What a church website actually needs on the home page (and the four things it doesn't).

Let all things be done decently and in order.1 Corinthians 14:40, KJV

Every church website I'm handed starts the same way: somebody at the church asks what it should have on it, and somebody else answers with a list of everything. A welcome video. A statement of faith. Ministries, staff, history, a photo gallery, the bulletin, the calendar, a blog nobody will keep up, a giving button, a slideshow of five things at once. It all goes on the home page because the home page is the page people see. And then a stranger opens it on her phone in a parking lot on Saturday night, and she can't find what time church starts.

This entry is the short answer to "what does the home page need?" It's a list of twelve things — most of them small — and four things I take off nearly every church site I touch. Print the checklist at the bottom, open your own home page next to it, and go down the list. It takes fifteen minutes and most churches find three or four things to fix.

The home page is for the person who isn't a member yet.

Members don't use the home page. They know when church is; they have the pastor's number; they get the bulletin on Sunday. When they do go to the site, they're headed for one specific thing — the calendar, a sermon they missed, the giving page — and they'll use the menu to get there. The home page, the one everyone argues about, is almost entirely read by people who have never been inside the building: a family that just moved to town, a man whose coworker invited him, a widow looking for a church that still sings the hymns she grew up on, someone driving past who saw the sign.

So the test for every single thing on the page is not "is this important to us?" It's "does this help a stranger decide to come, and get here?" Most of what's important to the church belongs on the site. Very little of it belongs on the home page.

The three questions she's actually asking.

Strip it down and a visitor has exactly three questions, in this order:

If the first screen answers those three, the page is doing its job. Everything else on the page is either supporting those answers or getting in their way.

What the first screen should hold.

"Above the fold" is a newspaper phrase that survived into the web: it means whatever is visible before anyone scrolls. On a phone that's a small space — the church name, one image, and a few lines. Here is the whole of what belongs there.

Notice what the button says. Not "Learn more," not "Get connected," not "I'm new" — "Plan a visit." It names the thing she's doing. That page, one click deep, is where the kids' program, the parking, what to wear, and the pastor's face all live. The home page's job is to get her to click it.

The twelve things the home page needs.

The first five are the first screen. The rest are a scroll down. Together they're the entire home page — if you have all twelve and nothing else, you have a better church website than most.

1. The church's name and where it is, in the first line first screen"Grace Baptist Church · Greer, South Carolina." The town matters: a stranger's first question is often "is this the one near me?" and a search engine's first question is the same.
2. Service times, as plain text first screenDays and times, every regular service, no graphic, no "click for schedule." If they change seasonally, say so right there. This is the single most-looked-for thing on any church site and the most often buried.
3. A tappable street address first screenA real address that opens the visitor's own map app when tapped — a plain link does this; you don't need an embedded map. Add one sentence of landmark: "the white building across from the fire station."
4. One button: "Plan a visit" first screenOne button, not four. It goes to a page that answers everything a nervous first-timer wonders — where to park, what to expect, what to wear, what's there for children, how long it runs.
5. One true photograph first screenThe congregation, the building, the pastor greeting people at the door. Taken by someone at the church, on a Sunday, recently. Not a slideshow; one picture, chosen with care.
6. A one-paragraph "who we are"Three to five sentences, written by the pastor, in his own voice. What kind of church this is, what it believes in a sentence, what a Sunday feels like. This is the "what will it be like?" answer, and it's where a visitor decides.
7. This week's sermon, playable on the pageThe most recent message, audio or video, with the title and text. A stranger who can hear ten minutes of the preaching has had a visit already. (If you keep a running station of past sermons, this is where it lives.)
8. The pastor's name, face, and a way to reach himA photo, his name, and a phone number or email that a real person answers. Churches hide this more than you'd think. Strangers want to know who's in the pulpit before they sit under it.
9. A phone number that rings somewhereIn the footer at least, on every page. If nobody can answer during the week, say when someone can, or route it to a deacon's cell. An unanswered church number is worse than none.
10. What's happening this month — the next two or three thingsNot the whole calendar. The revival, the homecoming, the Wednesday study starting a new book. Two or three upcoming things with dates, and a link to the full calendar for members.
11. Statement of faith — one line and a linkA single sentence on the home page ("We preach from the King James Bible; here is what we believe") and a link to the full statement. Visitors who care about this care a great deal; give them the door, not the whole document.
12. A footer that repeats the essentialsName, address, times, phone, email, and the links to Plan a Visit, Sermons, Give, and Contact. The bottom of the page is where people land when they've scrolled looking for something and haven't found it.

That's the page. Twelve things, five of them on the first screen, none of them a video that autoplays.

The four things to take off.

Each of these shows up on most church home pages I'm handed, and each one makes the page worse. None of them is a moral failing — they're just the default settings of website builders and the accumulated good intentions of committees. Here's what each one costs and what to do instead.

Two more that didn't make the four but are close: the counter of how many people have visited the site, and the "latest from our blog" block on a blog that was last updated in 2022. Both quietly tell a stranger the site isn't looked after. Remove or update; never leave.

On a phone, in a parking lot, on a Saturday night.

That's where and when most first visits to a church home page happen, and it changes three things. The page has to load fast on a weak signal, which is the real cost of the slideshow and the autoplaying video. The service times and address have to be readable without pinching — text, not an image of text. And the phone number, the address, and the "Plan a visit" button have to be tappable with a thumb: a phone number written as a link dials; an address written as a link opens the map; a button that's a real button, not a small word inside a paragraph, gets pressed.

The easy test: open your own home page on your own phone, outdoors, and try to find the Sunday time, get directions, and call the church, without zooming. Time it. If any of the three takes more than ten seconds, that's the thing to fix first.

Walk your own page against the list.

Print this page (the print version keeps the checklist and drops the rest). Open your home page beside it — on a phone, then on a computer — and mark each item. Take the marked-up page to whoever keeps the site. It's a short list of small jobs; most of them are moving something that already exists rather than making something new.

Keeping it true.

The last thing, and the one that separates a good church site from a good church site three years later: everything on the home page has to be true this week. The service time. The pastor's name. The photograph, if the congregation has changed. The "this month" section, which is the first thing to go stale and the first thing a visitor notices. Put it in the church's file, next to the domain map from No. 01 and the one-paragraph policy from No. 02: "The first Monday of each month, someone opens the home page on a phone and checks that every fact on it is still true." Ten minutes, twelve times a year. A home page that's simple enough to check in ten minutes is a home page that will still be right when the next volunteer inherits it.