The Library · Issue No. 312 · Tuesday, November 18
The Screenshot Library
A curated, annotated archive of 2,100+ live church websites — tagged by denomination, congregation size, and the feature each page illustrates. Filed by a team of editors and a pastoral review panel of 18 pastors and 9 communicators across 11 denominations.
Featured Plate · No. 47
Nine working pages, nine different Sunday morning problems solved.
Each tile below is a real screenshot from a live church site — captured by our editors, captioned with the design choice, and annotated for what a volunteer team could adapt by Saturday afternoon.
Plate No. 47 curated by Daniela Reyes · Reviewed November 12, 2025 by the pastoral advisory circle.
How the Library is organized
Every screenshot carries the same four labels, so a volunteer team can find what they actually need this Saturday.
The Library is not a Pinterest board. When an editor files a screenshot, four tags are attached before it can be published: the denomination (or "non-denominational" / "independent"), the congregation size band (under 100, 100–250, 250–800, 800–2,000, 2,000+), the feature the page illustrates (giving, visitor card, livestream, about, events, statement of faith, sermons, kids, contact, homepage), and the platform the site is built on (WordPress, Squarespace, Subsplash, Tithe.ly Sites, Ministry Brands, custom).
Those four tags are the axes you can filter the Library on. Nothing is filed without all four. Nothing is filed without a captioned explanation of why the page works — written by one of our seven writers and reviewed by a pastor or church communicator on our advisory panel before it goes live.
The four filter axes
How you'll browse the Library.
-
01
By denomination
Eleven tracked categories — Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Anglican, Nazarene, Reformed, Pentecostal, non-denominational, Catholic, Orthodox — plus an "independent" bucket for congregations without a denominational label. Filters respect how the church actually self-describes on its own About page.
-
02
By congregation size
Five weekly-attendance bands from under 100 to 2,000+. The Library is intentionally weighted toward the 100–800 range, because that's where most volunteer web teams live and where design decisions are made fastest.
-
03
By feature
Nine feature types tracked: homepage, about, giving, visitor card, livestream, events, sermons, kids, and statement of faith. Pick a feature and the Library returns only pages built to serve that feature — and not generic "showcase" pages.
-
04
By platform
Six platform categories — WordPress (the majority), Squarespace, Subsplash, Tithe.ly Sites, Ministry Brands, and custom-built. Filtering by platform is especially useful when a volunteer team needs to know "can I actually build this on what we have?"
What makes an entry useful
An annotated screenshot, not just a pretty picture.
A raw screenshot is decoration. An annotated screenshot is a Saturday-morning tool. Every entry in the Library carries three written pieces alongside the image:
- The caption strip. One or two lines set in a small serif beneath the screenshot, naming the church (anonymized when requested), the denomination, the size band, and the feature.
- The design note. A 60–120 word paragraph explaining the design choice the page makes — what is foregrounded, what is removed, what the visitor sees first and second. Written by one of our seven writers.
- The "what to steal" prompt. A short, actionable suggestion written for a volunteer team: "Use a single 'Plan Your Visit' button above the fold. Skip the rotating carousel. Cut the stock-photo banner." Then a copy prompt the team can paste into their CMS.
Before any entry is published, it is reviewed by at least one member of our 18-pastor and 9-communicator advisory panel — drawn from 11 denominations — for doctrinal and pastoral sensitivity. A page can be design-excellent and still not make it into the Library if it handles a sacred subject carelessly.
"The Library cut our redesign meetings from three hours to thirty minutes. Our team stopped arguing about taste and started pointing at the same screenshots. We had a homepage we were proud of by the next Sunday."