21 Online Church Innovations
I visited as many churches online as I could this Sunday. During my church channel surfing, I learned a lot about the adjustments churches are making to bring their worship experience online. For many churches, live streaming has already been available. Now that online is the only way churches can gather for Sunday Services, some are mixing things up to create a new type of online worship experience.
The 21 things I saw churches doing seem to fall in one of the following categories: Presentation (of the message), Worship (the music), Connection, Information, and Access.
Presentation
Join people in their homes by creating an intimate environment to share your message instead of preaching from a platform. For example, teach from your living room as if you were in a small group gathering.
Have a one-on-one conversation with people.
Give your church something consistent in a time when everything else seems to be changing by teaching from the stage as usual.
Worship
Creating a studio worship experience that offers some variety from what people may be expecting.
Use pre-recorded worship to simplify your production while still delivering a quality worship experience.
Take worship to the living room with a small group acoustic set.
Have the worship team on stage for a familiar setup for worship.
Connection
Use social media to take people behind the scenes.
Take communion virtually. Bring liturgy into the living and connect tangibly with those in your church.
It’s time to chat during church. Man the conversation feed for a personal touch.
Encourage online community by sharing a hashtag and asking those watching to post a pic.
Connect before you communicate. Take some time to get real before jumping into your message. Talk about the reality of how people are having to join church this morning, and what life looks like right now.
Information
Speak to your church directly with a video on your homepage explaining what they can expect from you and your church during this time.
Have a pre-show that informs and encourages your church. Give them tips for worshiping online and sharing the broadcast on their social media.
Before you kick of your live stream let your church know what you have available for kids and students.
Make it is easy to give and get COVID-19 updates. Put vital information in your Facebook Live Stream.
Have your broadcast schedule available if you are not currently broadcasting.
Access
Offer people multiple platforms to join your live stream on a landing page and on your home page.
Make your replay immediately available for those who may be viewing your church online for the first time and do not know your service times.
Take your worship guide online with a worship experience landing page that tells people how to connect and where to take next steps.
Create a Facebook event for your weekend service with live streaming information that people can share.
This Sunday showed me there are many great online church experiences. I really enjoyed tuning in and hearing from people I normally wouldn’t be able to get a message from.
What are some other things you see churches doing that seems to be working well in this new church online landscape? Leave a comment and let me know!
