The reasons to have a church website are probably as varied and numerous as the churches out there planning to do such. Maybe you're simply wanting a place to communicate with your members of the current happenings of the church. Possibly you're hoping to attract new visitors by letting them familiarize themselves with you before actually stepping foot in the door. Or perhaps you see the internet as the immense, mostly Godless, mission field that it is and hope to create a site to extend the reach of your church from one city to the world as a whole.

Now those are all good, solid reasons for creating your site, but I'd like to throw in one more...this technological generation is expecting it.

From pricing cars to booking vacations, more and more people are doing more and more things online. This carries directly over to finding a new church. You're well designed website says to the discriminating viewer that you have an active, growing church in touch with the current times. And for the non-Christian who just stumbles upon your site, you meet the needed goal of keeping their attention long enough for them to perhaps peak their interest enough to come back and learn more.

So, why do you need a content management system? Well I guess technically you don't, but I think I can give a few compelling reasons for using one. First of all it allows for consistent page design and layout, these provides a more professional look for you site. Secondly it gives you the ability to add and edit you own content. You don't have to pay a developer each time you would like to add something to your site, plus you can set you own timeframe for updates. Lastly by definition, it will help you to better manage your content. And once you get your news, articles, sermons, meeting times in place, you're likely to find you have quite a bit of content.