Overview

Wynndel Community Church is a rural church in Wynndel, BC, Canada. Through many cool happenstances of being in a online Bible study, I met Jordan Wilson, the lead pastor Wynndel Community Church. In April 2025, he called me interested in getting a website made for his church of 20 members to build their online presence, obtain/utilize their Google Business Profile, and centralize their contact information & church resources. I told him I would be happy to!

Tech/Tool Stack:

• Squarespace | Website Platform
• Google Business Profile
• Canva | Designing Church Logo & Design Elements
• Affinity Photo | Editing Church Photos

Overall Plan

After gaining permission from leadership of Wynndel, a plan was created to try out a website for a year.

So in April-May 2025, I began with asking for a list of assets and documents I needed to fill out their website. That included items such as:

• Church Photos | Church building, Sanctuary, Surrounding Environment, People & Community Interaction, Jordan Preaching, etc.
• Belief Statements & Background Information about Wynndel Community Church
• Biography of Jordan, his wife Ashley and their 2 kids along with copy of the missionary organization he is affiliated with, Village Missions of Canada
• Current Service Times and Address Information

I created a Google Drive Shared Folder where all of these assets could live between myself and Jordan & Ashley.

Project Roles

Throughout the project, it was my job to develop their website so it was responsive to desktop and mobile users, employ SEO best practices, and provide information for Jordan to present to his church leadership. Jordan and Ashley were able to review each change being made to the website, with Ashley taking a major role in providing / editing the text content going into each page & Jordan holding previously aformentioned meetings with the church leadership providing details from myself of what would be needed to get a website up and running!

Google Business Profile

By June, we began to tackle the Google Business Profile. For whatever reason, when you originally searched "Wynndel Community Church", Google would provide the right images of the church but the wrong address that instead directed users to the nearby Wynndel Community Center.

After some struggle with Google's verification process, we eventually succeeded in getting their Business Profile. I immediately got to work to correct the church's address, posted updated photos of their church, and added their Sunday service times!

What I Enjoyed

Doing this for Jordan & Ashley and Wynndel Community Church was a joy for me! Local Rural Churches generally do not have the same budgets that bigger churches have access to. So many of them often won't have the personal man power to develop a website in house, or have the money to hire someone to develop it for them at a lower cost. I told Jordan I would never expect a church of his size to pay the usual fee for a website so I did this for free!

I also enjoyed getting a newer perspective of a small church in a small town. The majority of my life has been spent in New Jersey, the densest state in the USA, and much of my own church experience comes from being in churches capable of holding 500-1000 people at a time. The surrounding town of Creston, BC, Canada (as of 2021) has a population of 5,583 with Wynndel, BC, Canada having around 650 people. These small churches don't often have $1-5k sound systems, RGB Lights, presentation software, etc. (which aren't wrong necessarily to have).

But they have each other. And that's all they need!

What I Learned

Never Assume A Client's Knowledge

This was one of the first times I had to explain the entire website development process from the various components of hosting, domain securing, website platforms, etc. Jordan had a tall task of explaining in detail to his church leadership the reasons for the cost of a website so I needed to be extra careful to lay out every part of creating a website for Jordan. I learned to not assume whoever I am working with knows what goes into creating a website.

Constant Clear Communication

Additionally, what really helped moving this project along was to create a group chat with myself, Jordan, and Ashley. Often during my calls with Jordan, he would refer to Ashley to get a better idea of what they were looking for, which led me to create a group chat. This improved our ability to get everything together as a team.

Timeline

April 2025 | Initial Call and Project Ideation

Late April-May 2025 | Website Education, Project Approval by Wynndel's Church Leadership, & Asset Allocation

May-June 2025 | Overall Development of a 7 page website

June 2025 | Google Business Profile Obtained & Information Corrected / Updated

Late June-July 2025 | Final Website Review & Website Published