Free church websites

Update, September 2026

This work is further on than the page below says and slower than we would like.

The redesign of Church Finder is contracted and in design. The page below describes it as scoping, which has not been the case for a number of months now.

What has not started is delivery. We are not going to put a date on that here, because a date we miss is worse than no date at all on a page churches are relying on.

The two figures below still hold. There are more than thirty-five different website platforms in use across Methodist circuits, and around one church in five has no working web presence. We rechecked the second of those in September and it has not improved.

We're exploring how to give every Methodist church a free, professional web presence through a connexional platform.

Right now, there are over 35 different website platforms in use across Methodist circuits - from WordPress and Wix to specialist church tools like Chrestos and Church Edit. When the volunteer maintaining a church website moves on, the site often goes with them. Our Digital Landscape Audit found that 20% of Methodist churches have no web presence at all.

We're working with the Developer Society to redesign the Church Finder tool so that every church has an up-to-date, accessible page as a baseline - generated automatically from existing data. Churches that want to go further will be able to customise their page with events, news, photos, and stories.

This means no church needs to pay for a separate website unless they choose to. No church loses its web presence because a volunteer leaves. And every church is findable by people looking for a place to worship.

This work is currently in the scoping phase. We'll share more as the approach develops.