Building a website that shines the Light of Jesus Christ in Irvine, California

When Pastor James Kim (church planter to Irvine, California) contacted us about building a new website for their brand new church, we jumped at the opportunity. Every aspect of this website was created with the prospective guest in mind, making it as easy as possible for someone to visit City Light Baptist Church.

The Problem

Irvine is home to some of the biggest mega churches in southern California, yet even with several in the area, it is estimated that only 1 out of every 10 people claim to have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

That’s why God called James Kim and his family to leave their home in Alabama to plant a brand new church in the heart of Irvine—to invite people into a life changing relationship with Jesus Christ. Being based in California ourselves, we were thrilled to hear that Pastor Kim was interested in our services. The more we chatted, the more we realized that City Light Baptist Church was going to need to make a big impact online in order to effectively reach their community.

Yet there was one problem—City Light hadn’t even had it’s first service yet!

Regardless, we jumped at the challenge of creating a website, outreach videos, website videos, and more to help City Light invite guests to attend their grand opening service.

The Solution

Once Pastor Kim green-lit the project, we immediately began developing a strategy to engage prospective guests online. After some research on best practices, we came up with four digital media deliverables and two services that we thought would best accomplish the goal of getting more first-time guests.

The deliverables included:

• • Seven Page Custom Website
  • Social Media Outreach Video
  • “Our Story” Video
  • “Identity Video”
  • Custom Photography
  • Custom Copywriting

The website was built first in order to make sure the printed invites and future social media ads had a proper foundation. We used stock photos at first to populate the website (ew!) but these were quickly replaced with custom photography later on.

The next asset we created was the social media ad. We decided to film it at the church’s meeting location in order to give the audience visual continuity. The script was short and to the point and the call to action pointed prospective visitors to the “Plan Your Visit” page on the website.

The final two assets we created were the “Our Story” video and the “Identity Video”. The “Our Story” video was going to debut on the launch Sunday in order to introduce the Kim family and give first-time guests a greater perspective on how City Light came into existence. It would then live on the “About Us” page, giving prospective guests additional context as they browsed the website. The “Identity Video” was filmed before the launch Sunday but would not be completed until after in order to capture b-roll during their first official service.

The Result

The grand opening service of City Light Baptist Church was a huge success! Thanks to the effort of many area churches passing out invites throughout the area and a massive online campaign, there were 105 people in attendance. Praise the Lord!

Although much time an effort was put into the grand opening service, this was the only beginning. All of the assets we created are still being used to reach more people in Irvine. The investment that City Light Baptist Church made into developing a strong, consistent online presence is still yielding spiritual fruit as the church continues to grow and thrive.