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Church Website Ideas Church Website Ideas Est. 2018

The Idea Letter

Issue No. 312 Tuesday, November 18

One Tuesday morning a week, we send a single idea your church can ship by Sunday — with the screenshots, the copy, and the template to do it.

A weekly dispatch for pastors, communications directors, and volunteer web teams who run the church website on the side. Founded in 2018 by church web designer Brian Whitfield, and read every Tuesday at 6 a.m. Central by 38,500 subscribers across 11 denominations.

No advertising, ever. Average open rate 47%. Unsubscribe in one click.

What arrives on Tuesday

What lands in your inbox every Tuesday at 6 a.m. Central.

Each Letter is a short, single-focus dispatch. One featured idea — usually something you can copy, paste, and publish by Sunday — illustrated with two or three annotated screenshots pulled straight from a live church website in our 2,100-site library. You also get a copy template (ready-to-edit first-time-visitor language, second-giver email sequence, or Statement of Faith module), and one conversational prompt your team can use in your next planning meeting.

No roundups, no sponsored links, no carousel of trend pieces. A Letter takes about four minutes to read over coffee, and it hands you the materials to ship a real change on your site before the weekend. That focus is why the Letter holds a 47% average open rate — more than double the 22% industry benchmark for ministry newsletters — and why readers stay for years instead of bouncing after a single issue.

Subscribing is free. You can also become a paid member to unlock the full 1,640-article archive, every past Letter, and the downloadable Site Playbook — but the weekly email is and will remain free, supported by our Founding Patrons circle of 240 churches.

From a recent issue

A look at the kind of screenshots that ship every week.

Each one is annotated in the Letter itself — the design choice, the copy under the fold, and the one tweak we'd suggest for your context.

gracecommunity.church
Annotated homepage hero from a 240-person church in Ohio
Homepage hero — the four-line above-the-fold pattern we recommend for under-300-seat churches.
harvestridge.org/visit
Annotated first-time-visitor card from a multi-site church in Texas
First-time visitor card — the layout that doubled 'plan a visit' submissions for the issue's example church.
oakchapel.org/give
Annotated giving page from a small rural congregation in Kentucky
Giving page — three-tier presentation that lifted recurring gifts by 31% in their Q3 report.
bridgeway.church/calendar
Annotated events module from a 900-seat neighborhood church in Oregon
Events module — the date-left, title-center pattern that replaced a noisy calendar grid.

Three recent issues

Three recent issues you can read right now.

Every past Letter is available in the archive. Here are the three most recent — the headline, the subject line, and the single idea inside each.

Issue No. 312 — November 18

The four-line homepage hero that a 240-seat church shipped in a weekend

Why the most effective above-the-fold sections delete almost everything, and a copy template you can paste into your CMS tonight. Includes the H1 / subhead / dual-CTA structure and three annotated examples from the library.

Read this issue

Issue No. 311 — November 11

A giving page that isn't a transaction screen

Three Texas-size giving pages, the second-giver email sequence that goes with them, and the one paragraph of copy that doubled recurring gifts for a rural congregation.

Read this issue

Issue No. 310 — November 4

"Plan a visit" — the only button a homepage needs

A close read of eight first-time-visitor cards from working church sites, plus the four-question copy framework our pastoral advisors use when reviewing a card for a member church.

Read this issue

Browse the full archive of 1,640+ articles and past Letters

We had been talking about a homepage refresh for about a year. That Saturday morning I opened one Letter, followed the four-line template, and by Sunday afternoon the new homepage was live. Four months in, our contact form is healthier and our pastor can actually send visitors to a single link. It's the first ministry resource that produced a finished thing, not a feeling.

Communications director A rural, under-200-member congregation in the Midwest

Get the Free Idea Pack

Five templates, three email sequences, and your first Tuesday Letter this week.

Drop your email below and we'll send over the Idea Pack — a starter library of the templates we send most often to member churches: a first-time-visitor card, a homepage hero block, a giving page, a Statement of Faith module, and the second-giver email sequence. Your first Tuesday Letter arrives later this week. The pack stays free whether you stay on the free list or move into a paid membership later.

We send the Idea Pack in under a minute. 38,500 pastors and church communicators read the Letter every Tuesday.