Pastor, Change Your Website Picture. Here’s Why.

Most church website research shows that your staff page is a critical, well-hit page. Go ahead and check yours to see if it’s in the top 10 pages on your website! It probably is. Don’t know how? Install Google Analytics (it’s free; search for it on Google.com) and after a few weeks, check the results.

People love checking out the Church Staff page.

Why? Your congregation (internal audience) is going to the page to find contact information or they’re trying to figure out who’s in charge of a ministry. And your other external audience, your community, is going to see who leads the church and if they look like someone they’ll respect. Or if you look like them, their demographic, or someone they’d like to spend time with.

Since most people go to your website, and this page, before visiting your church, this staff page becomes critical.

I recently worked with a church where their Pastor’s picture was about 10 yrs old and didn’t look at all like the man I was meeting with. This is a problem! Here are 5 critical things to remember when changing your picture:

1. Wear clothes that can be purchased today at a local mall. Be representative of current and affordable to most people in your congregation and community.
2. Dress like you’d expect a visitor to wear. Don’t wear suits unless you expect your congregation and community to wear them. If you say “dress as you are”; be sure to dress like what that looks like. Don’t go overboard with fashion-forward clothes, dress as “normal” as your congregation and community would describe it.
3. Make the picture more about your face, then the clothes. Crop it fairly tight on your face but don’t cut the picture at your neck (or it could look brutal). Show the top of your shoulders so it looks natural. Look like you will look if they ran into you on the street today. Change all outdated pictures. Now.
4. Ensure that all pictures are equally weighted. All pastors and staff should have the pictures cropped similarly so that the heads and faces are about the same size. No one should stand out on the page. Color correct all pictures so they all feel the same.
5. Look natural. You want to look approachable and not staged.

This page is so important, you need to invest in it. Pay for a photographer to come and take photos of the entire staff. It’ll certainly be worth it!