This past week, a worker wrote, asking if we knew anyone whom he could pay to do a WordPress site start-to-finish. As you know, it sounds easy… but there’s a bit of expertise in lashing up all the decisions, servers, services, and more — let alone the look and feel. Got a favorite shop? If so, please click Comment. Thanks!
4) What’s the Best Route to a Killer WordPress Ministry Website?
I recommend Mere Agency. https://mereagency.com Great guys. Great service.
We’d love to help. That’s the only kind of website we build at Harvest Media Ministry. We only create websites for faith based ministries, i.e. mission organizations, missionaries, churches. Our rates are lower than the regular commercial companies because we are partially subsidized, enabling us to service small and mid sized ministries who tend to be underfunded. Fill out the project request form at our website and we will get back to you ASAP.
Weebly and Squarespace are good alternatives to WordPress sites, depending on what this person wants to do with their site. I have been transitioning all of my WordPress sites over to Squarespace in recent years, though there are pros and cons to the various platforms.
I’ve done several ministry websites, and my own, on WordPress. I might be willing to do it, but the guys above are probably the more professional option!
We have been a proud Canadian part of Brigada for many, many years, had a website DramaShare.org for most of our 35 years in ministry. Some folks find it hard to believe 35 years since I have only had 20 birthdays, maybe being born February 29th contributed there. Ours, (DramaShare Christian Drama Ministry Resources), is a family ministry. Judy, my bride of 55 years (14th of August YAY), has spent the last 3 years in treatment for a rare form of uterine cancer, after which she had chemo, (to which she became allergic), then, the most unpleasant, blood clots in her lungs, meaning 6 months of daily injections, (which I, with my hand tremor, performed).
Ours is the “Jonah” journey to ministry. Since my pre-teens I have been a leader in the churches. I am the proud graduate of Grade 7. Just before Grade 8 finals I was hospitalized, but, as in most of my schooling, I was promoted. After a month of Grade 9 my Dad had a heart attack, I went back to the farm, started correspondence school, but duties of running a farm made it impossible.
I always was a studious child, hungered for knowledge, particularly history. My dear mom, who was a guiding light in my life, and who lived until almost 100, worried about my fascination with the Roman Empire, World Wars, Communism, Nazism, etc. I know she worried I might gain traction with those, in actual fact (sub-consciously) seemed to be studying what brought all of those down.
BTW not sure what size of posting here so if I drop off the face of this world you will know why).
At the age of 19 (4.75 birthdays) my parents, sister and I bought a farm in the Regina (Saskatchewan, pronounce that one y’alls!), 2 weeks later he died from what was assumed to be a heart attack, a miracle in that later). At a very young age I had become the head of the family, it just seemed normal, no biggie.
My parents were deeply involved in the formation of the United Church of Canada who met, often in our home, other times in a school house. Pop and Ma were leaders in church, in politics, is providing help and advice to neighbors, almost all Romanian immigrants, my Mom had a beautiful neighbour lady friend, Mom always said the only thing she and Annie Bistretzan could in the same language was laugh!
When we settled at our new farm, it was natural that we sought out the United Church in the beautiful valley town of Lumsden. When in church that Sunday I noticed a VERY pretty 15 year old girl in the choir. Hey that got the blood goin’! With my superior thinking skills I just knew I had to join the choir and get to meet that gal, Judith Ann McDonald, I heard was her name’ her mom and Dad owned the bakery on main srtreet. Strange, I never realized lack of singing ability was a prerequisite. Jude later admitted she married me to get me out of the choir. The story goes that Jude tried to get me to do “silent singing” out in the church parking lot but, I don’t believe this for one minute.
After six years of dating we were married, (OK so I am a slow learner). Within a year we were half a million dollars in debt, having built a poultry operation with 53,000 cage layer hens, (do not get me started on the merits of brown eggs, free range, etc.!), the largest between Winnipeg and Vancouver, from which we supplied most of the province, the business built to help finance our purebred Angus show cattle enterprise. We had 5 – 40′ X 100’+ barns and a grading station, 33 employees, 3 delivery trucks and a car, all joined together. It was my dream and, frankly, my religion. And one minus 40 degree January night, . . . it burned to the ground. As I stood alone in the yard watching my well planned dreams go up in smoke, I only wanted to die.
With our two beautifully adopted perfect (a boy and a girl) family, (we were told we couldn’t have children), and the clothes on our back we set off into a new world of unemployment, still sporting my Grade 7 education.
What actually happened is Mission Impossible. We ended up in Saskatoon, SK, (as in Johnny Cash’s The Girl From Saskatoon song) where, in hindsight, miracles happened, including me a professor in 4th year Commerce at the prestigious University of Saskatchewan, (I gave my true info, I guess I wasn’t sufficiently educated to know you had to have a university education to teach in university). And other miracles that rocked my Christian views: Bible truth, the existance of angels, miracles and the relevance of Christian drama.
This “book” is becoming too big!
Although I had zero experience, (or interest), in drama nor theatre, I one fateful day, in promoting my desire (demand) that all people must do something in church ministry, I suggested Christian drama because “anyone who could walk and chew gum at the same time” could “do” drama. My life would have been much richer and less hectic had I suggested “tiddletywinks” (which I think will be my next ministry). Fast forward to today where DramaShare, through some huge disastrous “coincidence” has become the largest Christian drama organization in the world . . even though I, LOUDLY, demanded that I loved being a well paid manager in Tarshish, thank you very much! . .. And some whale, (name’a Christian drama) came along, swallowed me up, gave me diseases called fibromyalgia, and something called Sudden Death Syndrome (look up HOCUM) and the whale spit me up on the shore of enforced ministry.
Seems to me the God who supposedly owns the cattle on a gazillion hills should invest in a toll-free phone line where I can call and give Him the benefit of my wow business mind. (Actually God did call me and gave me his number which I now pass on to you: 772937, (look tthat up on your phone), oh and y’alls gotts ta be on y’alls knees to get the dial tone, doncha know!
And along with many wonderful volunteers we have added a new, very young, immensely talented young face, one named Jenna Leanne Read, still only 18 birthdays old. She comes to us after a search by a head hunter guru, she outclassed all other candidates and I excused myself from the search, so no bias. I first met Jenna almost 19 years ago when our daughter Patti gave birth to this amazing person. I am blown away by her organizational and planning insight, her background in online marketing (she built and operated her BusyBoxShop.ca store which brought her more profit than my DramaShare.org for sure! She takes over as Operations Manager of DramaShare, slowly taking over my duties, (providing this is God’s will, watch out for whales Jenn!).
Anyhow we have just launched now our new DramaShare.org WordPress website, I have to admit that it’s not at all the easiest of options. And we are looking for someone skilled in WordPress to join with us, experience in Christian drama might, I am guessing, be an OK thing, but don’t try teaching me about that, I got me a whale does that more’n OK, thank y’alls k?
May God bless the Brigada ministry, dramatically!
John & Judy Alexander
Octogenarian by the grace of God!
DramaShare
Serving in 6,000+ ministries around the world since 1985
With 2,000+ scripts, how-to manuals & resources
Interesting you ask. I am a long time friend of Brigada! A small group of friends just started doing this. Most of us in are in Christian ministry, I personally am the International director of Antioch Network, a missions organization, established in 1987. We recently, have started a company to not only build WordPress websites but also maintain them for a small monthly fee of $50, so you can focus on ministry.
We started this to help other kingdom-minded ministries but also because we believe in the value of starting business that create value. We also believe in the principal of tent-making. Our work in creating quality websites for ministries allows us to do both. We would love to serve you. You can find our website here: https://www.postmodernpulpit.com
I’m a worker in Albania and my son, Christopher, is graduating from Liberty with a degree in CS. He has partially paid for his schooling with his web design and coding, primarily for various ministries.
He is excellent with web design from simple to very complicated dynamic pages built in various platforms. He “gets” this stuff because his generation lives it, but his sense of aesthetics is fantastic and his ability to do even the most complicated coding is unmatched – he makes it elegant and simple looking. His most recent job was to take a professional website that was made with big bucks but took 20 seconds to load each page. He got it down to normal load times just by implementing best practices in WordPress. He’s always going on about how important it is to build seo and mobile first and performance from the beginning so you don’t have to recreate it later on. As a freshman he was hired by liberty to do this stuff and he coded a website for them – it was so far beyond what the platform thought was possible that they gave him an invitation to a professional conference attended by university professionals from all over the USA – he was the youngest there by about 5 years and he was doing the presentation – that’s how good he is.
Anyway, you can expect that I would be biased as his father, but I would suggest that you contact him and get some references from people who have been thrilled with his work and actually see some of his work. His website is currently in the process of becoming a pwa (basically making the web site work as an app on your phone) so it’s not complete, but if you drop him an email at contact@pcbowers.com he can point you to examples and send you references.
Get him while he’s still in school and prices will be lower. And this summer he will probably have extra time for additional projects…