Client work. Church · registered charity
Restoring Lives Worship Center
Public website, church management system and installable app for a London church, on one codebase.
rlwc.org.uk
The brief
The church ran on WhatsApp groups, paper registers and a template website, across four congregations in London, Ilford, Connecticut and Virginia. The brief was one system for the public, the members and the office, that the church's own staff could run day to day.
Their letter, built in the TEKWROUGHT monument style
In figures
Counted from the codebase.
- 26
- Public pages
- 21
- Staff modules
- 8
- Member pages
- 61
- Database models
- 19
- API endpoints
- 8
- Permission roles
- 6
- Scheduled jobs
- 83
- Academy lessons
What we built
Public website
- Service times, visit planning and directions
- What's on with a live calendar and an .ics feed for Google and Apple calendars
- Sermon library, filled from YouTube every day by a scheduled job
- Ministers, mission, beliefs, feeding programme and Benevolence Fund pages
- Prayer requests and invitations for the Bishop to preach
Church management (CRM)
- Membership with visitor, regular and member stages and automatic certificates
- Pastoral care: Sunday register, absence tracking, annual reviews, private notes
- Prayer request inbox with Web Push alerts to staff phones
- Benevolence Fund approvals in two stages: ministers' board, then treasurer
- Finances, giving reports and a Gift Aid claim export for HMRC
- Email broadcasts to members who have consented, with one-click unsubscribe
Members' portal and Academy
- Self sign-up with email verification; staff roles given only by the office
- The Academy: 3 courses, 21 modules, 83 lessons, exams and certificates
- A question drafter that writes exam questions from the lesson text, with no AI service
- The prayer meeting link released only to members the office has welcomed
Giving
- Stripe Checkout for one-off and monthly gifts, Apple Pay and Google Pay
- Signed webhooks record every gift; receipts by email
- Gift Aid declarations captured at checkout
Security and compliance
- Own session auth with bcrypt hashing and two-factor sign-in for staff
- Role-based permissions checked on every server action, with an audit log
- Data subject requests, retention clean-up and nightly backups
- UK GDPR record of processing; charity details on every page
Technology
| Layer | Components |
|---|---|
| Front end | Next.js 15 (App Router), React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Motion, custom WebGL |
| Back end | Next.js server actions and route handlers, Prisma ORM, Zod validation |
| Data | PostgreSQL on Neon, Vercel Blob for images |
| Auth | JWT sessions (jose), bcrypt, TOTP two-factor |
| Payments | Stripe Checkout, subscriptions and webhooks |
| Messaging | Resend email on the church's own domain, Web Push |
| Hosting | Vercel, with cron jobs; installable PWA with an offline page |
Outcome
67
Pages across the public site, the members' portal and the staff system
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