Success Stories

Maintaining a 19th Century Heritage in a 21st Century World

Authors: Brian Tol, Julie Armstrong

The Moody Church is not your average middle-American congregation. Started in the mid-1800s by Dwight L. Moody with a vision to serve the underprivileged children of Chicago, The Moody Church has carried and served out their historic vision well as it has moved into the 21st Century. Under the leadership of senior pastor Dr. Erwin Lutzer, the heartbeat of the church remains a ministry passionately serving a congregation that reflects the economic and cultural diversity of its city.

Though the ministry of The Moody Church has successfully grown over time, their website had not. With a need to update their online presence to not only better serve the ministry communities of the Church but also serve as an effective communication tool for the church's approximately 4,000 people who attend weekly, The Moody Church came to Five Q.

Simple. Savvy. Serving.

The Moody Church needed a new website with a focus on intuitive navigation; a clean, simple design that reflected the diversity of its congregation; and a content management system (CMS) that would be easily implemented, maintained, and used by the staff. Additionally, they needed to be able to train the staff, who did not have extensive knowledge in HTML and CSS, to deploy daily changes to their respective sections of the website.

Culturally, the website needed to be a place that reflected The Moody Church as a trusted placed where anyone can connect with God and others. Practically, the website needed to actively engage and effectively serve its congregation, as well as provide relevant information to the visitors of the church.

Furthermore, The Moody Church website needed to provide opportunities for congregants to subscribe to a weekly email, watch the latest sermon, connect with a ministry, and find a place to serve.

"Mini-Sites" Meeting Major Needs

After a period of thorough research that provided a deeper understanding of the unique needs and culture of The Moody Church, Five Q developed a strategy that employed the concept of "mini websites". This customized solution would enable The Moody Church's 40+ ministries to effectively communicate about their areas of service on specialized website pages, while remaining solidly unified under the global branding of the church.

For the larger website, the primary functions of the homepage design included making powerful use of a graphical slideshow to showcase opportunities and events in the church as well as providing an intuitive navigation to easily find The Moody Church's Media Ministry, online video sermon series, and helpful information visitors might need about the church and its offerings.

Beyond the homepage, each mini-website provided The Moody Church ministry communities with customized landing pages, a centralized calendar featuring updates from The Moody Church’s in-house event organization system, blogging capabilities (with the option to publish globally), and branding options per ministry. Five Q provided The Moody Church communities the option to select specialized color palettes to use for their specific ministry pages of the website, which gave the flexibility to showcase their individual community branding while remaining within the guidelines and design direction created for the global website.

Finally, the CMS option provided by Five Q, accompanied by on-site training in its usage and maintenance for the staff, presented The Moody Church with the user-friendly administrative abilities to be effective stewards of both resources and information on their website without having to be CCS and HTML experts.

History and Innovation: A New Generation of Ministry

In just the first week of the website redesign launch in April 2011, The Moody Church saw an increase of website visits of 42%, pageviews were up almost 120%, and the average time on the website nearly doubled.

But more impactful was the user feedback The Moody Church has received since the website launched. Church members are thoroughly enjoying the new website, finding it welcoming, easy to navigate, and effective for their ministries. The Moody Church website administrators are also thrilled with the ease of use and their ability to easily work within the CMS without having to involve or be technical experts.

The rich history of The Moody Church indeed draws many to come visit for the first time. The centuries-long heartbeat of Spirit-led service, sanctuary, and diversity gives members a place they call "home". But the innovation of a twenty-first century website--built, deployed, and supported by Five Q--has resulted in a new generation of ministry: establishing and growing an innovative online presence with an effective toolset that meets the needs of this diverse congregation to connect with, and within, The Moody Church.