5 Essentials for Your Church Website’s Staff Directory

With the easy of information online, it seems that the days of paper staff directories are long gone. Rather than having the staff’s photos and titles on the opening pages of the church directory, you can easily have a staff page available, complete with a warm photo, brief biography, and title.

The benefits of having a digital staff directory are numerous, including updating pictures of the staff and their family as they expand, offering limitless spaces for additional staff, and allowing staff members to represent themselves freely. Here are 5 essentials for your church website’s staff directory.

1.   FREEDOM TO FLUCTUATE

Perhaps the greatest benefit of having a staff page on your church website is the freedom to expand your staff with great ease. We’ve seen great success in having each staff have their photo be of them and their family, which is significantly more inviting than a portrait.

Additionally, as staff increases, you can easily add roles, new photos, and update bios within minutes. This then allows visitors to feel welcome, even before setting foot in the door.

2.   UPDATED PHOTOS

When speaking of having the freedom to fluctuate, it’s absolutely necessary to include updated staff photos on the church website. If one of your pastors has a baby, the church (and even visitors) would want to know. What better way to keep them informed than having a recent picture of the whole family present for an updated family portrait.

Again, we have seen numerous instances of visitors walking into the church and already connecting with the staff, simply by having their photos available on the online staff directory.

3.   BIOGRAPHIES

Biographies are crucial when designing your church website’s staff directory. When visitors are looking for a church to join, they will be interested in the details of your staff, such as where they’re from, where they went to school, if they have large families, etc. Though it would be ideal for each staff to personally connect with every visitor, that simply cannot happen.

As churches continue to grow, pastors, especially those who are preaching, will have a harder time connecting with each visitor, and that’s where having the biography online can greatly assist you! Again, it’s all about connections, and biographies allow visitors to connect before even walking in through the door.

4.   CONNECTIONS TO SOCIAL MEDIA

Within ministry, connection is key. After all, you cannot be disconnected and call yourself a community of believers. We’ve seen great success in simply having a drop down menu underneath each staff photo that links visitors to their social media pages, including Facebook, Twitter, and even email.

By having each staff member be so accessible, members and visitors are able to ask clarifying questions concerning the sermon, or even be pointed in the right direction concerning a specific area of need in their life. It all points to being connected with one another under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

5.   SPECIFIC TITLES

Last but certainly not least is the often-overlooked titles in the church website’s staff directory. Rarely does a senior pastor forget to include his title on the church page. However, it is crucial to include the full church staff, ranging from the associate pastors, worship leaders, and interns.

Though rather obvious for a church with one site and one or two services, it becomes much more tricky when considering multisite churches with a variety of pastors who have a wide range of roles.

If your church has multiple campuses, or multiple pastors, you must consider clarifying which campus they serve at, and what their responsibilities. For example, when I was interning at a church with multiple pastors, we had to clarify which pastors had which responsibilities. This was accomplished through differing titles, such as worship pastor, connections pastor, executive pastor, and lead pastor.