50 of the Best Church Website Designs
Published March 17th, 2008 in Galleries, WordPressAs far as web design is concerned, churches have come a long way in recent years. It wasn’t too many years ago that most church websites were several years behind the times. Apparently a growing number of churches today are recognizing the importance of their web presence.
This gallery isn’t only for those who design church sites; these examples are excellent sources of inspiration for any design project. Many of them involve excellent use of color, images, and graphics that draw attention right away. In addition, most church sites have a lot of content that needs to be displayed and easily navigated. The layouts and methods used here can be applied to other projects with similar requirements.
If your church is looking for an affordable and professional website, please see our information about church website design..
Here are some of my favorites. Let me know which ones you like in the comments.
(Note: their website has changed since this was originally posted.)
Missionary Baptist Church
(Note: this website is no longer active.)
(Note: this website’s design has been changed since this was originally posted.)
The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection
St. Gregory’s of Nyssa Episcopal Church
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
Trinity United Methodist Church
(Note: this website’s design has changed since this was originally posted.)
(Note: this website’s design has changed since this was originally posted.)
Island Evangelical Community Church
Lake Ridge Church
(Note: this website is no longer available.)
Calvary Bible Church of Kalamazoo
Rolling Hills Community Church
(Note: this website’s design has changed since this was originally posted.)
Fellowship of the Woodlands Church
If your church is looking for an affordable and professional website, please see our package that is available for churches.
184 Responses to “50 of the Best Church Website Designs”
Wow! Amazing what an impact the website can have on one’s impression of the church. Love the look of Watermark Community Church’s site.
Hannah,
Thanks for your comment. Yes, I think a church can really send a specific message and use a website to show visitors that maybe they don’t fall into the stereotypes that the visitor might have.
I think that’s true. That Generation Church website has been passed around so many times that I can’t help but think that web designers in the area might go check it out just to see what kind of client asks for that. LOL.
As always, a great round-up. Awesome work!
Erika
Im glad people get interested on their website!!
hay alot of these webpages look good but alot of them don’t even look like church webpages
Love the site designs. I love the fact that there is no ’stereotype’ here and it appeals.
asha its SO right!!
Exactly most of them doesn’t like church web pages.
I love the designs, they are Great!
Wow – I happen to be working with our church right now to re-design their website. Very timely, and very nice designs! Thanks!
I love those, but you missed another good one.
http://www.ligonier.org/
In Christ, Don
These are not just great church websites, but great websites, period.
WOW, what a great list… it is really amazing what kind of services they can now offer through a great design. Scott
The company I work for has done some great design as well. Check us out-www.detailscom.com. However, some of these put us to shame (due to the fact we are a bit limited being tied into a CMS that isn’t as flexible as HTML/CSS only).
I love the clean look of Bethlehem Baptist Church. Great use of typography and color to make key elements “pop”
thegeekboys,
I think that’s the point with a lot of them, and personally I like that.
Don,
That’s a nice design too, although I wouldn’t have included it on the list. It seems to be a ministry site rather than a church site, and everything else on the list is actually a church. Nice design though.
Missed Jubilee World harvest…
Problem with a lot of these church websites is that they are so busy and cluttered and appeal to the churchie instead of the person interested in visiting a church.
Years ago, church websites were too simple and rubbish but now they are way to complicated and busy.
Good list however.
All are very nice design..
These are insprational design..
Thank You..
What about
Hillsong – http://www.hillsong.com
PlanetShakers – http://www.planetshakers.com
Lakewood – http://www.lakewood.cc
Thanks for collecting it
Thanks for a very interesting choice of good designs. My concern with many of the sites is not their great design, but the fact that they will only attract the church members, or ‘already believers’ in the area looking for a new church. Sadly, many of them seem much less accessible to outsiders in the community. Yet it is possible to make a church site that is prioritized for such outsiders – one that aims to demonstrate that church is not about a building with meetings, but a bunch of people wanting others to join their family.
We’ve created a church site self-assessment tool to encourage churches to build this sort of ‘outsider usability’ into their sites, and value thoughts on improving it.
Best wishes
Tony
What I like best about this list is that they not only have appealing designs and a logical structure that avoids the typical “brochure” navs so popularized in the 90s, but most of these have a good structure to support SEO as well (not that most are taking advantage of it, but at least it’s there)
Matias,
Hillsong is nice, although I don’t like flash intros personally. The others look good too. Thanks for commenting.
Tony,
Very valid point. There are definitely two different markets that a church site targets, 1) the members/attenders, and 2) everyone else that might be a future attender. My point with the gallery was really only focusing on the design itself, but I appreciate your feedback.
My picks:
Stonebriar
The City Church
The Community Church
Generation Church
Far Hills Community Church
Westside Family Church
What I wanted to see was something that interested my eye and also gave me a peaceful feeling like, if I were looking, this might be the place for me.
Recognizing that you chose 50 very fine designs, within them some seem too hip for their own good (almost like sites for a band), some were so calm they didn’t hold my interest. The six I mentioned really worked for me. Nice to look at on Easter. Glad I waited until the weekend!
Regards,
Kelly
Check out http://www.theembasyofgod.com – just launched in March 2008
Hey Vandelay! Thanks for the post and also, thanks for the props! I’m honored that you chose the site I built as the number two best church website! Blessings from Tacoma.
Hi Josh,
No problem. Thanks for stopping by.
i had to pass this on to a colleague, who is working a churches web design! Some great design work here!
This is an amazing set of websites, I’ve been learning about web evangelism for a few months now and hold Stonebriar in my top three sadly you’ve missed another beautiful site http://www.pemburybaptistchurch.org Kent, UK and the best church site I’ve come across http://www.southsidelife.org Canada.
The amazing thing about Southsidelife is it’s excellence in evangelism/marketing, it comes top in its area for regular searches such as weather and jobs. Also its use of the most under used resource in church or secular marketing “testimonials” and it’s apologetics section.
In the real world of soul winning its not about how nice the site looks but how effective it is in getting people to attend our services or if they can’t physically get to our services then to explain the gospel and encourage their spiritual growth.
I’m actually working on my churches web site right now.
The designers of Southsidelife did an excellent web seminar at the Internet Ministry Conference last September. You can watch it online, complete with PowerPoint – it’s the third video link on this page:
http://ied.gospelcom.net/internetministryconference.php
Best wishes
Tony
To clarify the end of my last message I’m looking for a web designer to put an evangelistically focused site together for my church. Can anyone help?
I saw the video around a week ago, it gave me a greater understanding of how amazing their site really is.
I’ll be viewing the other videos as well, thanks for the link.
In His service
Ray
great site for a german church: http://www.freikirchliche.com
I designed the Hopechurch.tv site so thanks for the props…thought I would add one to the list. It’s our youth ministry’s website…Generation Church (gcmvmnt.com). Let me know what you think.
Brandon,
The site looks nice. You’re a talented designer and a pastor. Very impressive.
A good collection of best websites.
All of these websites are gorgeous. I just love the layouts of them, plus the use of color. If I were to pick a favorite, it would probably be the Westside Family Church. Lovely. (0_o)
I just checked Dr. Stroll’s website mentioned above. I love to listen to Dr. Stroll on the radio, but the website looks like a sales tool and nothing more.
I am looking for a new look, but since I have to do it myself, I need something simple.
My website is ourladyoffatima.us
It is bi-lingual, multi-cultural, and absolutely of no charge to the church. I would not mind some direction from others.
Thanks,
MAM
Hi, I saw some incoming traffic from this site so I thought I’d check it out. I’m the designer/developer of the Memorial Baptist Church website – http://www.memorialbaptistpa.org“. Nice article. I’m honored to be listed among so many great designs. Thanks Vandelay.
Nathan,
Nice work. Thanks for taking a moment to visit and comment.
wow, great designs.
Awesome list. These sites are amazing.
Non-Profit Organization for Enumclaw, Washington
The website for the First Baptist Church of Hammond is up for consideration
http://www.fbchammond.com
Crosspoint isn’t flashy, but its clean.
http://www.crosspoint.tv/
Great list!!!
Love this set! Thanks for posting…great source of inspiration…
I like revolution’s design. Some clever art with the wings and the city. We also are doing web design for churches in Africa. Check out our CMS system at http://www.scribacms.co.za
Check out this one!
http://www.ccgulfbreeze.com
These are some awesome websites. But what about baby churches? For years now my heart has been with churchplants. I have helped start 2 churches in the Boston area and baby churches just dont have the money or the talent to produce and maintain something like these. Bridge Element http://www.BridgeElement.com is a new web design company that has amazing flash websites for churches and best thing is they have a content management system that allows you to update the entire website yourself!!!
Check it out and tell me what you think
Brian,
Why do you refer to Bridge Element as they when you’re affiliated with them? It looks like spam when you’re promoting something of your own as if it’s an unsolicited testimonial.
On the subject of new churches, I agree with you that most don’t have the resources for these types of websites. Personally, I would prefer one of the church themes for WordPress over a flash-based site.
Fabulous collection of Church Designs. I really think these pseak volumes to a world influenced by visual appeal.
Good work on collecting these sites. I also enjoyed your other collections.
I think http://www.churchplantmedia.com deserve a mention when it comes to Church websites. Their designs are a nice mix of Web 2.0 & grunge designs. Just a little grunge which gives them a more rustic feel. I suggest you check them out if designing a Church website.
Conor,
Agreed, that’s an awesome design. I’ll probably do a second set of church websites eventually, so I’ll keep that one in mind.
Love the functionality of Kingsfield, but the art on the Generation church was very eyecatching to me.
Simply amazing, it really shows what time & talent can produce. I’m truly surprised these churches had the budget or time to produce these.
Great resource for church design ideas. I noticed some comment about most of them not looking like a church website? What does a church website look like?
You should take a look at generatelife.com
If I may make a suggestion: http://www.fbchammond.com. They got a new website up just a few months ago, and it is a tremendous website. Has a lot of resources, the design is very crisp, clean, and professional, and also includes a mobile website, which they just released on January 1 (m.fbchammond.com).
Please take a look at it, and see if it is worth mentioning in your next article.
Thanks for the props on Zion!
What a great list to be mentioned in.
Great designs. YOU chould also check out some more at great church sites
check out http://www.alamocity.org for a great church website
Great designs…
God Bless
Tina
This is a great list. They are colorful and still look clean. I have to agree that I have seen the Stonebriar site on like 4 other websites as well. Most of them have that grunge look which is different from the traditional church website design
Need inspiration?
ChurchDots – Church Website Design Inspiration Group
Fantastic Designs….!!!
amazing work of art!
I was really surprised for all the work
God bless all!!
please help our church with some free website building software…
God bless…we are living in a third world country and some help will do
regards
Ian
South Africa
Ian,
You could try Wordpress (http://wordpress.org). It’s free and it will help you to get a site up easily.
These are some very good looking web sites. Keep up the good work. We are all in this for the glory of God.
Although the one that I co-developed is not one of these 50, I think it is worth looking at; I am an independent web site developer. What I love about ours is all of the dynamic feeds to the home page including the Sermoncasts, upcoming events, news, image banner, etc.
Church of the River: churchoftheriver.org
hi Guys, you see this web site: http://www.admaringa.com.br
Amazing list of sites here. Great designs. Keep up the great work. Do you do Indian Temple designs as well ?
Ramit,
I didn’t design these websites, it’s just a collection of great church sites from various designers.
Hi there.
First off, great collection of sites.
What i was wondering was, when you were looking for these sites, what was your criteria, or were you generally looking for nice sites?
When you look at a church website, what do you like to see or think captures people to look further?
Hi Nathan,
The list was based strictly on design and aesthetics. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. There’s nothing in particular that I like to see, but various churches have completely different groups that they target or that tend to be a part of the church, so it’s important for a church website to connect with those people.
Thanks for the reply, i agree with that by looking at the sites. Each church does target a different range or people or a certain target market.
It is interesting to see what churches are doing and how they promote what they are doing.
No Mars Hill Seattle?
While these sites look good and feel trendy, many of them are hard to navigate because of the clutter, lack of good hierarchy, and over-information presented on the main page.
A few good one’s I thought were appealing to navigate while I scanned the list were Calvary Church, and City of Grace (a lot of info, but well designed.)
Thanks for this list!
Thanks for this post on church website design.
I use it frequently as a reference for ideas.
Awesome websites!
Check out our church website at:
http://www.victory.net.nz
i could never in good conscience help to promote a church. they are probably the only kind of business i would turn down without consideration.
still, in terms of design, some of those websites look great.
very nice works, looks good…
Although there are some terrific ‘looking’ sites listed here – and without going ‘off-topic’ for too long – I’d like to offer a point: you can have a site with maximum eye-candy levels, but if it’s not easy to navigate and doesn’t have the right information, the hefty design bill will have been paid in vain. (Having looked at the Vandelaydesign portfolio of church sites I would say overall that they would be more effective than the top 50 list.) Design is nice and content may even be King, but without a clear navigation you’re just going to end up on a walk withut arriving at a desired destination. But back to topic, if we can have great design incorporating great content and great navigation, then fantastic!
Superb sites, they look really good. Any sign of a new dated version? I recently launched my new church website, its not in the same league as these but i’m planning on building to it over time. have a look at http://www.elimcc.com
Trinity Fellowship Church just got a new redesign http://www.yourtrinity.org
I just want to know where is the Mars Hill Church website on this list?
Jeff,
Mars Hill is included in the follow up to this post. I don’t know when it was designed, but this post is pretty old.
All of these sites are awesome, this is a good list.
I have to say a lot of these designs are fabulous. You have everything from ultra sleek and clean to the grunge/artsy layouts. One site that we designed that I think would go well on your list is Fellowship Church in OKC – http://www.fellowshipchurchok.com. We designed it with a younger demographic in mind and since they are meeting in the Warren Theater then we had to incorporate that element as well. The navigation was kept minimal so as not to cause confusion like many of the sites above with all of the clutter. It was put in our cms(http://www.multiplicms.com) so they have complete control over all of the content which of course saves them time and money on updates. I think the final website is pretty darn good if I say so myself.
great designs !!!!!!!!!!!!!
These websites are great! Awesome inspiration here. I love how churches have begun to join the design revolution over the past few years. It’s no longer acceptable to have a mediocre website that represent the Kingdom. Great work everyone!
Couple of weeks ago, we just launched new Leeds Universities Catholic Chaplaincy website – please have a look here: http://www.uilcc.org
Thank you for posting these church website designs. They are really inspiring to us. You rock. However, 2008 is kind of outdated, maybe add some new ones?
What about this norwegian church-site. http://www.nettkirken.no
Just launched our brand new site: http://www.discoverychurch.com and interested on getting feedback! Love your blog.. keep it up!
lakemount as changed
CodeDude,
It’s been about a year and a half since the post was published.
Wow, great inspirational church website. We are planning to re-design our church website. These sites will give us some ideas. Great work. God Bless.
Hi All,
Church websites listed in this blog are awesome.
Just we launched our Indian Multi-lingual Church website (in Chennai) : http://www.agannanagar.org/
Cheers
Hey,
I just want to thank you for providing the inspiration of these other church web sites. I was here 5 months ago seeking some direction. I’m happy to report we finally launched out site today:
http://www.metrobrook.org
Kind Regards from Milwaukee, WI
Devon Smullen
Thank you for the list of beautiful church websites!
Loving these sites..
Many church sites are generic and boring! Its so great to see some interesting and well designed ones!
Thanks for these
Cdoney77
Great inspiration. Can we add this recent design to the list? http://www.haltonbaptists.org.uk/
I am designing a church website right now, thanks for tha inspiration!
We recently designed an identity and website for The Church of the Crucifixion in Philadelphia: http://www.crucifixionphiladelphia.org
awesome collection . Thank you so much.
Such an inspiring collection!
Let us present you our latest church site: http://www.cccaleb.com
The desins are really amazing.
These are great looking church websites. Check out the ones we’ve done at http://www.camnio.com/portfolio.html
It’s always great to help our churches get the gospel message out with great web designs.
Great insperation for these website design. Thanks!
This is an amazing list of sites!! I know it was compiled a year ago, but I wanted to throw another church site your way in case you decide to do this again. Check out http://www.peculiarplace.tv. I’m the pastor of the church and the designer of the site.
Hi Folks
i would like to create a church website , the site should be
1.flashy
2.dynamic (ability to allow webstore)
what is the best tools to do this?
The StoneBriar design is actually quite strong, and has stood up well since this post was published. We are about to embark on a design for a church, so this resource should prove useful!
I’m really very useful to follow a long-time see this as a blog here Thank you for your valuable information.
I like the variety, but am always bothered by the number of typos, overall misspellings and punctuation problems…I know, it is probably just me. But when I see Men’s, Women’s, Children’s etc. without the apostrophe, it REALLY drives me crazy. And when I see simple things like apostrophes when the word is simply plural or them not being there when they need to be…crazymakers! Simple things like aisle instead of isle…
Thanks for listing nice sites..
Hi,
Thanks for the website listing. I have also done a site, but curious how you feel about the design, its a budget based website development. Please feel free to send your comments in my website.
http://www.forefrontchurch.org.uk/
Sathish Sampath
I just wanted to mention and give commendation to drupal and building Church Websites with Drupal
It is really amazing what kind of services they can now offer through a great design.
thank very much.
Thank You for sharing this wonderful page.
What about abundantlifejackson.com/new
That should deffinatley be on there.
great themes, actually It comes to my mind to upload a WP theme to my website. I’m so sick with my static website.
i consistently send people to this one http://www.yourchurch.com/ as a good example of great information beautifully and easily laid out for churched and non-churched alike to access.
Will check out some of the others more closely, they look great! Thanks!
Hi there… I like all your sites and comments and stuff. I was doing a search for “great churches” and google type ahead gave me “great church websites”… as an outsider who was looking, seeking, wanting…. I will tell you this… all that is great stuff- designs, colors, all that- great stuff. I guess the real reason that I did my search was to find great content… I have heard that content is king… simple sites with focus on content will do ultimately much better over time in reference to actual site readers… what would you rather have- “I love your site” or “I loved hearing your message.. glad I visited”?
My three cents
Scotty
Scottyr,
I completely agree with you that content is ultimately more important to a website’s success and usefulness than looking pretty. But a lot of times that is used as an excuse and a reason not to attempt better design. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
These are good web sites. The structure looks similar. Were they constructed using Wordpress or some other content management system?
http://corecommunity.org/
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