Part of the work of the Church Pages Initiative is to help Christian charities that are at the forefront of offering hope to marginals and young people. Obviously Church Pages is fully committed to supporting local churches as they outreach to their communities, but we also recognise that there is a place for parachurch, where Christians with specialist skills can use their expertise to meet those in need.

As part of our commitment to seeing the impact of the Gospel being furthered in this nation any money that we earn at Church Pages is immediately ploughed back into the Church Pages Initiative, so that we can facilitate the work that we feel God has called us to support.

Why did we help The Lighthouse Project, Crawley?

The Lighthouse Project, Crawley had heard of the Church Pages Initiative through one of their trustees, Steve Burston, Vicar of St John's Crawley. Steve explained our vision and ethos, and felt that we might be able to help The Lighthouse Project with their website.

The Lighthouse Project is an ecumenical Christian charity that exists to serve the schools of Crawley, whilst sharing the Christian faith and values. The charity had an existing website, but they wanted to expand its functionality and wondered if we could assist them with that.

We were so encouraged to hear of the in-roads that The Lighthouse Project had made in Crawley in gaining access to schools through assemblies, lunch clubs, mentoring, and taking RE lessons that we wanted to create a website for them that truly reflected the passion and commitment they had for the children of Crawley.

How did we help The Lighthouse Project, Crawley

We spoke with Lighthouse's Project Manager, Lizzie Ashley about how we could help her and it became apparent that she needed an almost bespoke site. However, this was something that financially was not a viable possibility and so we needed to look at what we could do to help.

After some discussion we thought the best way to serve The Lighthouse Project was to extend the Boaz template, and so the Isaiah template came into being. With its additional blocks there was space to provide further copy, imagery, videos and an Instagram feed. This enabled The Lighthouse Project to create the home page that they wanted, and gave the site a very modern look that would appeal to a younger demographic.

With the creation of a much longer home page, and stylised presets for folders and list images, the site has a very bespoke feel. However, despite this the website still has the similar building blocks of the Boaz template and so can be edited with very basic training.

We also took over the domain management for the charity, and worked closely with Lighthouse's email support service to ensure that the email service was not disrupted during the transition.

What was The Lighthouse Project, Crawley's response?

As Lizzie was able to provide the information and images needed for the website design and build, the whole process was completed within a month. This meant the site could go live before Christmas, which was what Lighthouse had wanted.

It has been such an exciting and enjoyable experience working with Heather and the team in putting our new website together. They made the process so easy and have done such a fantastic job. We had a long conversation at the beginning of the process where we got to express exactly what we required and they have delivered above and beyond our expectations. Thank you Church Pages!'"

Lizzie Ashley, Project Leader, The Lighthouse Project Crawley

We were so happy to have been able to help this amazing charity and are praying that the Lord blesses their ministry mightily. You can read the full case study of how Church Pages helped The Lighthouse Project, Crawley here, and visit their new website here.