Vale Community Church are a church plant whose vision is to see unbelievers and the ‘de-churched’ reached; those who don’t connect with the traditional styled churches. They are called as a church to keep pioneering and have set themselves the challenge to not settle in one frame of mind. Whilst Vale Community Church have been long-standing Church Edit customers, they recently decided to purchase one of our new Customised Templates for their website design.
As a church whose vision is to always be looking for the next step God has for them, they understand how important a church website can be in reaching a community, and so establishing a website was one of their main objectives when planting the church within the Community Forest of Marston Vale.
We spoke to Steve Gaunt, minister of Vale Community Church, and asked how having a website had been of benefit to their church:
“Being online is really important in today’s culture; where everything is now online. It has become a really important way of reaching people, particularly for us as we have a call on reaching the unchurched. We’ve had quite a lot of enquiries via our website, from people who are interested in our church, having heard about us through word of mouth and then looked for us online. Having a website is an obvious way to raise awareness, if people hear about you but can't find any information about you then they may not attend. By having that information online, it gives people the validation that you exist - particularly if you are not a ‘traditional church’ in the sense that you have a church building, or belong to a denomination (which at the time when we first planted our church, we weren't a part of). It is just a natural reaction nowadays, to hear about something and then look for it online.”
Steve and the team at Vale Community Church are enthusiastic about trying new ways of reaching people for God; they saw the possibilities that the internet could bring before the likes of social media and household named search engines even existed! When we asked Steve why he chose to use Church Edit, he told us:
“The ease of use sold it to me, it is a really simple straightforward tool to use and the layout and structure is easy to follow. The system has loads of free templates to use and so you can really create a good website with the templates. There are various design options available for you too, if you wanted to go a bit further with your site and still be able to have an easy way to edit and update it.”
Church Edit has hosted the Vale Community Church website for a number of years and whilst the team made full use of the free templates, Steve came to us to enquire about our Customised Template service.
As a church with a strong vision, and the understanding of how a website can be the face of that vision to new visitors, Steve was really keen to make sure that the website looked good; as he told us:
“The homepage of a website is always crucial, you get that wrong and people won’t look any further into the website. Finding the time to get it done by people in the church can be a difficult task, so we decided in the end that for the price, it was worth paying for one of the design services. This saved us a lot of time, and we managed to get a really smart and modern looking website. It was definitely worth having the Customised Template service, as now we don’t have to touch the front page at all, which saves us a lot of time!”
Churches being able to find time to devote to a website is an issue that we regularly come across at Church Edit; although many churches understand the need to have a good website, rarely do they have the time to get involved in getting to grips with complex packages, which is why we have designed our software to be simple and intuitive so that churches can create a good site easily.
As a long standing client with Church Edit, Steve often recommends our services to those who require a website and he has this to say about his experience with Church Edit:
“The service that Church Edit provides is excellent, everyone is really helpful and always very quick to respond. When companies say that they will call you back, they often don’t but the team at Church Edit are always quick to respond. They offer good quality products which are frequently updated. The team offer loads of training; there are regular webinars that run and lots online tutorials and tips, and then if you are still stuck, the team are always on the phone and ready to help you!”
To visit the Vale Community Church website, please follow this link: www.valecc.org.uk
If like Steve, you are pressed for time to devote to the design of your website, we do offer various design packages to suit every budget, further examples of our designs can be found via our website, or you can contact our team on
0121 651 11 20 or email us on hello@churchedit.co.uk