Working with a Reformed Christian studio: the FAQ

Four Thirteen Studios is a Reformed Christian-owned studio. That's a phrase we put in the footer and on the about page, but it raises questions we get asked privately and might as well answer publicly. This post is the FAQ — written for prospective clients, Christian and non-Christian, and for the developers who occasionally email asking how this works.

Do you only work with Christian clients?

No. We work with clients of any background — religious or not — who want a fixed-price, well-built site or app. We have no faith test for clients. The studio's convictions shape howwe work, not which clients we'll work for.

Will you turn down work that conflicts with your beliefs?

Honestly, yes — there are a small number of project categories we won't take. We won't build gambling sites, dating products that exist primarily for casual sex, occult or explicitly anti-Christian platforms, or tools whose primary purpose is to deceive (e.g., review-fraud software, fake-engagement tools). The list is short and we don't litigate edge cases publicly. If we're not the right studio for a project on conscience grounds, we'll say so on the kickoff call and try to recommend someone else.

For the avoidance of doubt: we have no problem working with companies whose ownership or staff have beliefs different from ours. The conscience filter is on the nature of the product, not on the people building it.

What does "Reformed" actually mean?

Reformed is a tradition within Protestant Christianity that traces its theological commitments through the 16th-century Reformation — Calvin, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Westminster Confession, the Three Forms of Unity. In practical terms, the convictions most relevant to running a studio are: the goodness of work as vocation, the comprehensive lordship of Christ over every sphere of life (including code and invoices), and the importance of plain, truthful speech — including in business dealings.

We're not going to evangelize at you on a kickoff call. We will ship you a site and send you an invoice that matches the quote.

Why mention any of this at all?

Two reasons. First, because clients deserve to know who they're hiring. The studio's pricing model, scope discipline, and operational practices are downstream of specific convictions, and labeling them as such is more honest than pretending they appeared from neutral business reasoning.

Second, because some clients specifically want to hire a Christian-owned studio and otherwise have no way to know. We're findable for them.

Do you charge less for ministries / churches / non-profits?

Sometimes. Case by case. Don't assume yes — assume no, ask. We're a small studio that has to make payroll, and the worst thing we can do for a ministry is take a project at a price that makes us deliver poorly because we're losing money. We'd rather quote honestly, propose a reduced scope that fits a smaller budget, or refer you to a volunteer-driven shop if the budget is genuinely zero.

Will you work on Sundays?

We try not to, and we don't schedule deliveries or client calls for Sundays. Real-world emergencies happen — a production site is down at 11pm Saturday, you can guess what that turns into — and we'll respond. But the default cadence of the studio assumes a six-day work rhythm, not a seven-day one. We flag this so clients aren't surprised when Sunday emails go unanswered until Monday.

If I'm not a Christian, will any of this affect me?

Practically, you'll notice three things, and none of them are theological:

1. The number on your quote will equal the number on your invoice.
2. Scope additions will be written down before they're billed.
3. You'll own the domain, hosting, database, and accounts on day one.

That's the whole observable footprint. Clients sometimes don't notice the convictional layer at all until they read the about page after the project ships, and that's fine. The work is what we sell.

Where do I read more?

For the convictional layer, the about page has a longer treatment. For the practical layer, the process page walks through what working with us actually looks like. For specific arguments, the rest of the notes go into the technical and pricing decisions in detail.