When someone searches for a Methodist church near them, what they find is a bit of a lottery. Sometimes it is a lively website with the right service times. Sometimes it is a page nobody has touched in years, or nothing at all. For a lot of people that search is the front door.

In the first conversation episode of Connected, Ben Hollebon talks to Dave Webster, the Digital Content Manager who looks after methodist.org.uk and, very often, the person who puts a church's details right when they are wrong on Church Finder.

They talk about why church information drifts out of date, and why that is about systems that do not talk to each other, with nobody at fault. They talk about what a simple page for every church could include: the location, the service times, someone to contact and a sense of what to expect on a first visit. Churches that already have a good website of their own would keep it, with the page linking through. Churches without one would still be easy to find. And they talk about the hard part, keeping it all right without asking more of local people than they have time to give.

Welcome to Connected. I'm Ben Hollebon. Here's something that happens every week somewhere across the Connexion.

Someone moves to a new town or they've been through a hard few months or they've just started wondering about faith.

They pick up their phone and search for a church near them. What they find is a bit of a lottery.

Sometimes it's great, a lively website, service times that are right, a friendly photo of the people who'll be there on a Sunday.

Sometimes it's a page that hasn't been touched in four years. Sometimes it's nothing at all.

And that matters because for a lot of people, that search is the front door.

If the service time is wrong, they turn up to a locked building. If there's nothing there, they simply don't come.

When we listen to people across the districts, this came up and again and again, and it came up with a lot of honesty.

Keeping a website going takes time and skills, and it often rests on one willing person.

When that person moves on, the website quietly stops.

So one of the things we're exploring is a simple idea that every church could have a clear, accurate page of its own,

looked after with the information the Methodist Church already holds and easy to find through the Church Finder tool on the Methodist Church website.

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I wanted to talk to someone who deals with this every week, and so Dave Webster, the Digital Content Manager.

And when a church details are wrong on the website, it's very often Dave who ends up putting them right.

So Dave, welcome to Connected. Thanks, Ben. Nice to be here.

For people who've never thought about who looks after a website, what does your week look like in terms of the main Methodist Church website?

Well, in terms of the main Methodist Church website, methodist.org.uk, I sort of have sort of an overview of that.

So that means I look after a whole team of editors from various departments within the Connexional team who are responsible for creating and maintaining their content on the various website areas.

So I look after that. I moderate the content myself just to make sure that it's all accurate and mistakes are kept to a minimum.

I also work on the behind the scenes stuff, so that's developing new features for the website, maintaining the bits that drive it with our website developers.

And I look after various other sort of digital platforms as well, like the one we use to send out our Methodist News email.

And when a church's details are displaying incorrectly on Church Finder, what happens at the moment?

Can you talk me through what a typical request looks like or situation?

Well, at the moment, on the Church Finder, we've got a link that says if you spot something inaccurate, please let us know here in this little form.

And I do get sent quite a lot of these, usually because the minister's details are out of date because they moved on a while ago.

Or it could be that a website has changed or it could be the church has closed and we haven't really registered that here.

So those come to me and at the moment I have to manually update them. And because there's quite a lot to do of those, I tend to do them in batches so it doesn't interfere with my day to day work too much.

But it is this sort of cumbersome and inefficient way, really, I think, of keeping that data up to date.

And why is it that the information does drift out of date? What are the reasons that we're finding at the moment that the information on Church Finder is out of date compared to someone submitting something through Online Suite?

Well, at the moment, there isn't a link between the data that goes into the Online Suite and the Church Finder, which makes it a bit difficult, really, because there's two separate places where the data needs to be updated separately.

So it's a bit of a frustrating picture at the moment. That's why we're moving to a much more streamlined way of doing this.

So it's not a case of we don't know what the data is or what the correct data is.

It's more a case of just kind of the systems in the back end not talking to each other in the right way and not syncing up properly.

Yeah, that's right. And because of time available in my job, it's difficult for me to keep on top of the changes that may be put into the Online Suite, but not registered yet on the Church Finder.

So taking that intermediate step where I have to sort of duplicate a change that's come through on the Online Suite is going to make a huge difference and it'll be a lot better.

So it will end up saving you time. It will most importantly end up saving local people's time because they're not having to worry about data being incorrect or out of date.

And hopefully it will all be updated with one submission rather than across multiple platforms.

Yeah, exactly. It makes total sense.

Absolutely. Yeah, that sounds like a sensible idea going forward.

There's some development happening on the Church Finder tool as well. It was relaunched back when the website launched a couple of years ago.

If a church had a simple page of its own on the Methodist Church website, what do you think needs to be on it to make it useful for someone who is looking to come to church on a Sunday or join a midweek service?

Well, I think just the sort of basic minimum, really, of clear information for especially for first time visitors, as you were mentioning, maybe people who are coming to faith for the first time.

We need the information to be really accessible. We need it to read to those sort of people in a friendly way.

So it needs to be welcoming and it needs to have all the basic information. So the location of the church, service times, a contact for people who might have questions.

That's the sort of basic minimum that we'd need for every church. But then obviously there's other information that churches could have on there that would make it more useful for people.

So what they could expect when they get there, what kind of service that the church has on a Sunday, maybe some images of anything that breaks down the barrier that might stop somebody or make somebody hesitate before going to church for the first time.

And what about a church that's already got like a brilliant website of their own? You know, it's updated, it's got great content on. How does that link in with what we're planning with the Church Finder tool?

Well, I think in those cases, it's a both and. So having a simple basic page then with a link through to that website so that people can find it straight away on the Church Finder and they can see where it is.

They can see the basic details and then link through to the church's own website. I think that would be the best of both worlds, really.

And what about for the church that doesn't have a website, that doesn't have the time or the skills or the energy to invest in and looking at doing one?

What's their route to having something online that can point people to them if they're searching?

Well, their route, and we do really recognise this issue, so we want to keep things as simple as possible while still maintaining the essential information.

So as long as we're confident that the basic details are right and the service times are correct,

then there should be minimal sort of need for people in that local church to come on to some sort of platform and update things.

What we do need to make sure is that those basic details are kept up to date.

So we're looking at and at the moment, this work is in development and we're having focus groups with church,

people from local churches to sort of try and finesse this. But we're looking at possibly having reminders.

So some contact maybe in the circuits who would get email reminders saying this is the data we have for this local church.

Can you please check that it is correct and let us know if anything has changed?

So we're trying to make it as simple as possible for that church information to be kept up to date.

Yeah. And it sounds like those focus groups are really helpful hearing from local people.

Has there been anything in it that surprised you that's come up?

Well, the results, there actually was one yesterday, so it's all happening right now.

So the results haven't really been written up yet.

But I gather that the one thing that's come through is the level of enthusiasm for this new project.

People are really, really keen that the Methodist Church as a whole and all the local churches really step up

and improve their website presence because people do recognise the importance of that,

especially nowadays for the mission of the church as a whole.

Part of the Digital Transformation Programme's kind of main objective is trying to take away some of the administrative burdens

and compliance issues that kind of fall to local churches and circuits.

If we're developing a tool that reads data that we hold centrally that we know is going to be more up to date in the future,

so we can populate a public facing church's profile with that information,

then that goes a long way to not having a church have to update it themselves.

Obviously, there's still an element where we need churches and we need circuits to help us verify things like service times

or the right contact information. Now, we do that through the Online Suite already.

How do we marry up asking local people to do less with something like ensuring they're checking that the contact details are correct

or the service times are correct in Online Suite? How does that work in terms of that kind of missional aspect?

I think this is still being a live issue. It's being thought about, as I say, with the help of people in the local churches.

I think it'll be largely down to really identifying who might be the key person.

If not in a local church, then in a circuit who has access to that information and making them the conduit.

So rather than expecting people in local churches to have to go onto a platform regularly or answer queries that they just haven't got time for,

we're looking for the people that do have a bit of time and that have access to the information at a local level.

They could be the most efficient sort of contact to say, oh, yes, OK, yes, the services at such and such a local church,

yes, they're still the same or actually they've changed the service times to 10am or whatever it might be.

If someone's listening now and they know that their church's details are wrong on Church Finder today,

what should they do at the moment and what's going to change in?

Well, I suppose we can't put a timeline exactly on it yet, but what's going to change in the future for them?

So now the best way to update any details is to register them through the Online Suite, because as we've been discussing,

we're moving from this picture where we've had different databases basically that didn't talk to each other,

to having one source of all the data and that data in the Online Suite will then be used to update the Church Finder.

Dave, thanks so much for joining me and chatting about this.

I know that it's a lot of work and a lot of planning and a lot of focus groups and research going into the right way to do something.

It's not always as simple as just going and doing it.

We want to make sure that the right decisions are made and they're the right decisions for, you know, not just now, but in the future too.

So it's been really, really helpful listening how you're transforming that particular part of the website and all the work you do as well.

And I think a lot of people will recognise that picture of kind of relying on one, maybe two people to keep everything going online.

That's definitely something that we've seen and heard about as part of the Digital Transformation Programme.

Yeah, exactly. And thanks. Thanks for having me, Ben.

I mean, as I was saying, I think especially for younger people now and especially for people who don't really know much about the church, who might be interested in Christianity for the first time,

this is a really key area people expect to be able to find information quickly and easily now.

And I think this this project is really, really going to help. Yeah.

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And as you said, you know, whether it's younger people, older people, people in general, it has to start with people.

It has to be about the people looking to explore faith, wanting to go deeper in faith, because if we can engage them and meet with them,

then we can hopefully look at a transformational moment with them in faith.

And I think it means making it simple for the people who know a church best to keep its information right and then making sure that information shows up wherever someone goes looking for it,

whether it's on their own website, whether it's on our website or or other places to.

Yeah, actually. We're at the stage of obviously doing a lot of research.

And Dave has said about the focus groups and everything. So it's really exciting to hear about that.

And in the meantime, as Dave said, if your church's details are out of date, please use the Online Suite tool to make updates.

And then the edits will come through going forward at a time as we make those updates to the Church Finder.

And of course, if you want to get in touch about the Digital Transformation Programme, you can find the link on the website and the contact details there.

This has been Connected. Thanks so much for listening.