I believe there are three primary purposes of a church website:

1.    To help people looking for a church home.
2.    To assist people already attending the church to stay connected.
3.    To help people grow spiritually by providing additional resources that complement the services and ministries.

Frank Johnson of Strategic Digital Outreach  expressed a different point of view in his blog article called The Purpose of a Church Website.  To summarize his points:

•    There are better ways to accomplish the second and third purposes than a publicly available church website.
•    Most unbelievers don’t care about our ministries because they can’t envision a time when they would ever want to be involved in those programs.
•    With limited resources and budget, efforts to maintain a church website will naturally gravitate to those items which serve already-existing members and attendees while items which are targeted toward unbelievers (which a church website is uniquely poised to deliver) will fall by the wayside.

So what do YOU think are the primary purposes of a church website?  Can a church website be a resource to its members and still be appealing to unchurched people or will trying to serve both purposes cause it to fail in both?

I would like to hear your thoughts, feel free to respond with your input about this very important tool!

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