By TheChurch.Digital:

Barna recently released data that suggests the opportunity to pray with someone at your church is a highly attractive offer not only to Christians, but also to people of other faiths and even of no faith. Asked if they would consider joining your church for online prayer, 68% of all Christians responded positively (including those who only attend church infrequently). 32% of people of another faith also responded positively, and a shocking 24% of people with no faith at all.

57% of all U.S. adults are at least somewhat open to online prayer during a church gathering

?This means that your church’s Sunday livestream may not be the essential draw for your unchurched friends and neighbors. Perhaps a signpost on your social media that announces that your prayer room is open for personal, private, face-to-face prayer is what will bring them.?

Does Facebook Prayer Count?

Now, what does that mean? When an unchurched person — or a faithful churchgoer, for that matter — is open to prayer while attending a service on Facebook, how does that happen? Are Facebook prayers real enough, deep enough?

Yes, I know the Holy Spirit intercedes for us, translates our inchoate words and thoughts and feelings, so that our groanings are communicated as prayers.

Facebook prayers? They must count as well. God gets the Internet.

I have to confess, though — sometimes typing prayers in a chat pane with a prayer partner sort of feels “less” somehow. Oh, sometimes it’s wonderful. But I get distracted by a few things that lessen the experience.

Typos.  I know! I shouldn’t care! But, when the other person types “churnch” instead of “church,” my eye and my brain just take me off track. And, even worse, when I misspell something, I get overly concerned that the other person’s eye and brain are likewise off track. I find I never behave this way during spoken prayer. Please tell me I am not alone in this weakness.
Tone of voice. “I just need to know that God loves me.” Which word in that typed sentence is the emphasis? Is this an affirmation? Is this a statement of doubt? Is this person loved by others, and just wonders if God loves her? Or, she knows that God loves others, but does he love me? Or, is it the know part — that she thinks God loves her, but she needs to know it. Oh, if only she had said this simple sentence out loud, her tone of voice would tell me.
Body language. When I am praying with someone in person, I can tell a lot from their posture and facial aspect. Are they deeply troubled? Worried? Inert? Stoic? Nervous? Lonely? Distracted? Physically run down? But, online, I either make an assumption as if I know, or I do my best to pretend it doesn’t matter. Sometimes, I ask, but almost invariably my chat partner on the other end says — “Dude, I just need to know God loves me. I don’t need a counseling session.  Let’s pray, not talk.”
“Caroline is typing.” In an everyday texting conversation, it is so useful to see a notification that my text partner is typing something. It helps make the conversation flow. With text-based praying, it’s a mixed blessing. I see “Caroline is typing” so I pause from typing my prayer. Then, she stops, but I don’t see any text from her.  Should I resume my typed prayer? After I have entered and sent my portion of prayer, how do I know if she’s received and read it? Did she see what I wrote? Did it help? Are we done?
Anonymity. On Facebook, it’s common to see a post from a church host: “If you’d like prayer, let me know.”  Ummm…. Does that mean I have to respond to you here in the chat, in front of everyone?  I really don’t want to raise my hand in front of everyone to say “Yes, I need prayer” or “I’d like to pray”. I can only imagine later on hearing from others — “oh, I saw you asked for prayer. What was that about?” I’d just like it to be a bit more private than that.
Delays. Sometimes, there’s a link in the Facebook chat — “Want prayer? Click here.” Invariably, it brings me to a form on the church’s website, which I fill in, and then wait for an email response back. That’s a little too 20th century for me. It’s still prayer. It’s just a little slow.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s prayer! And, text-based prayer is a huge blessing, especially compared to the alternative, which is no prayer at all. It’s just that all my visual and aural faculties are absent from the environment. So, in a meaningful way, yes, it is a “less than” experience. Greater than zero, less than normal.

Facebook Church Livestream + Altar Face-to-Face Prayer

Let’s take another look at that link on Facebook that points to a prayer page. What if clicking that link didn’t bring the prayer-seeker to a form, but instead brought them to a virtual prayer chapel? This is how some churches have begun to use Altar Live.

They set up an Altar Live event as a Lobby, complete with tables and chairs.

Each table has a person already sitting there, and has “Prayer with Veronica” as a label. When a visitor arrives there directly from Facebook, they simply look around and see who they would like to pray with, choosing someone who feels like a good match based on gender, age or other demographic characteristics.

Prayer tables in Altar Live for private, face-to-face prayer time

My son (in Maine) and me (in Boston) in Altar Live at a prayer table

Church Metrics: People in Prayer, not People in Pews

The churches who have pursued this model talk about deepening a culture of prayer within their community.

As pastoral staff develop new metrics beyond attendance, the prayer life of the congregation is a natural target for measurement. In a recent podcast on Rich Birch’s unSeminary, Pastor Darell Roland of Rock Bridge Church is quite direct on this matter:

Rock Bridge no longer focuses on Sunday, but rather on the Monday through Thursday that lead into the Sunday. Instead of the executive team dashboard focusing on numbers like attendance, they focus on hours spent in prayer, number of people in prayer groups, and new people recruited and engaged in ministry and outreach. Look at engagement and participation in those areas. Attendance will be a by-product of those things.

Is your church looking to deepen a culture of prayer?  What mechanisms are you finding for corporate prayer and intercessory prayer?

Source: Does Facebook Prayer Count?

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By unSeminary: Thanks for tuning in to this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Dr. Jonathan Armstrong today, an educator who has also helped run the virtual reality (VR) lab at Moody Bible Institute.

Our perspective on what technology is and how it’s affecting our world keeps changing. In fact as younger generations have grown up with certain technologies, they don’t realize how much these things influence the world we live in today. However, technology is incredibly important to people’s lives and that means that pastoral care has to embrace it and learn to respond to it. Listen in as Jonathan shares the possibilities and pitfalls of using virtual reality in our churches in the future.

What is VR? // Virtual Reality at its core is a type of internet technology – a way of interacting with data streams online. VR products, such as headsets and motion tracking, allow you to manipulate, interact with and experience data in real space. In a broad sense a virtual church is any way you convene as a community using online technology, such as watching a livestream of church or meeting as a small group over Zoom. But more narrowly, a virtual church could be one that meets entirely on a virtual reality platform like AltspaceVR or Facebook Horizon.More virtual gatherings. // Very few churches exclusively use an online VR platform for their services, but many more churches have some sort of virtual meeting space where church online is streamed. In the future, Jonathan believes that significant numbers of people will use VR as a way to congregate. While Zoom was the medium of choice for meeting in 2020, the next two to five years will likely show a transition to more VR as goggles and other products becomes more affordable and accessible. However VR will open the door to not just a local gathering online, but rather a global one with people from many different countries. It will be a totally new kind of church experience.Think outside the box. // Whereas Zoom does boardroom table discussions well, VR is a much more abstract form of media. While you could do a boardroom discussion in VR, you would be massively underutilizing it’s creative potential. So when it comes to VR church, don’t simply think about replicating the inside of your building, with people virtually sitting in pews, staring at the front of the room. Rather, think of VR as something that can communicate Christian truth in any way you want. Facebook perceives that this is the most powerful communication medium that humankind has ever invented. This technology can change human history as much as the printing press did in our past.Pitfalls and possibilities. // In considering VR, the first mistake we should avoid is the assumption that it will be a tool to translate everything we currently do in a church service effectively into another format. While VR could replicate our current productions, it doesn’t play to the medium’s strengths. We need to be creative theologians in this matter and we can’t be afraid to fail as we innovate and try new things. Some possibilities could include immersing ourselves in stories from the Bible, or pastors putting themselves in a “Paul” avatar while preaching from the book of Ephesians. There could be a “community theater” approach to the Bible as well where participants show up in VR “dressed up” as different characters and enact as a community a story from scripture. And the possibilities for Christmas or Easter are endless. Communicating the truth visually. // 65% percent of people are visual learners and VR challenges us to think more visually as we communicate truth. We are now living in a post-literate society. That doesn’t mean that people can’t read, but rather they can and choose not to. Our current forms of church are built for the highly literate person of the 1700s who reads and studies scripture, but we need to carry traditions of focusing on the Word into a world that has been influenced by radio, TV, and the internet. Using VR to communicate truth visually can become part of that new form of church.Virtual Reality Church. // Along with Darrell Bock, Jonathan wrote a book, Virtual Reality Church: Pitfalls and Possibilities (Or How to Think Biblically about Church in Your Pajamas, VR Baptisms, Jesus Avatars, and Whatever Else is Coming Next) to help church leaders and educators get their minds around what VR can and can’t do. It could be a great book for a leadership circle to explore and process together as you think about the future.

You can learn more about Jonathan and his work at Aqueduct Project.

Thank You for Tuning In!

There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!

Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live!

Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Chemistry Staffing

It’s important for church leaders to pursue the right fit for the right position, which helps determine a long-term, healthy fit. It all starts with properly assessing the applicant’s resumé. Download Chemistry Staffing’s Resumé Screening Playbook and walk through a screening process that will help you discover which candidates to focus on.

Source: Pitfalls and Possibilities of VR Church with Jonathan Armstrong

The post Pitfalls and Possibilities of VR Church with Jonathan Armstrong appeared first on Passion for Planting.

By: UnSeminary

Thanks for tuning in to this week’s episode of the unSeminary podcast. In June we helped cohost The Next Normal Conference with our friends at Leadership Network and Church Communications in order to inspire church leaders and spur collaboration between their teams about where we are all heading next. Today we’re bringing you a re-broadcast from that conference with Kenny Jahng interviewing Nona Jones, the Head of Global Faith-Based Partnerships for Facebook.

Develop a digital presence. // More than 80% of Americans have a Facebook account and are active on it, so it makes sense for churches to be there too. Even in spite of these facts, many pastors have been hesitant to have social media accounts. In a way, this season is forcing churches to play catch-up as they realize the importance of having a digital presence and developing these connections and relationships online. Understand that people have robust lives on social media. Be present whether it’s on Facebook, Instagram or another place your community is active.Create engaging content. // As a company Facebook is always asking: How do we make digital connections and relationships meaningful to people? Look for ways to use Facebook’s tools to capture more people’s attention as well as develop more online connections and communities. This will enable you to minister to more people more effectively. Practically speaking this looks like treating your online service differently than you would if people were in your building. For example, get rid of your countdown timer. The average attention span on Facebook is three seconds and if people scrolling by see a countdown clock, they will move on. It doesn’t serve the same function as it would if people were physically in your building. Make your content super-engaging and super hard-hitting so that people immediately feel as though it’s something relevant to them.Interact with your audience. // Whether you are doing a livestream on Facebook or posting content throughout the week, make sure you are engaging people. Respond to people’s comments and questions. Welcome them when a service is streamed. Tag them in comments. You want people to feel like they are actually a part of the experience. Rememeber that broadcast media has a passive message going out to a passive audience, but social media is an active message going out to an active community.Creatively use the tools available. // More and more people are gathering and participating online for bible studies and church services. It’s not uncommon for four or five times the number of people that would attend your church to watch your livestream. Facebook Groups can offer opportunities for engagement that are harder to do at a church building, for example 24-hour prayer. Use the tools that Facebook provides to get creative with how you can serve your people. Even Facebook Live provides an opportunity for people to access their pastors as authentic individuals, rather than just see who they are in a pulpit.Refocus your efforts online. // It takes effort to create social media content so work to repurpose the resources you already have. Where you were previously focused on in-person ministry, now think about how you can offer the same level of connection and engagement digitally. Literally think outside the “box” of your building. It’s not about replicating what others are doing. Rather take a step back, figure out what your goals are and what experience you want people to have, and then use the digital tools available to bring forth that vision.

You can visit www.facebook.com/community/faith to learn about the resources and tools available and you can connect with Nona at www.nonajones.com.

Thank you for tuning in!

There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!

Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live!

Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Plain Joe Studios

Ministry Grid makes it simple to train every volunteer and leader in your church. With a library of over 3,500 videos and 850 courses, you will find training for every ministry area and leadership level.

To get unlimited access to Ministry Grid for just $597, just go to? MinistryGrid.com/unSeminary?

Source: Navigating Social Media in the Next Normal with Advice from Facebook’s Nona Jones

The post Navigating Social Media in the Next Normal with Advice from Facebook’s Nona Jones appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Jeff Reed: Video, Video, Video! You’ve heard it – Video is the king of content on social media. So how do you start to incorporate video into your social media plan? Here are five tips!

Start Small – Add one video per month to your plan, then, try a weekly video. Don’t get overwhelmed or set yourself up with an expectation that you can’t carry on.

Don’t Record Live at First – If you (or your pastor) are timid about being on camera or concerned about being ‘live’, take the videos on your phone first and then upload as a video on Facebook or Instagram. Don’t worry about the one minute limit on Instagram because you can load the video into IGTV.

Set Reminders – If you plan to go live, set reminders in your calendar or phone roughly 15 minutes before you plan to go live. This time will allow you to get to your perfect spot and walk through what you want to say.

Find Good Lighting – If your office is dark and dim, head outside! Test out a few locations with quick videos and ask for feedback from someone else to see which location is the best for your video recording.

Don’t Overthink It – Live videos are just that LIVE! They might not be perfect, you might say the wrong thing – just pause and correct yourself. Be human and move on!

Here’s a good example of a Wednesday Live video from my church in Tampa. Pastor Matthew goes live like clockwork every Wednesday around noon. Sometimes he brings a scripture, sometimes he talks about upcoming events, sometimes he is on vacation and he still hops on to talk with our viewers!

Source: 5 Tips for Incorporating Live Video in Your Social Media Plan

The post 5 Tips for Incorporating Live Video in Your Social Media Plan appeared first on Passion for Planting.

This is a post written by Rich Birch. Rich the founder of Unseminary and is a member of my Speaking Team. You can book Rich to consult with your team or speak at your next event here.

By Rich Birch

If approached incorrectly, online church might actually be a distraction for your church.

Church online can stunt your church’s impact if you don’t manage it correctly.

Church online can stunt your church’s impact if you don’t manage it correctly.Click To Tweet

Before you send me hate mail or decide that you’re no longer going to read my posts, please know that I have been involved in church online since 2009. Over the years I’ve spent an incredible amount of time, effort, and money on making online church work, and I speak from a place of experience with both failure and success in this area.

We spent several years trying to figure out how to connect live video (or at least simulated live video) to a chat room so that we could minister to people digitally.

A funny thing happened in 2015 when Mark Zuckerberg and his team at Facebook developed Facebook Live. This innovation, undoubtedly, made it much simpler for many churches to provide an online church experience to their guests, which was great because too many of us were spending too many resources trying to develop our own online platforms.

While I’ve heard some interesting stories about churches that made somewhat of an impact, for many churches online church can become a distraction to our calling to build local churches where people meet face-to-face.

Before your church jumps headfirst into church online or if you’re questioning whether your current investment of resources is worth it, here are five reasons why I believe church online might be a distraction to your church’s vision.

For many churches, online church can become a distraction to our calling to build local churches where people meet face-to-face.Click To Tweet

1. Does it move people towards community?

At its core, the tension within church online is achieving the movement of people from anonymity to community.

When we first started playing with the church online world, we had chat rooms where users could make up their own usernames.

At the time I remember struggling with how we were going to help someone with the username “FancyBear213” become a fully devoted follower of Christ. If someone couldn’t even identify themselves with their own name and profile picture, how were we going to move those anonymous contacts into community with each other and get them plugged in?

Now granted, the folks at Saddleback Church have done an incredible job developing online community groups. You should study them and learn from how they are making that happen. Even so, most churches experience online groups as an anonymous mass.

I’ve also seen churches count the attendance at church online in the same way that we count heads on Sunday mornings. However, there is a significant difference between counting IP addresses or “seven-second watch-times” and the people who come in person and actively participate in our communities.

I’ve written so much about how difficult it is to move people from sitting in a seat to plugging them in. This is a struggle we’ve all shared.

How much more difficult is it then to move someone from the anonymous space of their phone or laptop to connecting with others in “real” life? There isn’t a clear path, and investing time, effort, and energy at this point would be a waste of your resources.

At the same time, there are people attending your live services today, the old-fashioned Sunday morning crowd sitting in rows, who also aren’t plugged into community.

Work harder at what could be a real growth opportunity in your “IRL” services.

2. Online tends towards amalgamation

In the end, there will probably be one or two very large online church presences.

There aren’t hundreds and thousands of online retailers; there’s Amazon. There aren’t thousands of places to stream shows and movies; there’s Netflix. There aren’t hundreds of incredibly popular, niche search engines; there’s Google.

The same is bound to happen with church online.

The drive of the internet is to reward a few very large content and community providers. The network effect takes over and those providers with the largest communities win in the end.

Over time, some churches will figure out how to use this medium for outreach, but chances are it’s not going to be your church or my church. The contenders could be churches like Saddleback, or North Point, or Life.Church. These churches are indeed doing incredible work already, but the reality of it is online media tends to amalgamate into one or two very large, dominant leaders.

The way that Amazon, Netflix, Google, and a myriad of other online sectors have narrowed down to one or two leaders will also happen with church online.

The way that Amazon, Netflix, Google, and a myriad of other online sectors have narrowed down to one or two leaders will also happen with church online.Click To Tweet

On a Sunday morning sometime soon, take the opportunity to scroll through different online church experiences. What do you notice?

They’re all very similar; they’re not differentiated from each other. Over time, what happens in an undifferentiated market is some player ends up becoming more dominant through significant differentiation.Every other player in that market offers a “commodity offering” while a single player or two stand out with above-average differentiated offerings and gain the majority of the mindshare.

Today we might not see a clear leader, but I believe that over time one will emerge.

Instead of focusing on how you can outdo some other large church on the other side of the country, consider how you can attract people who live within the vicinity of your church to come and attend.

In fact, the act of trying to differentiate online could take you away from the value of reaching people in your own area.

Instead of focusing on how you can outdo some other large church on the other side of the country, consider how you can attract people who live within the vicinity of your church to come and attend.Click To Tweet

3. On-demand beats scheduled live every time

One of the secrets of the church online movement is that most online churches have exponentially fewer viewers of live broadcasts than on-demand services.

Ask a church how many people view their video for longer than five minutes on a Sunday morning and ask that same church how many downloads their podcast receives.

You’ll find that the on-demand content of churches outperform live scheduled content at a rate of at least five to one, if not 10 to one.

Of course, it’s no surprise this is happening.

The internet is moving towards more time freedom and away from scheduled content. We’re used to binging content rather than waiting for new content to be released every week.

In fact, “long form live video” on Facebook—the clear leader in live video—is considered five minutes long. Typically anyone trying to engage in a Facebook Live environment will warn you not to go beyond 60 to 90 seconds in a live video (whereas most online church experiences range from 60 to 90 minutes!).

These forms don’t fit the style of what’s happening in our churches. I think that trying to leverage a live format rather than an on-demand style is distracting.

You already have a significant, on-demand audience downloading your podcasts, so instead of trying to develop an entirely new schedule of live content, how are you leveraging what you already have to increase numbers at your services?

On-demand content of churches outperform live scheduled content at a rate of at least five to one, if not 10 to one.Click To Tweet

4. Churches are “family ministries”

Churches have consistently grown on the back of family ministries as they provide an opportunity for parents to attend with their kids.

There is a well-worn path of providing excellent age-appropriate programming for both parents and children as a way to make an impact and see your church grow.

As Carey Nieuwhof has said, “Very few church people are lying in bed tonight wondering how to parse a Greek verb but they are lying awake at night wondering about their kids and how they can raise their family.”

Church online, on the other hand, is tending towards a solitary adult experience.

Facebook does not allow anyone under the age of 13 to view any videos, which eliminates a significant market. Nearly half of all people who become Christ-followers did so before the age of 13.

So imagine a church online experience where there are no ministries available to individuals under that important age! For the most part, churches haven’t figured out how to develop church online where the family attends together. These experiences are solitary, lonely ones rather than shared experiences for the entire family.

Just as it would be strange to have a church where there was no kids’ ministry, church online seems to be saying it’s okay for you to come by yourself.

This is a distraction from the purpose of developing community and connection within our churches.

Your church needs to continue to invest in and understand how you can attract families to attend your church together.

Families in your area are looking for a church like yours. The question is how are you developing ministries that ultimately draw them closer together within the community of your church?

Families in your area are looking for a church like yours. The question is how are you developing ministries that ultimately draw them closer together within the community of your church?Click To Tweet

5. We are a gathered community

The word “church” literally means gathering. I’m waiting for the day when virtual reality replaces the act of gathering physically.

In the same way that Second Life rose and fell from popularity, I’m still waiting (in vain) for Oculus Rift or other virtual reality environments to offer the same experience as gathering together.

In the same way that Second Life rose and fell from popularity, I’m still waiting (in vain) for Oculus Rift or other virtual reality environments to offer the same experience as gathering together.Click To Tweet

I’ve even seen attempts to do communion or baptisms online. In fact, I’ve been a part of crafting some of those experiences.

The truth? They fall flat compared to the live equivalents.

There is something about the gathered body of Christ worshipping in the same room that transcends. In a western world with such an emphasis and focus on the individual, church online offers the opposite of what it means to be a community.

Church online focuses on people being separate from each other, whereas the physical church focuses on the literal gathering.

Church online focuses on people being separate from each other, whereas the physical church focuses on the literal gathering.Click To Tweet

You could invest a significant amount of time, effort, and energy figuring out how on earth to have an online gathering in a way that is appropriate and feels connected, but it’s just a distraction. You already have people attending your church.

Consider this: how are those in-person interactions maximizing the sense of togetherness and experience of something transcendent?

Years ago, Christian television featured men sitting at desks talking into microphones. What they had done was transform an old format, radio ministry, to a new medium.

However, they merely replicated their radio ministry to a moving picture format. Similarly, the notion of a schedule-based video format feels like a stale representation.

Yes, your church should be thinking about how people connect seven days a week with your ministry.

I do believe that you should leverage social media as a way to stay in front of people consistently, but I also encourage you to examine how others in the medium connect with their audiences and build a community around those connections.

What you won’t see are scheduled, live videos once a week where you feel as if you are sitting in an audience. You experience much more intimate and interactive approaches.

If:Gathering is paving the way on this point. Jennie Allen and her visionary leadership of this group hint towards what the future of church online will look like.

This organization is a collection of live events, apps for your phone, books, videos, and incredible social media all working to see people grow closer to Jesus, which is the ultimate goal of all this connection.

I think the future of online engagement as a church will look more like If:Gathering than what we tend to see in the church online world today.

Finally, I believe that it is right to wonder how we can use digital platforms for engagement; however, church online itself is not the answer.

It’s asking the right question and it’s pointing in the right direction, but I don’t think it’s the answer. It’s a stage between knowing there’s a problem of connection and needing to figure out how to best resolve it.

I think the future of online engagement as a church will look more like If:Gathering than what we tend to see in the church online world today.Click To Tweet

A whole strategy to position your church to grow

Church online is only part of the equation.

Whether you’re a church that isn’t growing, has plateaued, or whether you wish your church was growing faster than it is, I’d love to help you break through. That’s why I created the Church Growth Masterclass.

The Church Growth Masterclass is everything I wish I knew about church growth when I got into ministry more than 20 years ago.

Naturally, I can’t make a church grow. You can’t make a church grow. Only God can do that.

But I believe you can position your church to grow.

You can knock down the barriers that keep you from growing. You can eliminate the things that keep your church from growing and implement some strategies that will help you reach far more people. That’s what I’d love to help you do in the Church Growth Masterclass.

In the Church Growth Masterclass I’ll show you:

The 10 reasons your church isn’t growing
Why even committed church-goers aren’t attending as often as before
How to tell if your church leaders are getting burned out
The 5 keys to your church better impacting millennials.
What to do when a church wants to grow … but not change
5 essentials for church growth
5 disruptive church trends to watch—and how to respond
How to increase church attendance by increasing engagement.

The Masterclass includes a complete set of videos that you can play with your team, board or staff, PDF workbooks that will help you tackle the issues you’re facing, and bonus materials that will help you navigate the most pressing issues facing churches that want to reach their cities today.

You can learn more and gain instant access to the course today.

What about you?

Who do you think is using online tools, social media, live video, and other ways of connecting online to build true community and move people closer to Christ?

I’d love to hear your response below.

The post 5 Reasons Church Online Might Be a Distraction to Your Church’s Vision appeared first on CareyNieuwhof.com.

Source: 5 Reasons Church Online Might Be a Distraction to Your Church’s Vision

The post 5 Reasons Church Online Might Be a Distraction to Your Church’s Vision appeared first on Passion for Planting.

Source: Social Media Trends and the Next Generation: Podcast 252

The post Social Media Trends and the Next Generation: Podcast 252 appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Rich Birch: Is your church doing regular Facebook Live broadcasts? Why or why not? The popularity of this tool continues to grow and flourish, and it is a powerful communication method that your church should be taking advantage of. While the service has been around for almost three years, which is comparative to something like 30 “social media years”, there are still a lot of churches that aren’t utilizing this tool to reach people.

That being the case, the goal of this article is to convince you to start doing or do more Facebook Live videos. You’ve been warned.

Facebook is still the default social media network for many people in our communities. In fact, in most communities, 68% of adults are accessing the platform regularly. [ref] Stop and think about that. If two-thirds of the people in your town participated in the same thing on a regular basis, wouldn’t you want to know more about it? Even further, wouldn’t you want to figure out how to best use that trend to see people connected to your church and the message of Jesus? Within Facebook, live videos continue to be a thriving and growing feature of the platform. In fact, 2 billion people have watched Facebook Live broadcasts. [ref] And the number keeps growing every day!

4 Ingredients of Great Facebook Live Videos for Your Church

Here are the four basic elements that your Facebook Live video broadcasts need to have to help you leverage this channel to reach people.

A “Hook” // You need to start with an interesting premise or quick hit idea at the beginning of the video that draws people in to watch more. Like the title of a great news article, a good hook’s job is to grab and hold people’s attention.
Educate or Entertain? // Your video needs to either entertain people by making them laugh or it needs to educate them by revealing something. If you use Facebook Live to just “advertise” what’s coming up at your church your audience will tune out. How can you provide value to them? Use one of these approaches to do so.
Show, Don’t Tell // This is a visual medium so leverage it. Broadcast from a visually interesting location. Show a prop on camera that will get people’s attention. Avoid the temptation to just be a “talking head” on the video.
Call to Action // What are you asking people to “do” because of the video? What is their next step after watching the video? Don’t let people just sit back and passively consume the content but entice them to take a next step!

Facebook is Still Pushing Live Video

It’s no secret that Facebook continues to encourage people to produce, view, and engage with live videos. In a very real way it seems like Facebook is transforming itself into a video-driven platform. We have all noticed that our “organic” posts on Facebook being viewed less and less. However, the platform continues to push the video content form in front of our audiences. Some churches have reported as much as 200 times more views on a Facebook Live video over a typical status update post.

“Live is like having a TV camera in your pocket. Anyone with a phone now has the power to broadcast to anyone in the world,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said. “This is a big shift in how we communicate, and it’s going to create new opportunities for people to come together.” [ref]

People Love Behind-the-Scenes Videos

87% of audiences would prefer to watch online videos if it included more behind-the-scenes content than a standard TV broadcast. [ref] One of the major “stickiness factors” of live videos is that we get access to things that we don’t normally get to see. Take your audience backstage at your church and allow them to experience something that is usually only experienced by a small group of leaders or community members.

3 Examples of Behind-the-Scenes Videos

Mid-week Message Prep // Do you prepare your messages in a unique location? Take us there with a quick two minute video to show people what that space looks like and discuss the upcoming week. Use this opportunity to ask a question or two about an upcoming message to draw people in and help you write that message!
Early Morning “Backstage” // More and more, we’re beginning to see it be a “standard practice” of churches to do a quick early morning video inviting people to come to church. Resist the urge to do these videos from the lobby, and take us backstage to see the behind-the-scenes activities of the morning prep. Is there a cleaning crew vacuuming the hallways? Is the guest services team planning something extra special this morning? What does it look like from the “tech booth” while the worship team rehearses? Find an interesting visual hook that people don’t normally see and show it to them!
Team Training // Training volunteers and leaders is a critical part of any growing church. Why not shoot a quick live video from your next training event? You could invite a person who just experienced the event onto camera and they could share what they learned! Sometimes at training events we do an “appreciation” segment where we go out of our way to thank a particular volunteer. What better way to turn up the appreciation by broadcasting it live as well!

Live Positions Your Church with the “Big Leagues”

Increasingly, huge brands and entertainment organizations are leveraging the exact same tools to broadcast to their audiences. For example, Facebook has secured exclusive rights to 25 MLB games this season [ref]. When your church chooses to leverage this channel, it puts your ministry on par with other brands.

While it’s a great thing to have your live broadcasts compete alongside some of the largest content providers in the world, it does require us to continually increase the quality of our content. We need to develop best practices for the type of content we’re providing as well as improve the technical quality of our broadcasts. Your church will need to pay particular attention to ensure that you are evaluating how the content is being received and what is working “best” to increase engagement with your community.

3 Tools to Increase the Quality of Your Church’s Live Videos

Rode Lav Mic // This mic provides great quality audio for a single presenter on a live video from your phone. It not only provides clear audio but requires little technical set up! Just plug the mic into the headphone jack of your phone and then clip it to the presenter’s shirt.
Mevo Camera // This is a clever, super high definition camera with a novel smartphone interface. It allows the users to present what looks like a “multi-camera” shot all with a single lens through some fancy programming. This product is great for when you want to shoot something six to ten feet from the camera.
Selfie Light Ring // Sometimes when you’re backstage at the church there just isn’t enough lighting to allow your audience to clearly see the presenter. This little device attaches directly to your phone and helps light up a subject when in selfie mode.

Engagement is 10X Higher on Live vs. Pre-Recorded Video

Have you ever stepped back and asked why your church does anything on social media? What’s the goal of all this effort you put into these channels? It’s all about engagement! We are attempting to connect with people in churches and the surrounding community in a way that draws them in to dialogue and connection. Live videos are the highest form of engagement in social media today. In fact, viewers comment “more than 10 times more on Facebook Live videos than regular ones.” [ref] The reason social media networks are pushing this content is because they know it’s engaging, which is what we want!

3 Easy Ways to Drive Up Engagement

Lead with a Question // In the first ten seconds of your video lead with a question that you want your audience to answer. What’s your favorite worship song that we’ve been singing at our church these days? If we could talk about one thing in our messages, what would you want that to be? What would you love to see us change in our kids ministry? A sticky question drives people to stay connected with the video and gives them the opportunity to interact and contribute.
Ask for the Share // Again, early on in the video the best practice is to ask people to share the video so the content can reach more people. Don’t beat around the bush but directly ask people to share the video so their friends can see it too. Point to where the “share” button is and ask them!
Give a Gift // At the end of the video, tell people to do something in order to receive a free gift from the host. For example, the first ten people to comment with a fact or point from the live broadcast could receive a gift certificate to a local coffee shop.

Online Live Video is Leading to Offline Engagement

Social media isn’t the destination but a stop along the road! Ultimately, we’re using these tools to encourage people to connect at our “offline” locations. There are industries that demonstrate that live video is an effective tool for driving “real world” engagement, not just “likes, comments, and shares”. For instance, 67% of audiences who watched a live stream purchased a ticket to a similar offline event the next time it occurred. [ref] Real estate mogul and social media guru Grant Cardone used a swarm of live videos to drive over 9,000 people to his conference in 2018. [ref] It would seem like live video is a shortcut for building an online community that “knows, likes, and trusts” a communicator or organization. That social capital can then be translated into real-world responses.

3 Ways to Bridge Offline Engagement

Show Your Campuses // Use your live streams to walk people through the Sunday morning experience. Park in your parking lot and then walk through various entrances to help people picture themselves arriving.
Introduce Pastoral Staff // Oftentimes, it seems like churches are using secondary team members “on screen” during live videos. However, brands that are moving people to offline engagement have the primary communicator and “face of the brand” at the center of their live videos.
Call to Action // Don’t be afraid to ask people for an “offline” action! Ask your audience to join the church at an upcoming special event. Ask them if they are willing to get in their cars and join the church at the next service. A well-timed call to action can motivate more people to connect with your church!

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Source: 5 Reasons Your Church Should Do More Facebook Live Videos (And 16 Tips for Doing Them Well) – unSeminary

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Source: How to Use Social Media in Your Church

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by Rich Birch: Welcome to another edition of the unSeminary podcast. I’m here today with Bryce Baldwin of Rome Alliance Church of Rome, NY.

Rome Alliance was founded in 1915. Today you’ll find a mix of people there from birth to age 93. Bryce grew up in this church, later returning to lead it. Rome Alliance is about impacting your whole life with the gospel in relevant ways, not just your Sunday mornings.

Today Bryce is here with us to chat about how to make an impact in your community by meeting practical needs. Rome Alliance Church has started something really innovative among churches: community job fairs.

What does your community need? // When we talk about outreach, think of what your community needs and how you can offer help in that area. One of the basic rhythms in someone’s life is that they look for work. The Lord kept bringing the idea of a job fair to Bryce’s mind and so he figured out how the church could host one. Their first job fair was held in April 2015. He began simply by inviting people in his church who were employers or owned their own businesses to get involved. From there he went out in the community to talk to other businesses. Rome Alliance’s goal is to provide a platform in which they can reach out to and walk beside people as they look for work.
Place points of contact throughout the event. // At each of the job fairs they host, the church makes sure to have people at every possible point of contact—from the parking lot, to the welcome and registration table, to the application tables. Blanketing the fairs with church volunteers allows the visitors to make connections with the church. People often visit the church because they’ve heard about it from friends who have visited the job fair or are familiar with the regular job fairs in the community. Serving consistently in this way has built a good rapport with the city of Rome and the people there. As Bryce notes, it all goes back to one relationship, one person at a time. In addition, churches are constantly looking for ways to invite their people to serve, and a job fair connecting to the community offers a whole new area of volunteer opportunities.
Look for ways to branch out. // As the job fairs have grown, they branched into Rome Alliance starting a separate 501c3 as a non-religious organization, called Rome Community Job Fairs. This change of structure allows for different opportunities for grants and sponsorships. It also created a new staff position and Rome Alliance hired a member of the church to handle the administrative aspects of the job fairs. This staff person can then meet with local businesses for coffee and talk with them about the job fair while also sharing the gospel with them. One of the goals of the city of Rome is to have new businesses come in, and the church has now become a part of that, creating a business focused on helping others.
Create opportunities to get the word out. // To make your job fair a success, you need to get the word out. This can be done by word of mouth or flyers, as well as using social media or Facebook ads. Facebook ads have been great in helping Rome Alliance get the job fairs in front of more people in their city. And as Bryce notes, you don’t have to spend a lot on this. Rome Alliance spends about $20-$30. Highlight some immediate incentives in the ad, such as come get an interview or some swag. You want more people to share it, so you need something to catch their attention. And more people will see your ads and posts through shares because it influences Facebook’s algorithm. Target a very small area focusing on your local community.

You can learn more about Rome Alliance Church at www.romealliancechurch.org, and their job fairs at www.romejobfairs.org

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Lightning Round

Helpful Tech Tools // Facebook (See Rome Alliance’s page)

Ministries Following // David Bartels and The River Foundation

Influential Book // The Eighth Letter by Mark Barnard and Kenneth Quick

Inspiring Leader // Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski

What does he do for fun // Watching and coaching sports

Contact // romealliancechurch.org or www.romejobfairs.org

Source: Bryce Baldwin Explains an Innovative Approach to Community Outreach Meeting Practical Needs – unSeminary

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