New Website for Berea Christian Fellowship
They wanted a central hub for public sermons and private church resources.
Since many church members are elderly and not tech-savvy, it was important that the website be easy for anyone to use regardless of how familiar they are with technology.
Here's what changed:
- Instead of emailing a resource, every church member can log in with their account and get the most up-to-date resource.
- Before it wasn’t possible to find sermons but now they can filter by speaker, series, or date.
Goals
Here's what Berea Christian Fellowship wanted or expected but wasn't getting.
- Ability to share confidential resources privately to church members with an online members-only portal.
- It was key that it’s easy for the elderly, to sign up, login, and use.
- Sermons auto distributed as podcast episodes on Apple, Spotify, and other podcast platforms.
- Sermons should be easy to find with search and filter.
- Update the website with a more modern look so that those considering visiting will feel more invited.
Problems
Here's what was keeping them from reaching their goals.
Their old website was confusing and didn’t have a member portal where confidential resources could be shared with church members.
It was designed on an outdated platform that was no longer supported.
Outcome
Here's what we did!
We designed a new website that they could manage internally. They could add new private resources, sermons, and grant access to church members.
An easy way to find and listen to sermons was a big discussion for BCF. They wanted them to be easy to find in multiple ways. We ended up creating filters for the speaker, topic series, and date.
For sermons that are part of a series, there’s special URL that can be clicked showing all the sermons in that series.
Another important factor was making it easy for church members to access private, member-only resources.
Resources like the cleaning schedule, directory, account balances, member meeting minutes, etc.
One of the big concerns was that it had to be easy to use and manage. Easy for non-techy church members to get access and also easy for the BCF tech team to manage access.
Instead of sharing a single login for all the church members, we decided requiring members to register their own account was the best choice.
The ability to register an account, reset the password if it’s lost, and login is core to WordPress and is as easy as any online account. It’s easier than Amazon without question.
On the private members page, if you don’t have a login, there’s a link to a form where you can register for access. This makes it simple and easy for the church member trying to get access and also the tech team to grant or deny access.
When someone requests access to the private member resources, an email goes to the tech team with instructions on how to grant access. Once access is granted another email is automatically sent to the member who requested access letting them know, they have been approved for access.
We used the SureMembers plugin to handle this membership access. It’s worked great!
Another important factor is that the contact form has been a great way for people outside of the church to reach out and inquire about visiting. This lowers the barrier of intimidation and is a way for the church to be more inviting.
Leighton, a pastor at BCF said, The congregation at BCF believes that the new website designed by Touchdown Technologies was worth every penny.