog

A blog is something most people wouldn’t consider an “SEO-friendly” requirement. However, blogging is one of the best ways to improve a website’s search rankings because it enables you to help visitors with keyword-targeted content.

We help all of our Progressive SEO Management clients write, optimize, and share blog articles. This is something we could not do if they used a website builder that lacks a blog feature.

10) Social Share Buttons

Like a blog, social share buttons aren’t on most people list of SEO-friendly factors, but social shares do factor into some search ranking ranking algorithms. Plus the more people who share your pages and blog posts, the more likely it is that people will link to your website and blog articles, and links are a big factor in search rankings.

The bottom line is…

Your church website builder should help your church get better search rankings not hinder it.

Get a Church Website Builder built for Church SEO

Because we at OurChurch.com provide SEO for churches, when we developed our WP-EZ Website Builder we made sure to include all 10 of these SEO capabilities, so it would be the best church website builder possible.

Comment and Discuss…

• How important do you think these SEO features are in a church website builder?
• Will you check for these SEO features before building your next church website? Why or why not?

Continuing reading Church Website Builder Tips and Tools

Paul Steinbrueck

Co-founder & CEO, OurChurch.Com

Paul has been the CEO of OurChurch.Com since its founding in 1996, combining his passion for faith and technology to lead the organization.

An accomplished writer, Paul has authored over 2,000 articles on faith and technology, featured on platforms like ChurchLeaders.com, The JoyFM, and his personal blog, LiveIntentionally.org.

Beyond his professional achievements, Paul serves as an elder at Journey Community Church and is deeply engaged in his community through his involvement with the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranch and the Safety Harbor Chamber of Commerce. He is a contributing author of the book Outspoken! Conversations on Church Communication. 

steinbrueck.org

The post 10 SEO Features of an SEO-Friendly Church Website Builder appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.

A secret straight from renown artist Pablo Picasso?

Before I reveal the secret, let me preface this by saying, the appearance of your church website is NOT the most important aspect of it.

The most important thing is that your website advances the mission of your church – to reach out to people in your community, to help people grow in their relationship with God, and to help people connect with one another.

The appearance of your church website doesn’t really need to be “beautiful” either, but if there are parts of it that are cringe-worthy, they are going to distract people and hinder your ministry.

It’s like music in a worship service. It’s more important to have authentic, heart-felt worship than to be musically “beautiful.” But if the worship leader, worship team, or choir is out of tune, it’s very distracting and hinders people from people able to focus on God and worship Him.

All that said, even if it’s not your primary objective, you can have a beautiful church website with hardly any time, effort or expertise.

The secret to a beautiful church website is…

Copy Others

Pablo Picasso is quoted as saying…

Good artists copy; great artists steal. -Pablo Picasso

Even though I lead a church website design company, I do not have a design bone in my body. My background is engineering. I could not design my way out of a wet paper bag.

But I recognize good design when I see it.

I bet you can too.

This is why we designed the WP-EZ Website Builder with Page Templates.

Page templates are beautifully designed pages that have sample text and images in them. All you have to do is replace the sample text and images with your own text and images, and viola… you have a beautiful church website.

Check out this 3 minute video that shows how Page Templates work in WP-EZ.

Looking for an affordable, easy to use church website builder?

Check out OurChurch.com’s  WP-EZ Website Builder! We give a 30 day money-back guarantee, so you can build your website today with absolutely no risk!

Got a WP-EZ 1.0 website?

Page templates are something we added to WP-EZ 2.0 themes. If you are using a 1.0 theme, I encourage you to switch to a 2.0 theme to get the page templates. To do that, login to MyOCC, and click the “Change Theme” button. For more info, see the WP-EZ 1.0 to 2.0 Migration FAQs.

Comment and Discuss… What are your thoughts on page templates?

Read more Church Website Builder Tips and Tools.

Paul Steinbrueck

Co-founder & CEO, OurChurch.Com

Paul has been the CEO of OurChurch.Com since its founding in 1996, combining his passion for faith and technology to lead the organization.

An accomplished writer, Paul has authored over 2,000 articles on faith and technology, featured on platforms like ChurchLeaders.com, The JoyFM, and his personal blog, LiveIntentionally.org.

Beyond his professional achievements, Paul serves as an elder at Journey Community Church and is deeply engaged in his community through his involvement with the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranch and the Safety Harbor Chamber of Commerce. He is a contributing author of the book Outspoken! Conversations on Church Communication. 

steinbrueck.org

The post Pablo Picasso’s Secret to a Beautiful Church Website appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.

1. Hire a church website developer to build the website for you.
2. Build your website yourself from scratch (installing and configuring all the software yourself)
3. Use a church website builder to build the website yourself.

Let’s look at the pos and cons of each option…

1. Hire a church website developer

The benefits of hiring a church website developer to build a custom-designed website for your church:

• Time savings: It will save you time compared to building a website yourself.
• Completed sooner: Professional website developers usually have a process with timelines and will keep the project on schedule. If you build the website yourself, chances are its one of many responsibilities you have, and it could be delayed if other things get priority.
• Better results: A team of people that build websites for a living will be able to create a better looking, better functioning website than you can on your own.

The only negative to hiring a church website developer is that its the most expensive option.

2. Build the website yourself from scratch

The benefits of building a church website yourself from scratch include:

• Flexibility/Control: You get to choose exactly how the website looks and what functionality you build into to it.
• Cost savings: It’s the least expensive option.

The biggest drawback to building your own site from scratch is that it before it takes a lot of time, effort and research, especially if you’ve never done it before. That’s because it involves the following steps:

• Purchase a church web hosting account (15 minutes)
• Purchase a domain name (15 minutes)
• Install a content management system like WordPress in the hosting account (15-30 minutes)
• Research, purchase, and install a theme (2-4 hours)
• Research and install 20+ plugins (10-20 hours)

And all of this is even before you have created your first web page.  It could take another 1-3 hours per page depending on the content and layout of the pages.

Another drawback to building the website yourself from scratch is that once your website is built, you have to frequently check for updates to keep your website running smoothly and prevent it from getting hacked. If the developers abandon any of the plugins you’re using you have to find new ones and replace them. So, there’s a lot of ongoing maintenance.

3. Use a church website builder to build the website yourself

Using a church website builder is an appealing middle ground between hiring someone to build a site and building the site from scratch.

• Cost:  The monthly cost for hosting and a website builder is usually only slightly more than hosting alone and significantly less than a custom-designed website.
• Time: The time it takes to build a site with a church website builder is in between the previous two options. It’s dramatically less than building a site from scratch, but more than hiring someone else to build it for you.
• Updates: The developers of the website builder will maintain and regularly update the website builder software and keep it secure. But they typically won’t update the text and images on your pages for you unless you pay extra for content updates.
• No technical expertise required: Church website builders don’t require any coding and are usually pretty easy to learn.

If you’re leaning in the direction of using a church website builder to create your church website, we’ve got some tips for you…

5 Church Website Builder Tips and Tools

1. Use our WP-EZ Website Builder.

If you want a new church website and have the time to do it yourself, our WP-EZ Church Website Builder is easy to use, affordable and designed specifically for churches.  No need to install WordPress, buy a theme, or install dozens of plugins. WP-EZ does all of that for you.

2. Update Your Church Website Theme.

If your website looks a little dated or you just want to change things up, one way to do that is to switch to a new website theme.

If you are using WP-EZ 2.0, switching themes takes just a few clicks.

If you built your website more than 5 years ago with our original WP-EZ Website Builder, we strongly encourage you to switch themes and migrate to WP-EZ 2.0.  Your new website will look and function sooooo much better!

3) Use the Training Center and Video Tutorial Library.

Have you already built your website with our WP-EZ Website Builder and want to make it even better?

You have free access to our WP-EZ Training Center which has a series of courses that combine short videos with action steps that will teach you everything you need to know to build a great website with WP-EZ.

We also have an extensive library of web builder video tutorials in our knowledgebase.

4) Ultimate Guild to Church Website Photos.

The biggest problems we see with church websites has to do with photos – lack of photos, blurry photos, improperly sized photos, and more. Use the Ultimate Guide to Church Website Photos to improve your website.

5) Help Us Help You.

Share your thoughts on church website design in this month’s Listening Post.

Bonus: More church website builder tips!

All month long we’ll be blogging our best church website builder tips and adding links these articles below.
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1. 3 Secrets To The Best Church Website Builder Designs
2. Pablo Picasso’s Secret to a Beautiful Church Website
3. 10 SEO Features of an SEO-Friendly Church Website Builder
4. Church Website Builder Must-Have Features!
5. How Sermons Can Give Your Church Website Better Search Rankings

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The bottom line…

Using a church website builder, is a great option for churches that have a limited budget, limited technical experience, and limited time.

1. 3 Secrets To The Best Church Website Builder Designs

When choosing the best church website builder for your church, a big thing to consider is the themes or templates that come with each website builder.

We discuss 3 specific things to look for in a church website theme in 3 Secrets To The Best Church Website Builder Designs 

2. Pablo Picasso’s Secret to a Beautiful Church Website

Would you like to know the secret to a beautiful church website?

A secret straight from renown artist Pablo Picasso?

Once you know that secret, you’ll understand how even if you aren’t super-artistic and don’t have any training or experience building websites, you can still build a beautiful website if you have the right tool.

Continue reading Pablo Picasso’s Secret to a Beautiful Church Website

3. 10 SEO Features of an SEO-Friendly Church Website Builder

Just about every church website builder claims to be “SEO friendly” but what does that mean?

There is no standard for capabilities needed to call something “SEO friendly.”

In this article we list 10 specific things to look for in a church website builder that are needed for a well-optimized, top-ranking website.

Continue reading 10 SEO Features of an SEO-Friendly Church Website Builder

4. Church Website Builder Must-Have Features!

One factor to consider when selecting a church website builder is the features (or functionality) you want to have in your website.

To determine that, we start by thinking about the purpose of the website. What do you want it to accomplish for your church?

From the many, many conversations we’ve had with church leaders, we’ve been able to determine The Top 5 Must-Have Church Website Builder Features

Continue reading to learn the Church Website Builder Must-Have Features!

5. How Sermons Can Give Your Church Website Better Search Rankings

Posting sermons to your church website can dramatically increase search rankings and visitors… but only if you optimize them well.

In this article, we list 4 Ways Posting Sermons on Your Website Helps Your Church SEO and follow that with 9 Ways to Maximize the Church SEO Benefits of Your Sermons

Continue reading… How Sermons Can Give Your Church Website Better Search Rankings

Comment and discuss… What questions, issues and challenges regarding church web builders do you have? Post a comment so we can help you with them.

Paul Steinbrueck

Co-founder & CEO, OurChurch.Com

Paul has been the CEO of OurChurch.Com since its founding in 1996, combining his passion for faith and technology to lead the organization.

An accomplished writer, Paul has authored over 2,000 articles on faith and technology, featured on platforms like ChurchLeaders.com, The JoyFM, and his personal blog, LiveIntentionally.org.

Beyond his professional achievements, Paul serves as an elder at Journey Community Church and is deeply engaged in his community through his involvement with the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranch and the Safety Harbor Chamber of Commerce. He is a contributing author of the book Outspoken! Conversations on Church Communication. 

steinbrueck.org

The post Church Website Builder Tips and Tools appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.

I hope it was awesome!

I hope your gatherings or services glorified God, people heard the Good News of Jesus’ resurrection, and God revealed himself in powerful ways.

I also hope God has revealed some things through your church’s Easter communications.

Our blogging this month focused on Easter – preparing your church website for Easter, doing church SEO for Easter, preparing to tell stories and follow-up after Easter.

Now that Easter is behind us, what have you learned from your Easter communication? And what changes do you want to make?  To help with this, here are some more specific questions to consider.

Easter Communications Assessment Questions:

• What aspects of your Easter communications worked well? How can you build on them?
• What aspects of your communications didn’t work well? How can you improve on them?
• Have you reviewed your Analytics since Easter?
• Have you reviewed your communication cards?
• Have you debriefed with your team?

3 Easter Communications Revelations

1) Church Website Revelations

If your website experienced an increase in traffic in the week leading up to Easter but you didn’t see many visitors to your Easter services, that’s an indication you did some great things to get people to your website, but there are likely problems with your website.

Perhaps it’s outdated, hard to navigate or not mobile friendly, and needs to be fixed or redesigned.

If you’re not yet using the Plan Your Visit strategy, that might be something to consider.

2) Church SEO Revelations

If analytics indicate your website got lots of visitors from search, that’s awesome – your website is probably well optimized and your local listings well established. If you didn’t get many visitors from organic search, that’s an indication your website doesn’t rank well in search engines and SEO is an area that needs work.

3) Church Social Media Revelations

If analytics indicate your website didn’t get many visitors from social media, consider stepping up your social media engagement. If you put a lot of effort into social media but your analytics still show not many people visited your website from social, it’s probably time to re-evaluate your social media strategy.

If you don’t have any analytics and/or communication cards to evaluate, then perhaps your next step is to get those things going so you have a better idea of your strengths to build on and weaknesses to work on next time.

God speaks to our hearts through his Word. He also speaks to our minds through data and the insight of others.

Want to work with our web design and/or SEO team?

If you need a hand getting Google Analytics and Google Search Console integrated with your website, or if you’d like an analytics expert to review your analytics, or you’re ready to delegate the website design or search engine marketing of your Christian church, ministry or business to an experienced team, we’d love to talk with you.

Complete the form below (mobile) or to the right (desktop) to schedule a call!

Comment and Discuss

• What did God reveal to you this Easter?  (Spiritually or in your communications)

Read more articles in our Easter Communications series.

Paul Steinbrueck

Co-founder & CEO, OurChurch.Com

Paul has been the CEO of OurChurch.Com since its founding in 1996, combining his passion for faith and technology to lead the organization.

An accomplished writer, Paul has authored over 2,000 articles on faith and technology, featured on platforms like ChurchLeaders.com, The JoyFM, and his personal blog, LiveIntentionally.org.

Beyond his professional achievements, Paul serves as an elder at Journey Community Church and is deeply engaged in his community through his involvement with the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranch and the Safety Harbor Chamber of Commerce. He is a contributing author of the book Outspoken! Conversations on Church Communication. 

steinbrueck.org

The post An Easter Revelation appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.

If you’re a pastor, church communicator or heavily involved in church ministry, I hope you can take a breath now. But you’ve got one more important Easter task to do…

Review Your Easter Analytics

Hopefully, you’ve already done some reviewing of your Easter services and related events, gotten feedback from members of your team, and made notes about what worked well and what didn’t. You’ll be able to learn from these observations and make next Easter even better.

What about your website? Your emails? Any social media you used? Any online advertising you did? Have you reviewed how they did?

You should have your website connected with an analytics system like Google Analytics.

Analytics can answer important questions like…

• How many website visitors did we have the week before Easter this year compared to the week before Easter last year?
• How many website visitors did we have the week before Easter compared to a “normal” non-Easter week a month ago?
• Look at the sources of your visitors in the week before Easter to last month and last Easter? Which sources saw the biggest increases? Organic search? Email? Facebook? Google Ads? This will give you a good idea of how well your Easter marketing and outreach worked.
• If your website is connected with Google Search Console, look at your search analytics to see which keywords were searched most often to find your website.

Don’t be content to just guess as to what worked well (and and not so well) with your website, search marketing, and Easter outreach…

Smart people make data-based decisions.

Partner with our team of SEO/Analytics experts!

This is why when we begin working with an organization to help them with their Christian SEO or Church SEO we configure their website with Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Bing Webmaster Tools.  With these tools we and our clients can make good data-driven decisions, which helps them better live out their mission online.

If you’re interested in getting some expert help with your SEO, fill out the form below (mobile) or to the right (desktop) to schedule a time to talk.

Post a Comment and Discuss…

• Have you reviewed your Easter analytics? Why or why not?
• If you have, what is the most significant thing you learned from your Easter analytics?

Read more articles in our Easter Communications series.

Paul Steinbrueck

Co-founder & CEO, OurChurch.Com

Paul has been the CEO of OurChurch.Com since its founding in 1996, combining his passion for faith and technology to lead the organization.

An accomplished writer, Paul has authored over 2,000 articles on faith and technology, featured on platforms like ChurchLeaders.com, The JoyFM, and his personal blog, LiveIntentionally.org.

Beyond his professional achievements, Paul serves as an elder at Journey Community Church and is deeply engaged in his community through his involvement with the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranch and the Safety Harbor Chamber of Commerce. He is a contributing author of the book Outspoken! Conversations on Church Communication. 

steinbrueck.org

The post Secrets Revealed by Easter Analytics appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.

That means Mother’s Day is an excellent opportunity to reach out to people your community and show how the love of Christ compels us to love moms and families – those who are already a part of our congregation and those outside our community of faith.

If you’re looking for new church outreach ideas for Mother’s Day, we’ve got a bunch of them grouped into two categories: first, events you can do in-person, and second, ways to promote your events and connect with people online.

14 Church Outreach Event Ideas for Mother’s Day

1. Mother’s Day Service

Plan a special Mother’s Day service to celebrate and honor mothers. Include special music, scripture readings, and a message that honors the role of mothers in our lives.

2. Mother’s Day Brunch

Host a Mother’s Day brunch for the mothers in your church and community. Serve delicious food, offer a time of fellowship, and create an environment where mothers feel appreciated.

3. Mother’s Day Cards

Encourage children and adults to create Mother’s Day cards to give to their mothers, grandmothers, or other mother figures in their lives. You could even have a card-making station set up after the service.

4. Mother’s Day Gift Bags

Create Mother’s Day gift bags filled with goodies and distribute them to mothers in your church or community.

5. Mother’s Day Photo Booth

Set up a photo booth where mothers and their families can take pictures to commemorate the day. Have props available to make it extra fun!

6. Mother’s Day Devotional

Create a Mother’s Day devotional that can be shared with mothers to encourage and uplift them.

7. Mother’s Day Tea

Host a Mother’s Day tea (perhaps the day before Mother’s Day) for mothers and their daughters or friends. Serve tea, light refreshments, and provide a time of fellowship.

8. Mother’s Day Movie Night

Host a movie night the Friday or Saturday before Mother’s Day and show a family-friendly movie that celebrates mothers.

9. Spa Day for Moms

Host a spa day where mothers can be pampered and relaxed. Offer massages, manicures, and other spa treatments. Alternatively, you could give away gift certificates for a spa day to special moms (e.g. oldest mom, newest mom, mom w the most kids)

10. Mother’s Day Sunday School

Create a special Sunday school lesson for children that focuses on the importance of mothers and the biblical examples of motherhood.

11. Support a Women’s Center

Does your community have a local women’s center that provides ultrasounds and support for expectant mothers, or baby supplies for new mothers? Raise funds or collect items for donations for your local women’s center.

12 Launch New Groups for Moms

Mother’s Day is a great opportunity to announce new ministries for mothers like a a preschooler play group, bible study for moms while their kids are in school, or a class for parents of teens.

13. Mother’s Day Out

Offer free or inexpensive child care at the church, so moms can have some time to themselves, with their friends, or to shop without kids.

14. Mother’s Day Corsages

The youth group could sell and assemble Mother’s Day Corsages as a fundraiser and distribute them before services on Mother’s Day.

8 Mother’s Day Online Outreach Ideas

1. Create a Landing Page

Create a dedicated landing page on your church website that provides all the details of your Mother’s Day services and events. This page should be easy to navigate, and the information should be displayed prominently.

2. Utilize Social Media

Social media is an effective way to reach out to your community and promote your Mother’s services and events. Utilize platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to create posts and share information about your Mother’s Day services and events.

3. Ask Your Congregation to Utilize Social media

Posting info to the church’s social media profiles will only reach so many people. If you really want to maximize your social media reach, get the people of your church fired up and excited about sharing your church’s social media posts.

4. Share Testimonials

Share testimonies from members of your congregation about the impact that their Mother has had on their life. Or testimonies from mothers on the impact God has had on their family. These testimonials can be shared on social media and on your website to help promote your Mother’s Day services and events.

5. Email/Blog Devotionals

We suggested giving away physical Mother’s Day devotionals in #6. An alternative would be to invite people to subscribe to receive daily devotionals via email.

6) Use Graphics and Videos

Create graphics and/or promotional videos for your Easter services and events. These visuals can be shared in your services, on your website, on social media and via email to catch the attention of your audience.

7) Use Online Advertising

Consider using online advertising to promote your Mother’s Day services and events. Platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads can be used to target specific audiences and promote your Mother’s Day services and events.

8) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Make sure people can find your church and Mother’s Day events when they search online. For help with that check out The Ultimate Guide to Church SEO

Forsake not your mother’s teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck. –Proverbs 1:8-9

Want to work with our team?

And if you’d like some help with church web design and church SEO so you can have your best Mother’s Day outreach ever, we’d love to work with you.

Fill out the form below (mobile) or to the right (desktop), to schedule a call.

Comment and Discuss…

• What Mother’s Day outreach is your church planning?

Continue reading… Church Outreach Ideas & Events for every holiday and season

Paul Steinbrueck

Co-founder & CEO, OurChurch.Com

Paul has been the CEO of OurChurch.Com since its founding in 1996, combining his passion for faith and technology to lead the organization.

An accomplished writer, Paul has authored over 2,000 articles on faith and technology, featured on platforms like ChurchLeaders.com, The JoyFM, and his personal blog, LiveIntentionally.org.

Beyond his professional achievements, Paul serves as an elder at Journey Community Church and is deeply engaged in his community through his involvement with the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranch and the Safety Harbor Chamber of Commerce. He is a contributing author of the book Outspoken! Conversations on Church Communication. 

steinbrueck.org

The post 22 Mother’s Day Ideas for Church Outreach (events and online) appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.

Earth Day is an annual awareness day observed on April 22 to focus attention on environmental protection and stewarding our planet. It’s a good time for Christians and Christian organizations to consider what we can do to protect and care for creation.

What the Bible Says about Protecting the Environment

After God created human beings, the first job he gave us was to care for creation.

Genesis 1:28 says, “God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.‘”

Just after that in Genesis 2:15 it’s recorded, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.“

Clearly God has given us responsibility to care for creation and steward it wisely.

7 Ways Your Website Can Help You Go Green

There are many things Christian churches, schools, ministries and businesses can do to protect and care for the environment. Because we here at OurChurch.com are focused on websites and online communication, we’re going to focus on the ways your website and online tools can help your organization be environmentally-friendly.

1) Streamline the Sunday bulletin.

Some churches require a small forest each week to produce all the bulletin inserts for every ministry and event in the church.

We strongly recommend a communications strategy that makes your website the hub of your communications.  When you do this, you don’t need to print every detail about every event. Just put the basic info for each event – name of the event, when, where and why someone would want to participate and then, “See the website for more info” Boom – end of bulletin inserts!

Some churches have even completely eliminated their print bulletins in favor of an online bulletin.

2) Do registrations and signups online.

Get rid of the printed signup sheets and registration forms lying around on tables in the lobby of your church or school. Online event registration will simplify your life, make it easier for people to signup anytime and anywhere, and save paper and ink. Online event registration can be done on your website with a plugin, or as we discussed earlier with Google Forms.

3) Use online forms.

Just as you can replace paper signup sheets with online signups on your website, you can also replace all kinds of paper forms with online forms. Online form builders are easy to use and can be used to create any type of form you currently have in print.

4) Put your manuals and handbooks online.

Do you have an huge employee handbook you print and give to each member of your staff? Do you have written policies and procedures for your church, school or business?

These things can be uploaded and placed in a staff-only section of your website.

Or even better, they can be put into an online file-sharing service like Google Docs. Another great feature of Google Docs is when a document need updating, you can do it quickly and easily online, and when you do everyone with access instantly has the updated version. No more need to distribute updates or wonder if everyone is using the latest version.

Putting instructions in Google Docs is also extremely helpful for training new staff and volunteers. No need to get people to remember everything or carry around paper instructions. Google Docs can be accessed anywhere on a smart phone.

5) Replace your paper newsletter with an online newsletter.

The printed monthly newsletter has been one of the most prevalent forms of communication for churches, schools and nonprofits for decades. Think about how many pages of newsletters you print every month. Depending on the size of your organization, switching to an online newsletter could save thousands of pages of paper a month. If you mail your newsletter you could save lots of money on postage (and the fuel used to deliver them.) Put an electronic copy of your newsletter on your website and send it out via email.

If you are a church with people who are older or don’t go online much, you may get some pushback. So, you may need to compromise a little by mailing the printed newsletter to those who specifically request it or having a handful of print copies available in the foyer of your church.

6) Forgo direct mail ads for SEO and/or Google Ads.

Some Christian churches, schools, and businesses use direct mail postcards to try to reach people in their community. While this can be effective, eventually the vast majority of them will end up in your local landfill.

Search Engine Optimization and Google Ads are a most cost-effective way to reach people in your community AND there is no waste.

7) Partner with a Green Web Hosting Company.

We at OurChurch.com love the outdoors and do everything we can to care for creation. We have already taken all of the steps above.

Additionally, our entire team works from home offices, which means no corporate office to build, furnish, heat, cool and clean. We’re also not consuming gasoline or polluting the environment on our commutes to work.

The bottom line…

How you use your website can have a big impact on how you care for creation.

Partner with an eco-friendly website design and marketing agency

If you share our concern for the environment, we hope you’ll consider the 7 ways to protect the environment listed above and consider OurChurch.com for your Christian web hosting, web design and SEO.

Comment and Discuss

• How are you using your website to reduce pollution and protect the environment?
• What other ideas can you share?

Continue reading… Church Outreach Ideas and Events for Every Holiday and Season

Paul Steinbrueck

Co-founder & CEO, OurChurch.Com

Paul has been the CEO of OurChurch.Com since its founding in 1996, combining his passion for faith and technology to lead the organization.

An accomplished writer, Paul has authored over 2,000 articles on faith and technology, featured on platforms like ChurchLeaders.com, The JoyFM, and his personal blog, LiveIntentionally.org.

Beyond his professional achievements, Paul serves as an elder at Journey Community Church and is deeply engaged in his community through his involvement with the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranch and the Safety Harbor Chamber of Commerce. He is a contributing author of the book Outspoken! Conversations on Church Communication. 

steinbrueck.org

The post 7 Ways Your Website Can Help You Go Green for Earth Day appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.

Many who are not Christian wonder, “Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?”

It does seem strange that anyone would describe the day the leader of their movement was unjustly and horrifically killed as “good.”

Back on that first Good Friday, Jesus’s followers didn’t consider it to be very good either.  In fact, on that day, they probably considered it the worst day ever.

Isn’t it amazing what a little perspective brings?

Here’s an excellent video to help put Good Friday in perspective…

If you like this video/post, please share it on social media.

For me, the video not only puts Good Friday in the proper perspective (with Easter Sunday coming), but it also serves as a reminder that even on our darkest day, the story is not over.

We have the hope that comes from knowing God’s goodness and power could change our entire story at any time.

And we have the assurance that the battle has already been won, in the end victory is certain, through Christ Jesus who has defeated death, despair and every other evil.

What does this video mean to you?  What does Good Friday mean to you?

Post a comment to share your insight and perspective with others.

Paul Steinbrueck

Co-founder & CEO, OurChurch.Com

Paul has been the CEO of OurChurch.Com since its founding in 1996, combining his passion for faith and technology to lead the organization.

An accomplished writer, Paul has authored over 2,000 articles on faith and technology, featured on platforms like ChurchLeaders.com, The JoyFM, and his personal blog, LiveIntentionally.org.

Beyond his professional achievements, Paul serves as an elder at Journey Community Church and is deeply engaged in his community through his involvement with the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranch and the Safety Harbor Chamber of Commerce. He is a contributing author of the book Outspoken! Conversations on Church Communication. 

steinbrueck.org

The post Video: It’s Friday… But Sunday’s a Coming appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.

Depending on where you are emotionally and spiritually, we thought you might want to see something to lift your spirit.

Maybe you’re going through a tough time, things are heavy, and you just want to see a funny Easter video to lighten things up for a few minutes.

Or maybe you’ve been busy and distracted, and you want to see an inspiring Easter video to help you focus on Jesus, remember his sacrifice, and remember that through Jesus we have victory over sin and death!

Before we get to the videos, I want to remind you that our team at OurChurch.com is here to help you reach more people and better live out your mission online with our DIY Website Builder, custom designed websites, and search engine optimization.

10 Funny and Inspiring Easter Videos

1. Easter According to Kids

This hilarious video by Southland Christian Church asks kids questions about Easter and then re-enacts the Easter story based on their replies.

2. Bible Rap Video | Resurrection Day

This funny rap video by “Chris Chris” is very creative both visually and lyrically.

3. Bible Builders – The Easter Story in LEGO

Even if you’re not into LEGOs you can appreciate the time, effort and creativity that went into re-enacting every scene of the Easter story with LEGOs.

4. Easter: A Scottish three year old’s take…

“Out of the mouth of babes…” This 3 year old (with an adorable Scottish accent) asks the questions about Eater that many adults are too shy to speak out loud.

5. It’s Friday… But Sunday’s a Coming!

This well known and inspiring Easter message by S.M. Lockridge is accompanied by creative images to make it even more impactful.

6. Easter Video – JESUS

A truly inspiring video by Mat and Est about Easter

7. He’s Still Risen | Igniter Media | Easter Church Video

Igniter Media has been putting out great videos for years that have been used by churches all over the world. This “preview” (available for purchase), makes you think about how people might have responded to the news of Jesus resurrection when it happened and what it means for us today.

8. What’s the difference in RELIGIONS

Short form videos like this YouTube short, are exploding in popularity. In this one, @RevAlexMeadows explains in less than a minute why Christianity is different from the religious of the world and Jesus is different from any other spiritual leader.

9. Trump Easter Cold Open – SNL

OK, I’m throwing you a curveball towards the end of the list. Yes, its political because its a spoof of Donald Trump. Yes, its irreverent because it’s Saturday Night Live. If you don’t like politics or irreverence, don’t watch it… but it is hilarious, IMO!

10 .Nicole C. Mullen – My Redeemer Lives (Lyrics)

Closing out the list with one of the most inspirational Easter songs every recorded, and a personal favorite of mine.

Feel free to share these videos on social media to inspire and spark conversation with others. Or share the whole lot of them by sharing this post

Comment and Discuss…

• Which of these videos is your favorite?
• Know of any other funny or inspiring Easter videos? Post a link in a comment

Continue reading… 22 Easter Ideas for Church Outreach and How to Prep Your Website and SEO for Easter

Paul Steinbrueck

Co-founder & CEO, OurChurch.Com

Paul has been the CEO of OurChurch.Com since its founding in 1996, combining his passion for faith and technology to lead the organization.

An accomplished writer, Paul has authored over 2,000 articles on faith and technology, featured on platforms like ChurchLeaders.com, The JoyFM, and his personal blog, LiveIntentionally.org.

Beyond his professional achievements, Paul serves as an elder at Journey Community Church and is deeply engaged in his community through his involvement with the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranch and the Safety Harbor Chamber of Commerce. He is a contributing author of the book Outspoken! Conversations on Church Communication. 

steinbrueck.org

The post 10 Funny and Inspiring Easter Videos appeared first on Christian Web Trends Blog: Church Websites, Design, SEO.