You remember Marge… she’s our friendly nonprofit employee that everyone looks to for knowledge on… well, everything. Marge has a deadline. Not a work deadline (this time) but a personal one: find a new church home before the holidays.

Since her move across town, she loves being closer to work. Unfortunately, her church is much further away now and she just can’t navigate that trek every week. Between the general chaos of her kids’ schedules and caring for her aging parents, she wants somewhere to belong before Christmas, not sometime in the vague future when things “calm down.”

On a rare quiet Tuesday night, laptop balanced on her knee and a cup of tea going cold beside her, Marge starts doing what most church visitors do before they ever set foot in a building: she opens a browser and starts searching for area churches.

She figures it’ll take twenty minutes. Find a few churches, find the service times, done. She has no idea how much those church websites are about to test her patience.

First Site: When’s the Service??

The first church website is a good sign, or so Marge thinks. She sees warm photos of a lovely sanctuary, a worship band mid-song, and kids laughing in a hallway. She almost relaxes.

Then she starts hunting for service times.

She checks the homepage. Nothing. She checks the “About” page, because sometimes that’s where churches hide things. Still nothing. She finally finds a single line buried toward the bottom of the contact page, in a font size clearly meant for people with better eyesight than hers.

Looks like services start at 10:00. Or maybe 10:30. The page contradicts itself in two places.

Marge closes the tab and starts to wonder if this will be as easy as she had hoped. And she’s not alone. 61% of church website visitors say they leave if they don’t find the necessary information within 5 seconds.

Second Site: Kids Do Actually Get Older…

Site number two is more promising. There’s a whole “Ministries” tab, which feels like progress. Marge clicks it, ready for answers.

Nursery, check. Sunday school for preschoolers and elementary aged kids, check. A very sweet page about a puppet ministry Marge did not know was a thing. She knows her youngest child will be set.

Then nothing. No mention of anything for her older kids, the ones who are past finger-painting and more into saying “bruh”.

She scrolls twice, checks the site’s search bar, tries “teen,” tries “youth,” tries “high school.” Nothing loads that tells her whether there’s a group, a leader, or a meeting time.

This isn’t a fringe complaint. Missing or unclear information about youth ministry, especially for older kids, shows up again and again in reviews of church websites, right alongside vague service times.

Marge closes the tab, mentally filing this one under “maybe,” and keeps going.

Third Site: Needs a Decoder Ring

Site three looks promising until the events page mentions something happening “in the FLC this Saturday.” Marge reads it twice. FLC. Is that a person? A committee? A very serious acronym for something she should already understand?

• Friendly local church?
• Forgotten lunch choice?
• Forced list creation?

She hovers over it like it might explain itself. It does not. A little digging tells her it probably means Family Life Center, a term plenty of churches use. Fine. Except nobody told her that on the page, and she’s left guessing whether she’s invited. Maybe this event is for church website visitors who already go there.

Even she knows that you should always explain acronyms the first time you use them. This site just assumes she already knows.

Fourth Site: The Ghost Town

Site four is clean, easy to read, and completely silent on what community life looks like. No calendar, no events page, nothing under “upcoming.” Marge clicks around looking for a potluck, a Bible study, anything that suggests people gather there for reasons beyond Sunday morning.

Church website guidance generally recommends an organized, searchable, updated event calendar precisely because its absence leaves visitors guessing. Marge isn’t guessing about logistics this time. She’s guessing about whether this place has a pulse.

By this point she’s tired, it’s late, and she’s starting to wonder if any of these churches know that people visit their sites who don’t already go there.

A Frustrating Lack of Progress

Four sites in, and Marge has a list with more question marks than answers. One church might have great photos and mystery service times. Another might have a thriving college ministry and absolutely nothing for her seventh and tenth graders. She’s started keeping notes in her phone, the kind with little stars next to the ones worth an actual in-person visit, because clearly the internet isn’t going to close this deal on its own.

The holidays are still coming whether or not she finds a church home by then. She’s got two more sites bookmarked and a Sunday morning free.

This is apparently just what church shopping looks like now, one browser tab and one small disappointment at a time. Marge isn’t done yet, and neither is this story.

How Would Marge Feel About YOUR Site?

If your church’s website has ever left a visitor squinting at a footer, guessing at an acronym, or wondering if anything happens there besides Sunday morning, we have a tool for you. The 5 Minute Church Visitor Leak Finder is a quick self-assessment that spots where visitors like Marge might get frustrated. It takes about five minutes and hands you a starting point, not a full redesign project, right before the busiest visitor season of the year.

Marge’s search continues in the next installment. Your website’s search for a fix can start now.

Until our next adventure with Marge, keep swimming along!