Everything on this site is about one thing: learning to specifically cherish our neighbors. We started with the LGBTQ+ community because that's where this project began — and because the gap between generic welcome and genuine welcome is most visible there, most consequential, and most measurable.
But specific cherishing is not a technique for one group. It's a practice of following Jesus, and it gets more precise the more you do it. What you learn about welcoming queer people — how to say the real thing, how to make the invisible visible, how to close the gap between intention and signal — applies to everyone your community is called to see clearly.
Your website is one of the first places that practice either shows up or doesn't. Here's how to make it show up.
Before you read any further, open your church's website as if you've never been there before. Give yourself thirty seconds and don't click anything yet — just look at the first page.
Ask yourself: If I were queer, newly out, or just quietly wondering whether a place like this could hold someone like me — what does this page tell me in the first thirty seconds?
Write down what you actually see. Not what you intend. What's actually there.
Why this matters — and who's already doing the math
Before a queer person ever visits your church, they've already been there. They've scrolled your website, read your about page, looked at who's in your photos, and searched for any signal that someone like them has been here and found a home. They are very good at this. Most queer people learn early to read a room before they walk into it, because the cost of getting it wrong has historically been high.
What they're looking for is not a policy statement buried two clicks deep. They're looking for evidence — specific, visible, unmistakable evidence — that your welcome is real. The number of clicks it takes to find that evidence is part of the answer your website is already giving them.
The good news is that most of what makes a website genuinely welcoming is not complicated. Some of it takes five minutes. Some of it takes a conversation. All of it is worth doing.
First steps: what anyone can do today
These require no budget, no committee, and no congregational vote. They require only attention and a willingness to be honest about what you find.
- Count the clicks. Starting from your homepage, find your LGBTQ+ welcome information. How many clicks did it take? If the answer is more than one, that placement is information about what your institution considers central and what it considers supplementary. Move it closer to the surface.
- Search your site for the word "all." All are welcome. All people. All identities. Count how many times it appears in your welcome language. Universality is a hedge — it reaches everyone in theory and no one in particular. Make a note of where you could say something more specific instead.
- Look at your photos. Who is visible in your imagery and who isn't? Most church stock photography skews heavily toward white, straight-presenting couples and families. If bisexual people, trans people, queer people of color, nonbinary people, and older queer people are absent from your images, that absence is part of the message your website is sending before anyone reads a word.
- Check your staff bios for visibility — with permission. If any of your clergy or staff have chosen to make their identity or family visible in their bio, make sure that visibility is actually there and not softened by institutional hedging. A bio that mentions a same-sex spouse by name, if the person has chosen to share that, changes what a visitor believes is possible inside your community. This is never a pressure campaign — it's about honoring the visibility people have already chosen, and not accidentally erasing it.
- Look at your forms. Membership forms, event registrations, contact pages — if any of them offer only binary gender options, that's a fix worth making today. It takes ten minutes and it signals that your institution has thought about who might be filling out the form.
This week: putting the real thing into words
These take a little writing, but none of them require a congregational conversation. They require clarity about what your community already does and the willingness to say it plainly.
- Write a specific welcome statement. Not "we welcome all people" — something that answers the actual questions a queer person is asking. Can a same-sex couple be married here? Can a trans person serve on vestry? Can a nonbinary person be baptized under the name they use? If the answer to these questions is yes, say so. Specific answers to specific questions are what people who have been burned by institutional language actually trust.
- Add pronouns to staff bios. This is a small thing that signals a larger culture. If your clergy and staff list their pronouns, it tells a visitor that your community has thought about this, practices it, and won't make it a production when someone new needs the same courtesy.
- Publish your nondiscrimination policy somewhere visible. Many Episcopal churches have one that includes sexual orientation and gender identity. Almost none of them feature it anywhere a visitor would find it. If yours exists, give it a home on your about page or in your welcome section — not buried, not in the footer, somewhere a person actively looking for it would actually land.
- Add the Progress Pride flag to your homepage or about page. The original rainbow flag carries meaning. The Progress flag — with the chevron of black, brown, white, pink, and blue — adds trans representation and acknowledges queer people of color. Knowing the difference, and choosing deliberately, signals that your community is paying attention.
The words your website uses are doing constant work, whether you've thought about them or not. "Regardless of who you love" offers tolerance with a built-in qualifier. "Wherever you are on your journey" can quietly position queer people as the destination of the congregation's spiritual travel rather than members of a community. These patterns develop without anyone intending them. They're worth finding and rewriting — not because the intentions behind them are bad, but because the people reading them have learned to hear exactly what they say.
This month: building the infrastructure of welcome
These require a little coordination but not a major initiative. They're about making your digital presence reflect what your community actually is, rather than a generic version of a church.
- Create a dedicated welcome page for LGBTQ+ visitors — not buried in the about section, but linked clearly from your navigation or your homepage. This page should answer the questions people are actually asking: what your community practices, what the sacraments look like for queer people and families, who they can talk to if they want to learn more before visiting. It should feel like it was written for a specific person, because it was.
- Register with Church Clarity. This is a database where queer people search for affirming congregations before they visit. Being listed signals that your church has done at least some of the work. Not being listed is a signal too.
- Add restroom information to your visitor page. Before a trans or nonbinary person is standing in your hallway looking for a restroom, make sure that information is findable. It's a small thing that matters more than it sounds — it tells a visitor that someone thought about them specifically before they arrived.
- Feature queer voices in your regular content — not just during Pride Month. A reflection from a queer member, a sermon by a queer clergy person, a photo of a queer family at a regular parish event. Ordinary visibility in ordinary moments says more than any Pride graphic.
Ongoing: the culture your website reflects
A website can signal welcome. What it can't do is create it. The deeper work is congregational, and it happens in the informal spaces — coffee hour, small groups, the moment someone is misgendered and the room either responds or doesn't.
Build a year-round content calendar that marks Trans Day of Remembrance in November, National Coming Out Day in October, Bisexual Awareness Week in September. If your congregation only shows up visibly for queer people in June, that pattern is legible from the outside. Naming the other dates — and doing something real on them — is what turns seasonal welcome into something that holds across the year.
Audit your website annually. Do it with a queer person reading it fresh, or ask someone who doesn't attend your church to take thirty seconds and tell you what they see. The gap between what you intend and what's actually there has a way of widening without anyone noticing. A yearly read keeps it honest.
Tell people what you actually do. Not what you aspire to. What you practice, right now. Can a same-sex couple be married here? Say so. Do you bless the children of queer parents? Say so. Do you celebrate trans people as beloved and complete, exactly as they are? Say that. The people who need to find you are already looking. The more specific you are, the more clearly they can see you.
Specific cherishing of LGBTQ+ neighbors is not the ceiling. It's a practice that, once developed, opens into something larger — a community that has learned to see people clearly, to close the gap between intention and signal, to make the invisible visible. That practice applies to queer people. It applies to immigrants, to people with disabilities, to people of color, to anyone whose belonging has ever been treated as conditional.
Your website is one place to start. It's not the whole story. But it's where most people begin when they're deciding whether your community might be theirs.
Make it worth the visit.