English-speaking church in the Hague

Years ago my then ten year-old daughter, Emma, was enjoying what should have been a wonderful Thanksgiving with dear friends on their family ranch in Texas when something terrible happened. The heavy metal door caught a gust of wind and slammed her elbow into the door jam. We immediately jumped into action. A fast drive to the emergency room and a few x-rays later we were happy to hear there was no serious damage. No cast. No long-term issues. In moments like these it is so important to have access to reliable data. If we didn’t have access to a doctor and access to x-rays we would not have been able to make a confident assessment of how to get back to good. Data is an incredible tool when you are trying to make good decisions.

Recently, Nicole felt a nudge from God to explore the website SEO (search engine optimization) numbers for our church. She discovered that our site was almost unseen. If you did a Google search for an “English-speaking church in the Hague” you would not find Trinity on the first page or even the second page. We showed up on the third page. This is roughly equivalent to being invisible. Nicole knew that we were a healthy, vibrant, life-giving church. She knew Trinity was a special place and she believed it was our responsibility to help people find us. The data showed that we were one of the best kept secrets in town. A week later she found out about Jason.

Jason was new to Trinity and had independently discovered that our website was in need of some significant upgrades. Once these two found each other it was only a matter of weeks before we would discover more compelling data. Here’s a few of the highlights: Our Google analytics were being sent to a “Christian ministry” called Trinity International Church in India. We still don’t know how this happened. Our site lacked security and compliance. Most importantly, the search words people use and the matrix Google uses for searches were almost completely missing. Our site looked good but no one was finding it. Furthermore, we discovered that 12,000 people every day in the Netherlands were searching for “English-speaking church” and none of them were seeing us. Within weeks Jason built a new site and we went live.

This is just the beginning, but we have already bumped up to page one on a Google search. The new site is much cleaner, easier to use and has many more compelling features. We are on the move and God has done a great thing bringing all of these things together as only He can. It’s a process I call, “convergence” and it’s captured in the beautiful words of Romans 8:28, “God works all things together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purposes.” If you haven’t done so already please go to trinitychurch.nl and have a look yourself. Leave us a review on Google (open Google maps and find Trinity International Church and click on it to open a menu where you can leave a review).

“Trinity International Church is a safe, welcoming, community of Christ-followers who uphold a high view of Scripture, celebrate unity in diversity and participate fully in the abiding Christian life as described in the Bible. We are united by the principle that in the essentials there should be unity, in all else there should be charity.”