I can recommend
Smashing magazine for design and technical web inspiration. The trend right now is toward simple and straight forward without the dimensional and gradient effects that we design types like so much. (We're due for a redesign along these lines, but the underlying look and feel should be pretty easy to maintain.)
You definitely want to build responsive design into your site so it can be viewed on desktop and mobile. I strongly recommend keeping a tablet or phone in front of you as you work so you can see how things display.
We've generally had good service from Squarespace. You can pick one of their templates, plug in your graphics and text, and be up and going in no time. I was impressed that they had employees running up 6 flights of stairs with gas cans for their generators to keep key components running during Hurricane Sandy. However, you will find them hard to work with if your site is going to be collaborative: if you give another person editing access, you have to open up the entire site even if someone else is only going to be working on one subpage. And while their forms are a breeze to build (for events like VBS registration, etc.) you can't have someone other than the site administrator or "contact" receive info from the forms.
After our landing page, we get a lot of traffic on resources like sermons and articles. Info about our worship and our pastor is also accessed frequently. We had a visitor recently who said he loved the information we gave about our beliefs and what to expect in worship (he didn't know I worked on the web site). Make sure your address and ability to contact the church are on the site. (You'd be amazed how often I find this missing on an organization's site.)
Google maps are a good resource. I don't know if this is always a problem, but I was on a church site the other day that uses MapQuest and they had ads of questionable taste popping up. Someone mentioned this about GoDaddy -- it's something to consider if you are using a free or inexpensive resource that is supported by ads.
I keep a block on my landing screen that can be changed easily for event information or seasonal photos. Events link to individual inside pages that can easily be enabled or disabled. The landing page looks fine without this block. This enables me to keep the site updated and avoid dead links or out-of-date info. Nothing says "dead organization" faster than an out-of-date website.
