The New Way to Do Church

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.

Pradeepan and Amreitha Jeeva at their Macs and ready to chat!

Encourage online community by sharing a hashtag and asking those watching to post a pic.

Daniel E. Groves demonstrates how to take a selfie before the Hope City broadcast.
Jeremy Foster, Hope City Church

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.

Scott and Kelly Niemeier, HighPoint Church

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.

Brad and Jessica Hampton, SOCO Church

Have a pre-show that informs and encourages your church. Give them tips for worshiping online and sharing the broadcast on their social media.

https://www.soco.church

Before you kick of your live stream let your church know what you have available for kids and students.

Andy and Christy Cass, Echo Church

Make it is easy to give and get COVID-19 updates. Put vital information in your Facebook Live Stream.

Pradeepan and Amreitha Jeeva, Kalos Church

Have your broadcast schedule available if you are not currently broadcasting.

Jimn Kyles, Anchor Bend

Access

Offer people multiple platforms to join your live stream on a landing page and on your home page.

Shaun Nepstad, Fellowship Church, Antioch, CA

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.

Terrence and Johanne Wilson, Cool Church

Take your worship guide online with a worship experience landing page that tells people how to connect and where to take next steps.

Rich Wilkerson Jr., Vous Church

Create a Facebook event for your weekend service with live streaming information that people can share.

Terrence and Johanne Wilson, Cool Church

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!

10 Live Streaming Solutions for Churches Adjusting to COVID-19 Outbreak

How to Connect with Your Church Online During Social Distancing

Some churches are adjusting to holding services online for the first time now that social distancing guidelines are in place across the country. How can we help pastors live streaming for the first time avoid mistakes and interruptions to their broadcast? Here is a list of tips and insights to help make the transition smoother.

  1. Avoid being kicked off of Facebook and Youtube by not playing copyrighted music in your pre-service buffer video.
    • For example: if you are playing Hillsong on your pre-service countdown video you can get kicked off for copyright infringement.
    • Live music is fine, but playing tracks could cause the music to be picked up as copyrighted.
  2. Combine your efforts. If you do not have a permanent location or equipment team up with other churches that do.
    • Maybe one person has the equipment and the other has the permanent space. Or maybe you have team members that can do worship that will be used by all on the team-up. What a witness this could be for your community.
  3. Encourage people to share the premier instead of hosting multiple watch parties for greater interaction. 
    • “For greater interaction on Facebook live (both live or pre-recorded)… watch parties and multiple services actually hurt interactions. Doing just one 10am service allowed us to exceed all my expectations with interactions online. Watch parties took people away from the momentum of numbers in our primary group chat and viewers.” Contributed by Brad Hampton, Soco Church, Bentonville, AR. 
  4. “Designate someone to run and man the stream chat as there were questions and comments in real-time that needed to be addressed and or deleted.” Contributed by Michael Matthew, Eternal Rock Church, Houston TX 
  5. The benefits of pre-recording vs live streaming.
    • “Higher resolution on broadcasting prerecorded. Post-production editing. Adding text, videos, slides in post-production editing, for churches that are unable to steam that content in real-time. Broadcasting prerecorded overall decreases the room for error.  We have the ability to live stream. But just pre-recorded last night for this weekend. And they’re going to pre-record for the next two or three weekends Starting tomorrow.” Contributed by John Pomeroy, New Anthem Church, Mount Clemens, MI
  6. Free live streaming is available. Church Online Platform from Open Church (Life.Church and the Bible App) is totally free and will always be free. You can find out more here: https://churchonlineplatform.com.
    • “At Life.Church, one of our core values is irrational generosity. We’re committed to equipping the “capital C” Church in every way we can. That’s why the Church Online Platform is available completely free of charge. Our definition of “free” extends to support and updates, too. You’ll get personalized customer service, software upgrades, and new features for the life of the tool.”
  7. Free Resources for Kids:
  8. Worship Solutions from Substance Church
  9. A Church Communications Strategy/Calendar during Covid-19. Live Stream Content Starting at 9:44 https://youtu.be/35QtLDdLrsM  (Contributed by Jon-Michael Sherman, TheRocket.Media)
  10. More live stream options:

15 Things Church Planters Can Do During COVID-19 Outbreak


Strategies for Church Planters Adjusting to COVID-19 and Social Distancing

What do you do if you are a church planter preparing for a launch day later in 2020 or 2021? The landscape is changing day-by-day right now. Things may look different a week or two weeks from now. Even so, I wanted to share some things that can help church planters move forward in a time where social distancing is the rule and there is a pandemic impacting people’s live like we have not seen in recent memory.

If you are a church planter here are 15 things you can do right now:

  1. Pray –
    1. That the spread of this virus would be contained and that we will see a turnaround in the number of people being infected and dying from this disease.
    2. For healthcare workers.
    3. For wisdom for leaders.
    4. For those impacted by the virus.
    5. For people to place their trust in God.
  2. Follow Community guidelines regarding social distancing. Educate yourself on what others are doing to implement these guidelines and learn from their messaging.
  3. Have contingency plans for launch day. Have three timelines. For example:
    1. Plan for your September Launch Day.
    2. Have a backup plan to launch in October
    3. What would it look like to launch at the beginning of November or in 2021?
  4. Website – Make sure to have a landing page if not a recruiting website up as soon as possible.
  5. Giving – Make giving easy by having online options available. Some platforms will offer free use of their giving platform for church planters for an introductory period. 
  6. Go online with your message now. Don’t wait for Launch Day or Sunday to start offering hope and prayer. Take advantage of social media platforms to offer messages of hope, pointing people to God, encouragement, and prayer.
    1. Offer online prayer meetings.
    2. Offer daily short encouragement.
  7. Offer a listening ear. One of the greatest gifts we can give someone is the time to hear them out. FaceTime or call people and just check-in, ask questions, listen, and offer to pray with them.
  8. Stay informed. Be in touch with what is happening in our nation, your state, and your local community. What guidelines are being given and what needs are being presented that can be prayed for?
  9. Be Others Focused – Make everything you do and say is about the people you are serving and not about you and your church or your unique needs in this uncharted landscape of church planting.
  10. Prepare the things now that don’t involve meeting with people or will take away from your time focusing on people once some of the meeting guidelines are lifted.
  11. Look for the opportunities to serve that are being presented that may not be available if circumstances were different. Serving local business and medical professionals For example:
    1. Offering free coffee in the drive-through at a local coffee shop to medical professionals.
    2. Support for families at home with kids.
  12. Stay connected to your church network and other ministry leaders for encouragement, resources, and new ideas to continue moving forward.
  13. Broadcast – Learn how to use live streaming platforms for online presentations. For example: 
    1. Quick Guidelines for Live Streaming a Church Service
    2. Zoom
    3. Facebook Premiere
    4. Youtube Premiere
    5. Church Online Platform
  14. Use money wisely. Make every dollar count and save when you can and spend only what is necessary. Wait when you can, and trust God with your financial preparations.
  15. Use technology to stay connected to your team during social distancing
    • Group Messaging Apps: Slack and GroupMe
    • Cloud Services for collaboration: Google Drive & Evernote
    • Video Messaging: Marco Polo & Google Hangouts
    • Facebook: Groups, Page, Chat, & Messaging
    • Instagram
    • Twitter
    • Youtube: Public Videos, Private Videos for Your Team, & Past Broadcasts

What else would be helpful? Add to the list in the comments below. Thanks!