I sometimes wonder if pastor search committees who are searching for their church’s next pastor realize that the first place a candidate who knows the church has received his or her resume heads is to that church’s website. For pastoral candidates, it is an easy, accessible and private place to ferret out information about the kind of congregation that particular church is.

 The reason I wonder if search committees realize that is that when I check out the various websites, I am stunned to see outdated information. The site may even list the name of the former pastor as still being on staff at the church! Or, it may have a “last updated” counter that indicates that the website has not been updated in several weeks. It’s as though nobody is paying attention to this public “face” of the church.

 Perhaps even more importantly, the information contained in the church’s website can be an indication of what is important to the church at that particular time.  For example, I talked with one pastoral candidate who commented on the fact that one church’s website indicated that the most important thing at the church was the fact that they had newly-renovated facilities. This seemed to take precedence over everything else at that church – including the mission and ministries of the church. It was as though they were saying, “We have this grand new facility. Now all we need is a senior pastor to come and fill it up!”

 Many websites also have a portion of their sites devoted to the pastor search. It might list a position description and is also a good way of keeping church members updated on the progress of the search.

 And, of course, a good website is important in that it also can attract visitors to your church.

 Here is what Mike Adkins, interdenominational minister, says about the characteristics of an effective church website: http://www.mikeadkins.com/article/characteristics-of-a-good-church-website-design/

 1. Less is more. Get rid of the clutter factor.

Contrary to what we think that the more information you put on the homepage the better, it is actually more friendly to your church website visitor if you put lesser information on the homepage – allowing them and encouraging them to easily navigate through the areas that they need or want information on.

They key is to discover the areas in your church or information that you want the visitors to quickly find such as upcoming events, getting involved in a ministry and sermons or what to expect when they attend as a first-time visitor.

2. No flash intro please.

Other than flash intro is not only user-friendly and search engine friendly, it is a thing of the past. A lot of website users nowadays just skip through flash intros to get right in to the page where they need information on.

You have to keep in mind that your visitors are “time-poor” so having a flash intro that doesn’t give significant information about your church should not be an option.

3. Intuitive Navigation.

A good church website has easy to find information. In order to achieve this, an intuitive navigation must be in place. What does intuitive mean? It simply means that your church website menu would be available in one central location and is visible on all the pages of your church website (usually on a bar at the top below the header or wherever the designer decides to place the navigation but would be available on every page).

4. No neon colors and glittery effects.

Let’s leave them to MySpace layouts for teenagers. Like we said earlier, web users are now more educated and more intelligent and know a good website when they see one.

5. Easy way to contact you.

Is there a way for site visitors to contact you by email? You might think that email may be impersonal. But according to some studies, there are web users that are actually classified as “introverts” and they prefer to use emails over phone calls. So provide both ways to contact you.

And my own personal pet peeve about church websites: those sites that do not have the church’s physical address and phone number on its home page! Please don’t make me look for it!