Great article.  There’s definitely a lot of truth to what you’ve said.  There are exceptions, but more often than not, churches get what they pay for.

Mike and Tim:

I’m curious to know if you quote your standard rates (or discounted rates) to churches and ministries (the one exception I have made in the past is for missionaries whose vision I believe in - I have a few projects right now that fit into that model).

I generally charge churches and ministries, but at a discounted rate. Even at the discounted rate, I can often “hear” a person’s jaw dropping on the other end of the phone or via email when I quote a discounted rate.

What occurs to me at the moment is that I probably don’t do this part well enough:

“and told them why it was a great value”

Anyway, it’s a great article and I love the comments so far as well.

I agree.

I’ve had a couple of instances where the ‘great cloud of witnessless’ that is the Body online has opted to re-spin style instead of sustaining long streams of substance.

BTW, you’ve been blogged:  (http://tinyurl.com/at9kw)

> If I charge a church thousands of dollars then I feel a bit guilty knowing what actually work went into some sites.

I don’t speak for Mike, but I think he’ll concur that one of his points was for those of us who are design pros to stop feeling guilty.

Instead, send a bill - even if its stamped “paid in full” - so they understand what it is they have received.

Moreover, I suggest going one step further and try to make said parties aware of some other intangibles. For example, if the church website has a great google ranking, then inform them what the cost would be to ‘recapture’ that presence if lost due to a redesign.

Have them understand the ‘dirty little secret of frontpage’ ... that is you wind up becoming an HTML expert anyway.

But again, MB hits the nail on the proverbial head when he accuses the Church of being more into Flash than compelling content.

Thanks Dean, I had not thought about the paid in full idea.  That is great!

And I agree that flash above content has been for to long the norm.  I hesetaded putting our church site because I am guilty.  I just ripped out the old site which I had running on PHPNuke.  The new site is minimal and hopefully to the point once my people are in place.  LOL I havnt even changed from the default Drupal template, and may not.  http://fblo.org is the site and its poorly underdone.  For me its like the old story of the the mechanic.  He ussualy has the worst running car in town because hes working on everyone elses.

Not a pitch, but if you want to see the other net ministries we are into look at http://gamingministries.com and http://gmpodcasting.net

Thanks again for that tip Dean.

Mike,

great article and I haven’t even read all of it yet. I’ve been there and done that with the “help the church for free” bit and the results, most of the time, ain’t pretty.

If there is no investment, there is no value for the receiver. My spiritual approach is that if God is with this church project, then he will provide the money to pay for it too. And its beautiful, because he does.

I totally agree.  Great post.  I’m tired of seeing bad Christian websites becuase it’s done for free.  I think it’s great to offer free service, but we Christians need to realize not everything is or can be received for free.  We have to count the cost in everything.

Great post!

Sometimes what helps churches understand the need the most is a failure. I quoted a price of a few thousand dollars to a church once, and watched their eyes glaze over in disbelief. They decided to give their site to a volunteer at their church.

A few months later, they contacted me again, and this time they understood why I quoted the price I had earlier. Their volunteer attempt had failed, and they were ready to invest some time and money in their site.

Sometimes failed attempts are the best teacher that web sites cannot (or at least SHOULD NOT) be thrown together!

I just want to thank you all for commenting and discussing this issue so thoroughly!  A timely post! You’re many opinions are truly treasured!

I have been the webmaster for our church’s website, http://coaldalembchurch.com, since January (it was Javascript focused, and based on FrontPage before).  Once I complete the youth’s interactive sub-domain section, I need to send them the bill (time, domain registration, hosting $$$).  I like the concept of “paid in full”, yet I have struggle with giving away the SEOs, outside link updates, and directory submissions I worked so hard to obtain.

I went into this task ‘telling them I knew what I was doing’ and sharing with them I didn’t want any ‘tweaking suggestions’ or ‘slight changes’ until the design was done.  Their only task was to create intriguing and compelling CONTENT!  We’ll see if they keep this up!

My process with the church went as follows: (1) They stated the purpose, goals, and top 3 objectives, (2) We sat down together and they told me what the previous site lacked, and what 3 aspects they ‘needed’ in the new site, and (3) Finally, they could only comment and make suggestions after the site was “live” and up to date.

I in turn promised to (1) make it clean, stable, simple, and accessible, (2) make it easily up-datable by the staff, and (3) during the process, I would not be ‘immediately available’ for each question, as their site was not my full time job.

Could you all comment more on how I, the webmaster, could protect myself more from future suggestions of “site redesigns”, “moving to a flash design”, or erroneous other suggestions from the church board / staff?  Their original site wasn’t updated in 4 years, it’s links unusable, and it was horrendous advertising for the church ~~ I have helped them move beyond all that ... and I want this to continue to be a positive experience.

I swear, next time I’m lugging out my IEEE manual from grad school and lay on them some righteous templates from my 1016 and 830 documents - adding an estimated price to each requirement specification detailed, documented, coded, tested and signed-off.

Dean, sorry you thought I was saying opposite to what the article stated.  I admit it did split some. 

Mike is absolutely correct.  The church MUST take a closer look at why they have a web site.  Far to many put up sites in the beginning simply because some other church that they wanted to mimic did.  And as Mike’s last sentence points out, I also do not think that the church takes it seriously.

This is precisely where we have two very clear issues. 

The first being the desire of creative/performance minded people wanting something cool and jazzy.  They move to every new fad out there causing the page to change in appearance regularly.  All the while its content remains lacking and unchanged. 

How many church web sites have we all visited that are slick looking but have an events calendar that is over 6 months old?

The second is that some of the best content providers sometimes are not able to produce this type of look, but have far better reach by the stories that they tell.  I have to admit that in the last year I have had to come to this realization myself.  I have always wanted a flashy site with great graphics.  But with the explosion of blogging where people can write and in mass, such as this site and comments, we see that simple templates do the trick just fine if not better than flashy sites.

From a personal point I am great at design and lacking in content.  I am working on that by forcing myself to write more.  It was a chore at first but is becoming a joy.  I have also got my wife going on it. 

So I agree completely.

Where I split the topic and wish there was another article on the subject is the bringing together of these two areas without taking advantage of the church. 

Yes, we need to pay for services. However the fact is theire are and will always be, very small churches that need assistance to get off the ground that can not and will not afford these prices.  So it is that fine line, and very delicate line that is so hard to define.

My prayer and convection is to help equip other believers with these tools and options.  Let’s face it, most of us here are geeks.  The major church attender and staff person is not. We need to find a way to bring this information to them.

I hope this makes sense.  I am truly enjoying the fellowship and subject very much.

Hi there. Interesting discussion.

I do quite like the idea of sending an invoice to the church saying ‘paid in full’.

Just out of interest, would you advise the person running the kids group, mowing the churchyard, arranging the flowers or changing the lightbulbs to do the same? If not what makes us web designers ‘special’?

Does the ‘do not let your right hand know what your left hand is doing’ principle have any influence? Actually, having seen some of the websites I’ve designed it evidently does.

What a fanciful notion…that charging for web development will inspire the church in question to respect the work more.

As someone who actually does web development professionally, I can say from vast and intimate personal experience that paying clients by and large don’t respect their web sites either. At least half of my fees are, to my mind, compensation for coping with exactly this sort of attitude.

The difference between churches and businesses is not so much that businesses pay and churches don’t, but that when businesses abuse their sites and thereby push people away, it’s merely a bad decision, whereas when churches do so, it’s a violation of a holy mission.

Excellent post and comments everyone.  We’ll definitely send some surfers your way from IndyChristian.com.  [hat-tip, Orangejack]

I just want to add one thought… ie, a new theme some of us are now promoting…

“It’s not about a church web-SITE.  It’s about a church web-STRATEGY.”

Just like the Church is not defined by the building, likewise the Church is a composite of its membership.  So develop a web strategy to proliferate the message of the church/Church pervasively throughout your whole community of members and their sites. 

Did I say ‘bloggers’?

Encourage your individual members to start a free site and reciprocally-link with the church site(s) and other member-sites.

Perhaps also AGGREGATE your members’ RSS feeds at the church site.

And for heaven’s sake… produce a church RSS feed so local Christian portals (not to mention local journalists) can help you.

How does this all impact the issue at hand?  Integrate the church’s site so tightly among the Church (not to mention, the Community), that if the new staff/volunteer webmaster changes anything for the worse, he/she will be excommunicated.  **smile**

[You could read the entire article at LovingChange.com]

Great article, Mike! When I started my agency last year, my pastor came to me and asked if they could be one of my first clients - paying clients! (I had done a free website about 7 years ago that obviously sucked by now.)

So I did it. But at about a third of the normal cost. But because there was cost involved, the pastor AND subsequently the staff were motivated to do a good job. That involved me doing some education with them on marketing and standards.

All in all a good process.

Mike

good thoughts and comments. I also want to add in this.

Having a prayer team devoted specifically to the development of a church’s website (strategy) is immensely helpful. And its often overlooked, especially by us professionals.

Part of the reason that church websites appear to be more difficult than other projects is because there is spiritual value to a well-done church site. And because of that, the Enemy really does work against well-done church websites.

I think that as people who offer professional services we should be aware of this critical factor.

Even if the church pays us what we’re worth, takes the website seriously, produces amazing content, has a comprehensive strategy, and figured out how all of this glorifies God and brings people to him, things can go deadly wrong. And the only solution to some issues, the ones we can’t see, is prayer.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say someone is really hounding you to use such and such a technology which you know is really detrimental to the website. You can do all the good, professional things you can to deal with this person and sometimes it just doesn’t work.

What’s the deeper issue here? Why is this non-web professional so insistant and seemingly out to ruin the site? That’s where a prayer team can be a wonderous help. Say “Hey prayer team, something bad is going on here and I just need you to lift up this whole situation in prayer. I’m depressed about all this….”

We need to take the spiritual side of things just as seriously as we want the pastors (or whoever) to take us seriously as professionals. Put everything involved in the project in prayer in addition to being the professionals we are at our day jobs.

I realy think you’ve hit the nail on the head there Brad. Our church has had to learn that lesson the hard way over the last few years or so (even in the last month!). Leadership is the key, if there is no ‘buy-in’ at the start of a work, be it a youth meeting, Alpha, a website, anything you care to mention then it is ultimately doomed to failure.
I found it invaluable when developing our website actualy being able to talk to the leadership team and get them on-side before any work began and keeping them up to date with progress.

Now I just need to get more of the church using it and I’ll be happy :-p

Part 2:

Then the senior pastor left. Months went by with no proactive contact from my third liaison, even though I tried to contact him and the office staff repeatedly about information I needed to update the site. During this time, I kept updating the calendar (which was the only basic information I had as I was not attending the church).

I was probably too naive, but it didn’t totally dawn on me that the relationship had deteriorated (for what reason, I still don’t know) to the point that the church would start looking for another designer.

Finally, the long downward spiral culminated when I found myself locked out of the ftp site one morning, without any notice. I tried to get an explanation for months, but my third liaison would not return my phone calls or emails. After months of trying, he finally sent me an email with a curt message saying that they had decided to go a different direction.

I still don’t know the whole story. Even the senior pastor who left (who I am still on good terms with and continue to work with on web projects) doesn’t know what happened (even though his brother-in-law is the chairman of the board of elders at the old church).

I’m convinced that the third liaison wanted to have his friend develop a new site, but something fell through with that. Now they have a new site developed by a volunteer in the church which, in all honesty, doesn’t come close to approaching what I had developed for them, in terms of look and feel, usability, etc. But most importantly to my mind, in terms of philosopy and vision.

All of that long-winded story to say this: having a direct link to a staff member is great and important, but that link won’t do much good when the staff member leaves or when the senior pastor leaves.

When a church has paid for a website, they won’t be so quick to abandon it even when the senior pastor leaves. I think that was part of Mike B’s point.

In hindsight, I think I would have pressed to present the vision for the website to the board of elders and would have refused to be involved if we didn’t get total buy-in from the board and staff. Live and learn.

(sorry for the 2 parts, but I didn’t think I could pare it down to fit in 1 comment).

Frank J. said something really important—most churches just need a five page web site and nothing more. Even if you paid for this, it would not amount to much when compared to “printing” a newsletter or having a vinyl sign made at Kinkos. There is a difference between what is possible and what a church will actually use.

This is an ROI point that I usually make to clients—I compare the one-time investment in a web site with a content managment system with publishing the monthly newsletter; a line-item that even in small churches can run into the 1000’s. I think we can demonstrate a web site has a better ROI.

Dave W. asked if we should the apply the same logic to the nursery. I say that is a false analogy. Web designers should be treated the same as the carpenter or electrician.

I agree with Dean, Matt is 80% right when he says paying clients don’t care either. The difference is that I got paid—at least for me it was not a waste of my time/passion.

Mike B. is right that church web sites are still viewed as throw aways when they should be viewed as “property”.

IndyChristian has some nice ideas. But Dean is right. Every client I’ve had to teach how to build good content has failed, pastors are especially bad just like small business owners.

As with most things, success is dependant on the people involved and less on technology or strategy.

As for the difference between a web strategy and a web site or ministry or whatever, we don’t need to re-invent the wheel, most of this stuff is already figured out; it’s just no one does it.

Brad H. is correct. The real issue here is how pastors view “volunteers” and “delegate” (not just web designers but all volunteers). If the church leaders would view its congregation as co-creators, co-visionaries a lot of this discussion would be mute.

Here is a nice article on 10 Bad Project Warning signs that I just read this morning.

http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2005/05/10_bad_project_warning_signs/

Tim said:

“Dave W. asked if we should the apply the same logic to the nursery. I say that is a false analogy. Web designers should be treated the same as the carpenter or electrician.”

I’m not sure about this. Is there something more ‘spiritual’ about doing the jobs in a church that involve dealing directly with people rather than the fixtures and fittings, website etc? I’m not sure I’d want to make that distinction. I may well have completely misunderstood the point of course.

IndyChristian. Well done is all I can say. My experience is that getting a community of your friends to blog is possible, getting church leaders to do it is… less so. You can lead a Minister to the login page but you can’t make them blog.

One more thing occurred to me this morning as I was driving in to work. Not sure how on-point it is, but I think it’s related.

Mike B.‘s original post, if I read it correctly, didn’t concern itself so much with what a church should do with its website, but who a professional Christian designer should choose to work with.

As I was contemplating my journey as a Christian web designer this morning, I recognized that there had been a subtle shift in my thinking over the years.

When I first started out, I would work for anyone who asked me (apart from pornographic sites, gambling sites, etc. - which thankfully no one has ever asked me to do!).

Somewhere along the line, I got so busy that I recognized that I couldn’t work for everyone, so I started only accepting work which came to me when I had a relatively free schedule.

Lately, I’ve been approaching it differently. I think God has called me to a particular mission (helping the church use the web for outreach). Now, if an opportunity doesn’t further that mission, I refuse.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that I refuse projects unless they are outreach-related, because certain projects have benefits for the overall mission because of networking factors (who knows who - sorry to say, it’s important in the church world these days).

But now days, I’m not trying to evaluate projects in terms of do I have the time, will they pay enough (although I still tend to agree with the premise of Mike B’s original article), etc. Instead, I’m evaluating them in terms of whether they help further the mission to which I believe God has called me.

A somewhat different, and at least for me, refreshing perspective.

Or podcasting :-)

No really.

Wow, there is a lot to ingest here, folks.  Do any of you have any documentation you’d be willing to post on your sites?  What I mean by that is this:  Do you have forms or documents you give out to church clients that explain the process of designing their site to them?  Potential pitfalls?  An explanation of what is required of them?  A “Here are the first ten steps you need to take before we’ll design a site for you” kind of thing?

Would love to get my hands on some resources like that.

Thanks!

In reading this post I realise how fortunate I am to be working for a church that pays me full time to run their website.

Not perhaps at a salary commensurate with my skills but enough so that any outside work I do (which is quite a large amount) is added bonus rather than having to support my life…

I too am dismayed at the mentality of and in churches (meaning business owners in the congregation) that to work at something that has the potential to expand their profile should be offered by me for nothing.  Or that I should have to wait months, and months for my cheque…

In my mind this whole question speaks to a much greater problem and that is the culture in the church that makes these questions relevant.

Sorry for jumping in late…

It would be nice to be a paid church webmaster full-time or even part-time, but it’s not going to happen - at least not in most churches.  In our church, there are a lot of other priorities first - like trainee ministers, more gospel preachers, resources for a church plant and even an office person to free the bible teachers to get on with their primary task.  Does it mean that we don’t value the Gospel because we don’t pay for all the gospel work happening in our church?  Of course not.

If we work to bring glory to God through our ministry in a church - be it running a web-site, or sweeping the floors, then we are acting in accordance with God’s will.  Will there be frustrations and deliberate ignorance along the way?  Absolutely - it’s called sin, and as Christians we should know more about sin than anyone.

Dean, you teach Sunday School I think.  Do you expect to be paid for it?  Yet I know Sunday School teachers who’s work is not valued, yet they continue to do it for the sake of the Gospel.

If every volunteer in Christian ministry required fair market value for the work they put in, then would the gospel have got past Samaria?

I understand the problem of work being undervalued, but I don’t think expecting payment is the solution.

Yes, so the _full-time_ Christian worker, the person who makes it their job to proclaim the gospel should be paid by those whom he or she serves, from verse 11 of 1 Cor 9 (not 3): “those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel”.

But, are webmasters apostles?  I would argue “no”.  In 1 Cor 12:28, there is an order to the importance of activities in our church: “And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues.”  Really, the webmaster is in the helping/administrating section.  Can the web-site be used to proclaim the gospel?  Absolutely.  But the content writer is doing that, not the webmaster.

My point is, that I don’t think church webmasters should be trying to claim compensation for their work, rather if they want to be seen as valued, use education.  The people running our churches are not of the ‘net’ generation, they probably don’t understand the power of the web for evangelism.  So, educate them - gently.  Change in most churches will be met with resistance, so it will require patience and perseverance.

My experience over the last 7 years with my church’s website has been similar.  As a volunteer, I made a contract with the administrative pastor that the content would be the responsibility of the staff or lay leadership who are involved in ministry.

We started with a static content site and I redesigned that once, in 2000 - some of the content is stale (not my responsibility).  TO THIS DAY I still struggle to get current content for this site.

In 2002, I started using community portal tools (xoops) and I started deploying a portal for each ministry that wanted a web presence.  This has proven effective for 1 reason - no launch until the ministry leaders drop the content in.  After the first 2 successful launches ministry leaders have live experience with the approach.

My conversations with ministry leaders go like this.  “I have 5 hours a week to give to this ministry.  I can have a site deployed for you to test and add content to within a week of our agreement on the initial content scope.  When the site launches is completely up to you and when you have time to add the initial content.  I will train you to use the tools.  Keeping currnet information on the site is completely your responsiblity.”

I have had several ministries start the conversation, and once they realized the investment of time they had to make, they bailed on the process before launch.  I have had ministry leaders start and launch and go gangbusters for 30 or 4 months, then slowly lose interest and let the site go fallow. 

There have been many times that I felt that if I were charging for my services that they would be valued more by those I serve, but that is not the truth.  This is my ministry, and those I serve need to BE INVESTED in order to form a partnership.  Without that investment, it is like pushing a rope.  Like any other service ministry, those served need to feel the value of the service.

While it is frustrating to do work as a volunteer and have it lie unrealized, One must trust God for the outcome.  It is no different that the project at work that get’s canceled halfway through because the customer changed direction. 

If you say that the difference is that at work you got paid, I would reply that your service is not for man or for the church, but your service is to and your reward is from God, and it is His will and purpose that is served. 

In Christ,

Rich

I truly agree with Kaala’s comment but wonder if it is missing something crucial.  I too have volunteered and been paid for both website and sound (overall technical related STUFF) and have tried to do both as unto the Lord (Col 3:23). 

Here is what is missing, however.  The point of both the boyink post and the lonetomato’s sound post is that it is the church that suffers when little value is placed on that which is done for free.  A website should be rich with both information on the church and resources that help people draw closer to God.  FEW church websites achieve this goal.  Some place too much emphasis on how COOL it looks while others don’t think of it at all as long as the voluteer slot is FILLED.  In the end, a man struggling in his marriage hurting at work looking to his church for encouragement during his long and painful day has nothing because of a missed opportunity by a church that overlooks a great resource.

The point isn’t frustration over volunteering.  The point is that the church tends to miss opportunities because it doesn’t take its own mission seriously.  The same goes for sound.  How many people have missed the Word of God because the sound irritated them that week.

There is no sympathy for the whiny volunteer that wants more recognition for his “important” skill and role in the church.  This person should probably step down and seek discipleship from a mature Christian.  The point and heart is that the church can do better and if they won’t value work without pay, then they should pay.  The better solution, however, is for the church to work harder at seeing the value in supporting these ministries and respond accordingly.

Brothers,

Over the weekend I had a conversation with my pastor.  He had attended a presentation by our Church Office Software vendor about how they can help us create an interactive website.  He was considering paying a $150 monthly fee for web features that we already have on our site. 

During our conversation, he said exactly what many of you in this thread have been saying all along.  It is hard to get staff and ministry leaders to pay attention to something that cost you nothing.  Even in the body of Christ, we have a consumerist mindset - no cost = no worth. 

My comment to him was, ” Perhaps I should bill the Church a market rate for my work, and donate the money back.” 

Jesus cannot be pleased with this approach.  My heart is not rejoicing!

here is the url in case you want to visit the blog:
http://emmanuelmi.typepad.com/emmanuelmi/

Michael…

Those who have commented here apparently love the big questions you’ve mentioned.  [And here in Greater Indianapolis, we’re collecting similar types of big-question folks at our site as well.  There’s too little time in life for the tedium, to tell you the truth.  So thanks for keeping this focused.]

Since commenting above re the Church changing its thinking from web-SITE to web-STRATEGY (ie, tapestry network of sites), I’ve built a sample church-blog for our own local church in suburban Indy, and tried to demonstrate how it might fit into the overall web STRATEGY of the (Big-C) Church here among the driven Christians in the Racing Capital of the World.

If interested in the concept, visit http://ROCCblog.blogspot.com .

And plan on being at GodBlogCon 2005 in October.

Biola is in La Mirada, CA, near the Imperial Hwy.  It’s not too far from Brea, Fullerton, Anaheim, Norwalk, etc in Orange County.

Mike:

Regarding this part of your comment above: “I’ve been in conversations with pastors who didnt’ want to put the audio or video of a sermon online for fear it would prevent people from showing up.”

I have a friend/acquaintance who specifically told me once that he loved the church he was a part of specifically for this reason - that if he woke up one Sunday morning and didn’t feel like driving 30 miles to the church he had chosen to be a part of (in another city, apparently because it was more exciting than any church in our town), he and his family could site in their bedroom in their pajamas and _watch_ the live video feed of the Sunday morning service.

The problem I have with this is that it reduces the gathering of the saints to something to be watched rather than a gathering to be experienced.

In my opinion, anything we do on the web which has the potential to discourage face-to-face gatherings should be considered very carefully. I’m not saying that putting up video of services is wrong in itself - only that we should ask ourselves some pointed questions before doing so. What is our motivation for doing that - just because it’s the cutting-edge thing to do or because we see some value for discipleship. And if the latter is our reason, have we carefully asked ourselves whether putting up video on our websites is the best way of accomplishing this?

I’m not totally against the idea - I just think that most churches who do this probably haven’t thought it out very carefully.

Frank

We left a Church (possibly temp), I used to help out with the website for free. Now, however, the Pastor want to pay me, if I decide to, what shoudl I charge a little ‘ol Church who wants a (not so smart) flash intro? I already have a non-profit copy of Studio MX 2004 pro for the Ministry God has given me…

Regarding Web Masters are electricians or nursery workers with respect to pay: webmasters are more like electricians in that there is a much greater skill set required to do the job, and that skill set is held by a much smaller group of people than those that can take care of children.  Most adults can at least keep kids from destroying a room or each other for an hour or so.  Most adults couldn’t program a decent website.

As far as charging a church for work done, Lil Earl, I see your point, but does that mean my pastor shouldn’t charge for his services either?  If he is really a part of the church and loves it, would he be wrong to ask to be paid?

Good discussion.

... continued from previous entry, yeah, I’m wordy… ;-)

That said, I *do* realize the point of the article *wasn’t* that we need to charge because we want the tangible appreciation, or that we deserve it, but to make the church (staff?) appreciate the value of the task and of the resulting site, thus being willing to take it seriously and contribute their own efforts when needed.

That might or might not work.  I certainly have paid (non-church) clients who’ve been all hot to do sites or redesigns, but it’s been a multi-year tooth-pulling process to drag the necessary content out of them.

In some cases, particularly when doing a site for a church or ministry not-my-own, I’d certainly consider going ‘paid’ from the start.  For my own church, or anywhere I’m doing this as my ministry, I’d prefer to find other ways to involve others as needed, generally by building the personal relationships to support the tasks.

Frankly, with the experiences I’ve had over the years trying to do our church site, I don’t think I’d ever want to take on long-term design and maintenance of a site for a church that I was not a member of.  There are so many advantages to being part of it to being able to do the site well, and conversely so many frustrations with communication that it’s hard to imagine doing it if I weren’t closely connected with the church community.  (So I seriously salute you all who are willing to take that on!)

One other thought: Probably some of the differences in views here are because this conversation seems to be covering both working on your own church’s site and working (as a job) for some other church’s site.  Approaches would probably differ between the two.

Lastly, Jeremy wrote: “I think we (Christian techs) need a forum setup to discuss some of these issues, rather than in a blog comment section.”

How about over here: http://www.webservant.us/

(FYI, Dean’s blog entry on this topic has more good discussion on this)
http://healyourchurchwebsite.com/2005/06/07/mike-boyink-on-the-problem-with-free-ice-cream/

Jeff Wilkinson
webmaster for [url=http://www.centralpc.org]http://www.centralpc.org[/url]
http://www.centralpc.org/admin/webminfaq.htm