The calendar content framed section
is a nice attempt, but it doesn’t function well – and uses terms that
most website visitors won’t be familiar with: Holy Eucharist, Gamblers
Anon, etc.

Prominent on the page is an image of the Episcopal Church’s logo that is so low-resolution
that it looks like it was run on a dot matrix computer, and it has a
white bounding box that just glares “we don’t know what we’re doing.”
Worse, it has quite a few nice looking ads for ministries completely
unrelated to the church (presumeably how they fund their “free” website)
and these all look significantly better than the church’s own
offerings.

Is the average website visitor going to know (or care
about) whether they’re a part of the “world-wide Anglican Communion” or
what diocese or parish they’re a
part of? This does matter, but why put this front and center on the
homepage as the only meaningful content? Better to have a link that
says, “About our Church” and on that page give a text description of its
affiliations and connections.

The News and Events page, like the other information links, just stacks one piece of information on another, making it extremely lengthy and wordy and difficult to
navigate (scroll, scroll, scroll), and most of the links and
news/events mentioned use full text names but nothing of practical
value – for example, what is a “Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper” and what
is the “Trinity Parish Herald” (is that the newsletter? if so, why not
just say, “download our newsletter”)

The “Tour of Windows”
is an interesting feature revealing the character of the building and
its congregation, but once there, the image links are broken.

The
message I get from this website is “We have 300 years of tradition in
an historic (translate: ‘old’) building, care very much about our
Anglican and diocesan connections (but have no clue what I need and no
interest in serving it). We know we’re supposed to have a website, but
we have no clue why or how to do it.”

The calendar content framed section
is a nice attempt, but it doesn’t function well – and uses terms that
most website visitors won’t be familiar with: Holy Eucharist, Gamblers
Anon, etc.

Prominent on the page is an image of the Episcopal Church’s logo that is so low-resolution
that it looks like it was run on a dot matrix computer, and it has a
white bounding box that just glares “we don’t know what we’re doing.”
Worse, it has quite a few nice looking ads for ministries completely
unrelated to the church (presumeably how they fund their “free” website)
and these all look significantly better than the church’s own
offerings.

Is the average website visitor going to know (or care
about) whether they’re a part of the “world-wide Anglican Communion” or
what diocese or parish they’re a
part of? This does matter, but why put this front and center on the
homepage as the only meaningful content? Better to have a link that
says, “About our Church” and on that page give a text description of its
affiliations and connections.

The News and Events page, like the other information links, just stacks one piece of information on another, making it extremely lengthy and wordy and difficult to
navigate (scroll, scroll, scroll), and most of the links and
news/events mentioned use full text names but nothing of practical
value – for example, what is a “Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper” and what
is the “Trinity Parish Herald” (is that the newsletter? if so, why not
just say, “download our newsletter”)

The “Tour of Windows”
is an interesting feature revealing the character of the building and
its congregation, but once there, the image links are broken.

The
message I get from this website is “We have 300 years of tradition in
an historic (translate: ‘old’) building, care very much about our
Anglican and diocesan connections (but have no clue what I need and no
interest in serving it). We know we’re supposed to have a website, but
we have no clue why or how to do it.”

The calendar content framed section
is a nice attempt, but it doesn’t function well – and uses terms that
most website visitors won’t be familiar with: Holy Eucharist, Gamblers
Anon, etc.

Prominent on the page is an image of the Episcopal Church’s logo that is so low-resolution
that it looks like it was run on a dot matrix computer, and it has a
white bounding box that just glares “we don’t know what we’re doing.”
Worse, it has quite a few nice looking ads for ministries completely
unrelated to the church (presumeably how they fund their “free” website)
and these all look significantly better than the church’s own
offerings.

Is the average website visitor going to know (or care
about) whether they’re a part of the “world-wide Anglican Communion” or
what diocese or parish they’re a
part of? This does matter, but why put this front and center on the
homepage as the only meaningful content? Better to have a link that
says, “About our Church” and on that page give a text description of its
affiliations and connections.

The News and Events page, like the other information links, just stacks one piece of information on another, making it extremely lengthy and wordy and difficult to
navigate (scroll, scroll, scroll), and most of the links and
news/events mentioned use full text names but nothing of practical
value – for example, what is a “Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper” and what
is the “Trinity Parish Herald” (is that the newsletter? if so, why not
just say, “download our newsletter”)

The “Tour of Windows”
is an interesting feature revealing the character of the building and
its congregation, but once there, the image links are broken.

The
message I get from this website is “We have 300 years of tradition in
an historic (translate: ‘old’) building, care very much about our
Anglican and diocesan connections (but have no clue what I need and no
interest in serving it). We know we’re supposed to have a website, but
we have no clue why or how to do it.”

Your last paragraph seems to imply that you’re OK with violence in the name of religion.  Otherwise, why use different religions compared to different species?

I was never speaking about scripture.  Only the culture of the church matching the culture of our society.  We no longer say “thou” at our church, because our culture no longer says it.  So our leadership has the option to still speak, dress and sing 15 years behind our culture, and sadly, many still do – without the seeker in mind. 

Seeker Sensitive says “Come as you are”

Seeker Sensitive has relevant, modern graphic design.

Seeker Sensitive is allowed to wear jeans and use Ikea lights on stage.

Seeker Sensitive isn’t scared to call it a stage.

Seeker Sensitive doesn’t like Religion, but loves people and points them to Jesus.

All that phrase has ever meant to me, is we think about seekers as we design our services and weekly activities.

I would also like to point out that 1/2″ bevel and feather on an image has always been ugly. A mass of non-graphic designers discovered Photoshop filters and lost their minds. :)

Thanks for continuing this conversation with me. I’m interested to see if anyone else will jump in with their thoughts.