Church websites tend to do one thing very well – they target their marketing audience beautifully with their website designs. They know that for youth group websites, the kids tend to flock to something that is semi-grungy more than something with a bunch of middle age photos tossed around on it. They hit the nail on the head with their website designs (for the most part).
My goal in this article is to showcase 35 of the most amazing church website designs.
Love them, hate them – let us know in the comments :)
Calvary Christian Center ↓
Canyon Creek Church ↓
Christian Tabernacle ↓
Church of the Open Door ↓
Church on the Rock ↓
City of Grace ↓
College Park Church ↓
Collide Magazine ↓
CSB ministries ↓
Dolpheide Ministries ↓
Eastpoint ↓
Edgepoint Church ↓
First Baptist Broken Arrow ↓
First Baptist New Orleans ↓
Four Corners ↓
Gateway Church ↓
Generation Church ↓
Genesis Church ↓
Grace Community Church ↓
Highpoint Church ↓
Kingsfield Church ↓
Long Hollow ↓
Mars Hill Church ↓
Murphy Road Baptist Church ↓
Open Doors Student Ministries ↓
Peace Community Church ↓
Redeemer Covenant ↓
Revolution Church ↓
River City Church ↓
Rolling Hills ↓
Sevier Heights ↓
Status ↓
Stonebriar Community Church ↓
Valley Creek Church ↓
Watermark Community Church ↓
Your Turn To Talk
I hope you enjoyed this post and it got your creative juices flowing! Please let us know which ones are your favorites in the comment section!
Author: Mike Smith
Mike Smith writes a freelance blog on a regular basis and is also a blog designer at Guerrilla.
Nice list, there are some beautiful sites here. My favorite church site is http://www.hillsong.com. I’m a sucker for sites like that though.
Some of those are so flashy they MUST be blasphemous!
How awesome that something like this got on Digg!
I agree about how some of the web sites were very flashy. I’m not sure if I like that so much for a church site… it just seems like off but they are well designed. Just surprising for a church.
Very inspiring! I’m happy we’re getting away from animated gif’s of spinning crosses tiled as the background! Awesome collection.
Very inspirational list. Now, if we could just convince the 98% of churches whose sites are ancient, don’t exist or are shoe-horned into some template that doesn’t work for them, to move in this direction.
How about the other Mars Hill, in Mighigan?
http://marshill.org/
Wow! These are top quality sites.
If anybody from any church is looking at this list and thinking, ‘I’d like my church to have a website like this’; then realise that these sites are top dollar sites
@Dan Walker: Unfortunately, I suspect the vast majority of that 98% are operating without the budget and/or the expertise to do any better. And at least a few of them were persuaded to invest in those ill-fitting templates by consultants who assured them that “this is how all the cutting-edge” churches are doing their websites nowadays.
Until congregations accept the fact that websites like these will cost more than $500 and will require someone other than the part-time youth minister to maintain them, the situation isn’t likely to improve.
Nevertheless, I am surprised at those who are surprised that some churches are using the web so artfully and effectively. As we’ve always maintained, while the Message never changes, the medium has and (hopefully) always will to meet people where they are.
I’m very disappointed to see that only 2 of these designs have a CROSS in the homepage. Any church site should have a symbol of catholic/christian cross in the homepage. Design is great for many of the sites on this list but that’s my opinion here.
Glad you guys all liked them. It was fun rounding these all up.
Holly designs!
Clicked on this link from a twitter post to get some inspiration. Didn’t expect to see a site I did! Thanks!
Another of my favorites that isn’t up here: http://www.thecity.org
Great stuff.. my friends over at http://harborchurch.us have done an amazing job as well..
I also find it…”odd” that these churches’ sites are so flashy. They seem to be very trendy and “commercial”, as if they’re putting more focus on getting people to be like, ‘wow, flashy,oohh awww’. possibly to get them to join to increase the money coming into their church? Maybe that’s too harsh, as I’m sure they do plenty of good things for their community and the needy..Just not understanding why a church would need to such a site like these.
You’re not going to see most churches using their funds to pay for some flashy website, when their money can be going towards so many more important areas, like helping the community, the poor, needy, homeless, the sick, etc. etc. I’d much rather see a church hand $500 to a family in need then to dish it out for some eye candy website.
The websites themselves are well designed, albeit very trendy. I just feel these churches have their priorities confused.
These are cool sites.
I was surprised that Willow Creek wasn’t on the list: http://willowcreek.org/home1.aspx
Still, neat to see such a list compiled!
Hey, I’m a Christian :) They are really great sites.
Very cool list of great designs :o) Love to see churches getting in tune with design trends :o)
Wow… Thank you for including us in this list; what an honor. (I’m on staff at Long Hollow and built the site featured above.)
In response to a few of the comments above about churches having nice sites, I can tell you from first-hand experience that developing and maintaining a quality site is one of the best things a church can do for it’s communication strategy. The web is by far the cheapest communications vehicle to maintain (outside of the initial development costs), and if you can train your members to look to the web first for the latest information, it can be the most effective tool at your disposal.
In addition, it’s a wonderful way to interact with your community and to reach those who wouldn’t normally attend a service. Hundreds of people watch and listen to our messages online every week, view and submit prayer requests through our site and interact with us online in ways they would never do in person. The web can be a safe place for people to learn more about our Savior and check out church for the first time.
Taking advantage of all that the web has to offer drastically frees up financial resources to do more ministry instead of costly print campaigns, mailers, etc. And since your audience is better informed and consistently engaged, you’re able to encourage your members to do more every day.
Thanks again for the mention!
great list! Thanks for taking the time to put this together. Love seeing quality church design.
Hmmm, too much grunge and dirt. I guess it is a stereotype of the “edge” and the “extreme”, so is a natural way of churches trying to dis-convince people that they are boring (which, of course, they aren’t). But stereotype is just that – a cliche, and it would be nice to see the designers move away from it.
We’ve seen grunge in youth church invitations in the 90’s, and we are seeing it now in the websites. Done for teenagers? Yes. Yet would be good to have them look like they weren’t done _by_ teenagers.
Thanks for putting this together, Mike, it is very interesting food for thought. I wouldn’t use these for inspiration, though, more as something to try to differ from.
I have to chuckle a bit when I read comments about the church websites being too trendy. It’s almost as if the argument is to make the church website look old and outdated so it doesn’t look like the world, because the world’s websites are trendy and flashy.
Maybe I’m misinterpreting the comments, but thanks for this list of nice websites. I think God’s people should strive to do the best they can with the resources they are given. Regardless of the budget, every church that wants to connect with its community should have a great looking website because, like it or not, a church’s website is a reflection of the church and it’s often the only glimpse of the church that a prospective visitor will get.
http://www.adabible.org/ is another nice one
you should do a list of the top non-profit web sites and include:
http://www.worldvision.org, which recently went web 2.0
http://www.kiva.org
http://www.invisiblechildren.com/theMovement/
Seems like “contemporary” (not so much “trendy”) is what these sites have in common. They are all promising unexpected church experiences to young people. If a church, however, IS traditional and formal… wouldn’t good design communicate that accurately as well? Here’s one that does a pretty good job, http://www.gracestlukes.org , but I haven’t seen many.
My new favorite is http://www.accesslakeland.com
Great list!
Really nice sites. Made me think about my own which is not so good…
http://www.newcovenantbible.org is another nice church / ministry site.
Awesome websites! Glad to see churches are staying up-to-date in the design world!
I hear http://www.redeemer.net recently updated their website.
I may be biased but CrossPoint did a nice redesign. http://www.crosspt.org
I like most of these designs, and Calvary and StoneBriar do a great job with actually being designed for visitors which is our 2nd commandment… :)
http://churchbuzz.org/10Commandments
You’ll notice design is #6 on my list… :)
Patrick Steil
http://ChurchBuzz.org
We see a lot of small churches looking at larger churches and making decisions about what must be modern design based on those larger sites, like Mars Hill. It’s certainly evolving, especially since this article was written. However, there does remain a big market for conservative design too, which doesn’t have to mean 1998 conservative.
Good designs here. These days, there’s still a large market for conservative design too.