I’d like to give you an update on the Church website and how it’s doing.  This website costs Good Shepherd Lutheran about $100 a year to operate. Everything is set to run almost on autopilot, it only needs one operator to post the sermon weekly and make minor changes here and there.  The $100 fee is paid to WordPress for the domain and other blogging services that come with the account.

Since 2019 we have ranged between 5000 – 10000 hits per year.  The biggest year was of course 2020, no need for explanation there.  The second largest year was 2024.

I’m going to dig into 2024 and give you a more detailed analysis on how our website did that year.  It will help you understand how people interact with us online before visiting.  In the year of 2024 we had two spikes in traffic about the time of year you would expect. 

The posts and pages most frequented can be seen below:

It shouldn’t be a surprise that we got a lot of traffic on our welcome page.  That page has custom designed SEO in place that attracts people seeking a church with a search engine.  For the same reasons it’s also no surprise that the preschool is the second runner up.

The next one I want you to look at is the “what we believe…” page.  That’s what I look at to gauge how many people visited and decided whether or not we may be a good fit for them.  When I typed it up I actually just used the pamphlet that Rev Alsop had made years ago.  There was a stack sitting around that had all that written up already.  Only things I added were direct links to the Book of Concord and the main LCMS website.

I think it’s a fair bet to assume that most of the traffic we are getting to the sermons is from members of this church.  But that’s not the whole story. Below is a snapshot of our web traffic the world over.

Just by doing what we normally do every Sunday Good Shepherd Lutheran here in Tehachapi is proclaiming the gospel all over the world.  Yes most of the traffic is likely very local because we are a local church, but not all of it.  God’s Word never returns void, never underestimate the power of being a church body that values preaching the gospel. 

Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God (Rom 10:17).