The crux is role confusion combined with poor communication. It takes quite a bit more than one talented nerd to build a website. By my count, there are actually nine different skills involved in making a great church site, and over half of them predate the Internet, not to mention the Web.

For a large corporate websites, the roles and skills ideally look something like this:

While that’s not a model that will work for even a large church website, it’s important to congregations for a couple of reasons. First, it highlights the wide variety of skills involved in creating and maintaining a website. Second, it’s the model that many church website volunteers come from. For example, your church webmaster could be a database analyst for state government. While chances are she will do an excellent job of coding your site, there’s an equally good chance she won’t know the first thing about design. You could blame your unattractive site on her, but all that’s likely to do is reduce your membership. She’ll leave the church and with good cause.

Behind every second-rate church website I’ve looked into, not to mention quite a few good ones, the roles look something like this:

The web staff and the site are in a silo. It’s not an ongoing leadership priority, and expectations for the website are both fuzzy and unrealistic. In all the cases I know of, this has been completely unintentional. The root cause is that everyone, including the Web Team, is busy. Thus it’s expedient to keep doing one’s separate tasks — not taking the time, let alone building the infrastructure, to tackle your ailing website.

Another way of framing this is that it’s management, not technology, that’s the issue. Thus the remedy involves good leadership. What you need for not just a good website, but also a healthy and happy Web Team, is a model more like this:

There are still a lot of skills involved, but with shared responsibility and appropriate divisions of labor come greater appreciation and satisfaction for all involved. And inevitably this will show on the website.

So what exactly are the nine roles? Most of them are fairly traditional, but the newer, web-specific ones seem to be shrouded in mystery to many ministers and church leaders. That in itself is a cause for the gap in Diagram 2. To add to the confusion, because the Web is relatively new, the nature and definition of these roles is evolving rapidly. But church websites don’t have to be bleeding edge, so to demystify, here’s a breakdown of the roles I’ve seen needed in recent years.

Website Roles

1. Management. Church leadership, working with their current webbies, defines the scope of the website, sets policy, and recruits as needed for the Web Team.

2. Content Creators. At the heart of every good church website is its content, including photographs. If your website is going to have both an authentic voice and a steady stream of news, this will come directly from the ministers and leaders, including church staff.

3. Project Manager. This is your website work traffic cop. In my church, project management is actually done by our Communication Committee. When new initiatives or technologies are needed for the website, they are run through the committee, prioritized, assigned, and given time-tables.

4. Usability / Information Architect / Analyst. Probably the hardest role for a non-webbie to understand, this is the person who actually transforms the content into a good website. They see to the navigation, use tools like Google Analytics to see where the site needs to improve, interview a variety of people to see what works and what doesn’t, and make sure the site adapts as needed. This is the role I gravitate to in most of my Web work, though I’ve done everything else, with the exception of being a sys admin.

5. Editor. This is just what it sound like. The skills are not that different from print editing. And like their print counterparts, Web editors need good policies, crafted by some combination of the project manager and church leadership, in order to succeed.

6. Developer. Note that way down the list is the role that most non-webbies associate with the web. That’s the programmer — the person who knows how to code. For congregations, this role also usually includes database management. Ironically, while it’s the role we think of, a church can get by without having developer if your project managers can find a technology that works for the team (for example, WordPress).

7. Designer. While Web designers and graphic artists have some overlapping skills, designing for print and web are surprisingly different. It’s a rabbit hole many websites have gotten trapped in — having talented graphic artists mock up sites that can’t be coded for the Web (unless you use a questionable technology like Flash). Web designers not only have a good eye, they also understand HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Fortunately, you don’t need a designer on your church team all the time. They are most needed for redesigns and are a good match for outsourcing.

8. PR / Marketing. This is where Social Media fits in. It’s essentially tangential to the website, but usually perceived as part of it.

9. System Administrator / Site Hosting. Chances are this is outsourced, and that’s as it should be. If you’re lucky, your denomination takes care of this. Otherwise, and more likely, the Web Team chooses and works with a commercial Web host. The cost is nominal — typically $100 to $200 per year.

Putting It All Together

Once leadership is ready, getting to a healthy model of church website creation is simply a step-by-step management process. Given the different personalities and histories behind church websites, however, the specific steps will vary. In particular, care needs to be taken with people who’ve worked hard on the site in the past.

In an upcoming series of Congregational Resource Guide videocasts, Megan DeWald Kline and I will be discuss some specific situations — how various churches improved their websites and resources that can help. If you have specific questions you’d like me to address in the videocasts, please feel free to use the comments below or contact me directly. I’d love to hear from you.

“How can the web be a calling?” I asked my dear friend Daisy. It feels so utterly true to me and yet, unlike music, the web has only existed for the briefest flicker of human existence. And she said, “It’s about communicating with grace.”

And now I read the words of Parker Palmer: “Today I understand vocation … as a gift to be received. Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess…. It comes from a voice “in here calling me to be the person I was born to be.”

To treasure this year, to use my time wisely, I resolve to delve deeper into the mysteries of communication, for myself and for my faith. While the particulars of this resolution are still emerging, some of the pieces are:

• To meet regularly with my dear friend Denise, who will hold me accountable for this resolution.
• To not just read, but act based on Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey’s book Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization.
• To develop a WordPress theme to help congregations struggling with their website.
• And of course, to write for Faith and Web.

Wishing you all a very happy new year.

“The greatest problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.”
– George Bernard Shaw

Chocolate plays a pivotal role in my church’s Communication Committee, the mother of our website. In case you don’t believe me, check out the foreground of this photo of us from three years ago. The back row is my co-webmistress and me. It’s not the greatest shot of either of us, but then we’re not the front row stars of the show. Chocolate duties are even in the “Comm Comm” Chair job description.

The worst (or best, in my opinion) are our retreats. Twice a year, we gather on a Saturday morning and indulge in a chocoholic smorgasbord. Our drink-of-choice is coffee, but being good Southerners, we also feature Yoo-hoo.

The point is that once tanked up, my, how the ideas do fly. One of our most helpful and thus successful web pages (A FUUN Guide to Getting the Word Out) is a good example of the results of our idea fests.

Also, as you might expect, our committee size and number of volunteers climbs steadily. At last count, our ranks have doubled since 2005 – from six to twelve. That includes expanding the number working on the website.

To share the wealth, here’s my contribution to our most recent meeting. Enjoy.

Amazingly Easy From-Scratch Chocolate Chip Brownies

1/2 cup butter
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
2 t. vanilla
2 c. sugar
4 eggs
1 c. flour (flour is for sissies; I’ve even done it with 1/2 cup)
1 c. chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease a 9×13 pan (though they have so much butter I often wonder if this step is needed).

Melt the butter and chocolate together. Put sugar and vanilla in a mixing bowl and add the chocolate mixture. Let this mix cool a bit, and then add the eggs and flour. Mix well. Stir in chocolate chips.

Bake at 350 for about 25 minutes. Cut with a plastic knife. (Oddly enough, it’s much easier than with a regular knife.)

From my worker bee perspective, it was all a bit much. Because of this feedback I thought that’s what people really wanted. And people like me are at risk of burning out without more support – the way I saw it when I walked into the meeting.

However, as we talked I realized it was really some individuals who cared deeply about one form of communication or another. The congregation as a whole wasn’t ready to have it all. To scramble to provide all things in one sense is the easy way out – avoiding hard decisions. It’s not that the church doesn’t want all these forms of communication. It’s just that excellent communications are not a clearly defined priority.

I emerged from that meeting with my perspective turned around. Now I want to know what types of communications the church most needs. Where do the different forms fit in the overall priorities? If we need more (e.g. if we should have podcast sermons), what kind of resources will we devote to this? Will we hire more staff to help with some of these functions? Is making the church larger a goal for us? If so, do people understand the role the website can play in this? Should we increase the percentage of time staff devotes to communications? Should the Music Director oversee podcasts? Should the Youth Coordinator blog?

My hope is that our visioning process will clarify this some – give us a groundwork from which it’s easier to make these tough decisions. Once we know better who we are, presumably we’ll know better what matters most.