Special Offerings relaunches website

Redesign offers church leaders easier access to resources and stories of impact

by Scott O’Neill | Presbyterian News Service

The Special Offerings ministry redesigned its website to give church leaders and users easier access to resources, stories and engagement tools with the Church’s four Special Offerings. (Contributed image)

LOUISVILLE — Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Special Offerings ministry launched a redesigned website Friday, (specialofferings.pcusa.org) giving church leaders and users a more intuitive and robust presence to interact with the Special Offerings staff and access to the many resources available to congregations wishing to participate in the Church’s four Special Offerings. The ministry built the new site as a response to feedback its staff has received from church leaders and individuals over the past several years.

“Our new site is an outgrowth and result of the questions and feedback we’ve received from Presbyterians,” said Bryce Wiebe, director of Special Offerings. “We not only wanted to meet the needs of our church leaders, but we wanted to make the site more inviting and engaging and offer stories on how our congregations connect with our offerings. I think this site accomplishes both of those goals and we are very happy with the results.”

One of the new features is a Leader Support section, which provides step-by-step instructions on how congregations can get started with one or more of the four offerings: One Great Hour of Sharing, Pentecost, Peace & Global Witness, and Christmas Joy. Users can schedule a phone call with Special Offerings staff members who will answer any questions, download an Action Kit, schedule a time for Wiebe to talk to church leadership, participate in an onboarding webinar, and find access to each Offering’s resources.

Another new feature is Stories of Impact and Engagement, which details how the Offerings change lives. According to mission specialist Lauren Rogers, who was project manager for the site relaunch, sharing the inventive and creative ways congregations engage their members with Special Offerings was a main goal.

“We wanted to make sure we shared stories of engagement about the cool and creative ways congregations interact with the Offerings,” said Rogers. “These stories will hopefully inspire other congregations to share similar stories. There’s even a call to action on the site to make it easier for people to share those with us.”

Development and design for the site, which started in late 2018, was performed by the Louder Agency, which has offices in Nashville, Tenn., and Louisville, Ky. Chris Thurman, partner/creative lead for Louder, was challenged with a lot of information to present into an organized and straightforward navigation structure so that users can easily find what they need.

“Our main focus was creating a better first impression of the Offerings as well as make it easy to find resources and information to help churches implement each Offering,” said Thurman. “We created engaging landing pages and filterable resources to find Minutes for Mission, curriculum and other downloadable resources.”

“We hope that users will more fully utilize the resources now that it’s easier to find them,” added Rogers. “Most of the people who come to our site are looking for resources, but we also hope the new site invites people to communicate with us.”

The new site, which maintains the same URL address as before, also offers users the opportunity to safely and securely donate to each Special Offering.