Dear Friends,

As is so often the case with successful companies, Church Web Works was born from valuable lessons learned in the wake of misfortune. At the time, my brother Steve, co-worker Bill and I had just lost the online sports company that we had founded with such great dreams. It collapsed in the wake of the devastating technology crash of 2000.

We gathered at a local coffee shop and licked our wounds as we decided "what's next".  We felt that, learning from our previous experiences, we should focus on two important goals.

• We wanted total financial and technical control of the company. We did not want a repeat of what we had just experienced with venture funding and investors.
• Second, we knew that success lay in our strengths, our passions and contributing to society. 

To achieve the first goal appeared impossible. After all, we were all broke and jobless. So we quickly moved on to the next goal: What were we good at, what was our passion, and how could we fulfill a need?

Turns out we were relatively good at a number of things. Steve and I had recently created an in-stadium interactive game that was the largest of its kind in the world with more than 47,000 people interacting with it at one time. Bill, as an accomplished 3D artist, had just won an Emmy for the best television show open sequence.

But God had a better plan. He knew of a need we could fulfill to serve His church. As we chatted about ideas, Steve told us about the website that he was building for his church and wanted me to help with its design work. I said, wait couldn't building websites for churches be our business? We're good at design, we have built a software company, we know how to program, and we want to help churches communicate more effectively in the new world of the Internet.

Let’s do it.
 

But what about the money? How could we afford it?

The awesome thing is that God provided the right solutions for us. Bill was able to live in El Salvador for about eight months at a low cost of living. Steve was able to work at another company during the days and program at night. I was able to rely on some of my old contacts to do design work during the days to keep food in all of our mouths. 

We ran the company for nearly two years before we launched Church Web Works 1.0.  Since that initial launching of the software in 2002, we have been innovating and growing Church Web Works regularly.

It was a long tough road from launch to sustainability. For five years we assisted the company with supplementing earnings from other ventures. But we paid back our loans and had no need to take on outside investors. We grew our staff to double-digits and, as the founders, we still use our talents on a daily basis to make the software and company run efficiently.

As we I look back on our company, now in its eighteenth year, we can see  the hand of God on all that we did. We have full control of the company, we are doing what pleases God with our talents, and we are leaving a technical legacy that enables our many clients to effectively communicate with their communities.

Our employees have all been with us for more than a decade, and, trust me, they are not here for the great stock options and cafeteria. They are dedicated to serving the church and live that mission out with integrity and pride. I have never worked with such a great group of people; those clients who have spoken with folks from our team can attest to that. 

We pledge that we will run our company with integrity over the years that lie ahead. We will always be truthful, hard working and fair to our customers. 

Running a technology company is expensive. Costs rise. Yet we have stayed committed to our pricing structure. We believe that we give outstanding value for money. We will never try to sell you things you don't need or blast your sites with outside advertisements to boost our income.

We work with all of our vendors to make sure they are committed as we are to the success of our church clients. The one area of which I am particularly proud is that we have never taken a percentage of transactions (tithes) processed through the church websites. Every processing company offers kickbacks to a company, but we have told them that we do not want those kickbacks; we want all the money to go to the churches. 

We are independent from any large funding companies or even large ministries. That gives us freedom to concentrate on serving churches rather than serving an agenda or making a fortune. The bottom line is that we love what we are doing — from programming, design, customer service to tech support.

God has gifted us with many talents and we enjoy seeing what He is going to do next in our lives and in our company. 
 

Gavin Fysh 
Founder, Church Web Works