Owning your presence · 7 min read · Updated August 2026
Why a Facebook page isn’t a website
Plenty of small churches run entirely on a Facebook page, and it is a reasonable place to start. But a page is rented ground. It is worth understanding exactly what you control and what you don’t, so you can decide what to do about it — and there are useful things to do this month even with no budget at all.
Step 1. What you don't control
Who sees your posts. Facebook decides. A post to a page with 200 followers commonly reaches a small fraction of them, and you cannot pay your way out of that at a church budget.
Whether the page stays up. Pages get locked when the admin account has a login problem, and appealing it is slow. If one volunteer is the only admin, one lost password can take your entire online presence offline.
What sits next to your content. Ads and unrelated posts appear around yours, and you have no say in them.
Step 2. What a page genuinely does well
It is good for people who already follow you: quick updates, a cancelled service, photos from Sunday. Keep using it for that. The point of this guide isn’t that Facebook is bad — it is that it is not a substitute for an address of your own.
Step 3. What only a website gives you
An address you own, that works for someone with no Facebook account, that Google can index properly, and that nobody can switch off. When a neighbor searches for a church, a website you control is what puts you in the results on your own terms.
Step 4. Three things to do this month, for free
One. Claim your Google Business Profile if you haven’t. For a small church this does more than a website and costs nothing — our step-by-step guide covers it.
Two. Add a second admin to your Facebook page, as above.
Three. Put your service time, address, and a contact name in the page’s “About” section as plain text. Most churches leave it half-empty, and it is the first thing a visitor opens.