Built for churches sharing one vicar

Why this matters so much in practice

Across rural Lincolnshire especially, it's the exception rather than the rule for a church to stand entirely on its own. A benefice might cover two neighbouring parishes, or stretch to six or nine churches spread across a scattering of villages, all served by the same vicar and often the same small group of volunteers. A website built for a single church doesn't fit that reality, and neither does a cost that assumes one.

So the approach starts from the group, not the single church: one website, one shared home page, and a dedicated section for each individual church within it — its own history, its own service times, its own story. No parish gets reduced to a single line in a list.

How one site represents several churches

Every group site follows the same pattern. A shared home page and a shared news section cover the whole benefice, since a lot of church life — the vicar's rota, joint services, a benefice-wide event — is genuinely shared. Each individual church then gets its own page: its dedication, a little of its history, its service pattern, and its own contact details where they differ from the rest of the group.

This structure has been built for benefices from two churches up to nine parishes spread across a deanery, so it holds at both ends of that range.

Safeguarding works the same way. Each church's section carries its own safeguarding contact details, since the DSA or Parish Safeguarding Officer for one parish often isn't the same person as for another. See Safeguarding & Online Safety for how this is built into every site.

Who can send updates, across a group

This is where a shared site earns its keep. Rather than everything funnelling through one overworked webmaster, whoever looks after news for each church can send updates straight to me for their own section, while the vicar or benefice office does the same for anything shared across the group. See Keeping Your Site Current for how that works day to day.

What it costs

Nothing, whatever the church count. A benefice website isn't really several separate church websites — it's one central site the whole group shares, with news flowing through the same place for everyone. Because of that, there's no per-church surcharge: the site is free, funded by sponsors, whether it covers one church or nine. See Sponsorship for how that's funded.