Santa Barbara Trinity Episcopal Church

Website Development & Design
2015 to present

The Portfolio

After 20 years of service, the beloved and highly esteemed rector, Mark Asman, Trinity Episcopal Church was planning his retirement. With great foresight, he gave the congregation three years to prepare and the action plan they developed resulted in an adjunct website called The Portfolio. This website would aid them in the search for a new rector.

Their process was befitting their reputation of being a progressive faith group. The Portfolio Committee set out on a mission of listening. They listened to the congregation in various ways, with a parish-wide survey, 12 church-wide ‘parish conversations’, held a Trinity History Day and an open invitation to dialogue with the committee. The goal was to name, “What is life-giving here?”

The Portfolio website is the result of the listening they engaged in, what they learned and a process that they feel made a profound difference just by the fact of doing it. It’s a marvelous example of what an entity can and ought to do when preparing for transformation of any kind be it a new pastor or a business entering into the connected world online.

In their own words, “We hope for a person with empathy and spiritual depth, a person of mindfulness and commitment to pastoral presence in community. We pray for a meditative person who engages in regular spiritual practice in addition to Sunday worship, who is comfortable and interested in sharing the experience of the spiritual journey. …We are eager for a rector who preaches with creativity and insight.”

What We Did & Why

We were delighted and honored to engage in this project with the wonderful, energized and hard-working committee members sent our way to facilitate it. The site itself needed to be purely informational about the church philosophy, parish vitality and standing so candidates could familiarize themselves with the church and all its functions. The site URL is its own and not a subsection of the main church website. We had the freedom to create a site that didn’t resemble the main site and was rather direct in its need to appeal to applicants rather than congregation members. There was emphasis on coming from the heart, being authentic and speaking sincerely and directly to the future church leader.

Visit the site