How to Advance Your Ministry Online

The world is rapidly changing, and in order to keep up, and minister effectively to your congregation, you need to take advantage of the latest technology that your parishioners are using to stay connected with friends and family, do business, and take care of their personal and spiritual needs.

This can be a confusing set of circumstances to navigate, with all kinds of media sites and technology out there clamoring to be utilized, all claiming to be the best way of reaching your current and potential congregation. How do you proceed? Here is a rough, abbreviated breakdown of the technology that is available to you to help you reach and expand your congregation.

Your Website
If you don’t already have a website, why not? Printed phone books and encyclopedias are nearly obsolete, as the internet makes information so much more easily accessed, from finding local vendors to answering your children’s homework questions. If your church does not already have a website, it should. And if it does, it should be updated frequently with fresh, informative content to keep parishioners checking back regularly to see what’s new.

Multimedia – Interactive Multimedia
Your church building may only hold 100, 200, or 500 members, but your virtual church can reach millions, through the power of media. Do you have a pastor who is a particularly powerful speaker, someone people wait all week to hear? Videotape the sermons and make them available online. You can post them on your website, your Facebook page, YouTube and more, to attract more members to your church, or increase your revenue by offering them for sale, via CD, DVD or audio or video download from your online store, which brings us to…

eCommerce
Take donations online, sell recordings of sermons and motivational lectures, allow parishioners to purchase tickets to special events and more with an eCommerce site.

Social Media
Harness the power of the most interactive technology the world has ever known by leveraging social media to get your message out to more people than your predecessors could have ever dreamed of. With the right message, or a captivating photo, video clip or other post, your church can go viral, and expand far beyond the reach of its physical walls.

Mobile Technology
Almost everyone seems to have a smart phone these days, and they’re always surfing the net. If they’re looking for spiritual guidance, be the one to give it to them with a mobile-optimized website. What difference does it make? Imagine seeing your current website on a 2-inch square screen and you’ll understand. A mobile optimized site shows your visitors what you think is important, and lets them browse through the rest of the site at their leisure.

In summary, as bewildering as it may seem at first, the newest technology that is overwhelming us with its rapidly evolving applications is a powerful tool for churches to reach out to members and potential members in a way never before possible. It’s a brave new electronic world out there. Make sure you’re a part of it.

For more information on this and other topics, get your copy of “The iChurch Method Volume 1: How to Advance Your Ministry Online.” or The iChurch Method Volume 2: Changing the World When You Login or even sign up for the iChurch Method Online School.

http://www.ichurchmethod.com/how-to-advance-your-ministry-online/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-to-advance-your-ministry-online

The iChurch Method TV – Ep 15 – Ministry Growth Online

Continuing The iChurch Method TV series, here’s the transcript from the video above.

That would be continually ongoing. It would be a subscription-based fee where students sign up per class. It would be continually ongoing because the classes would never stop. Technology doesn’t stop, so the classes that are in the iChurch network won’t stop.

Right now you have five courses because the first book has five chapters. The next book, which is coming out in April 2013 has five new chapters. As we continually release books and eBooks and more products, that’s more training and more online access that we can create for our members.

I would tell a minister that basically you could continue to do ministry as you do it for your local and regional reach. Continue to push out the content that you already are; preaching your sermons and ministering the people in the way that you do. But, understand that now it’s going to be packaged and distributed to an international audience.

I’m not trying to tell them to change the way that they do ministry, I’m just letting them know that I’m giving you a larger distribution of the content and of the ministry and taking the gospel to the four corners of the earth.

For more information on this and other topics, get your copy of “The iChurch Method Volume 1: How to Advance Your Ministry Online.” or The iChurch Method Volume 2: Changing the World When You Login or even sign up for the iChurch Method Online School.

http://www.ichurchmethod.com/ministry-growth-online/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ministry-growth-online

How Churches Can Use Video to enhance Church Online

What kind of video needs does your church have? You probably didn’t even realize you had any. Video capability can enhance the churchgoing experience, allowing you to reach out to thousands of people online, some of whom may decide to attend your church in person, and others who will take what they need from the online sermons.

Live streaming video of your sermons is a powerful tool, allowing you to expand your congregation without having to knock down any walls or even hire a contractor. Regular members will also be able to watch even when they are sick or out of town. These live streaming videos can be posted on your site later as on-demand videos, archived by date for parishioners to access at their leisure.

Other types of church activities can be filmed as well, from church picnics, fundraising activities, charity drives, sporting events and pageants to community outreach messages and public service announcements. Consider cutting apart and editing some of these videos into short clips, which will be more watchable than the long version. Show highlights of events, or create a sort of video montage, so that viewers don’t have to sit through the whole thing.

Videos can be posted on YouTube and embedded into your site for easier loading and to reduce space requirements. Start a YouTube account for your church, where parishioners can go and watch all of the various clips you have uploaded, and be sure to advertise it on your site. And don’t forget about social media sites like Facebook, where you can post or embed videos as well.

Where Do I Get All These Videos?
You should invest in a good digital video camera for your church. With today’s technology, these are not terribly expensive. Make sure you get a tripod for recording sermons. The camera will come with its own software for editing and saving videos in one or more of several popular video formats:

• MP4 – a common format with good compression for internet streaming and digital distribution;
• MOV – similar to MP4 but not as common and does not compress as well;
• M4V – used mostly by Apple, similar to MP4 with good compression for smaller file sizes;
• WMV – Microsoft’s version for Windows; it has very good compression, high quality audio and video with small file sizes, but does not play on Macs without conversion software.

Once you have the camera and the software, start filming, and then play around with the editing software. You’ll be delighted at how much fun it can actually be!

For more information on this and other topics, get your copy of “The iChurch Method Volume 1: How to Advance Your Ministry Online.” or The iChurch Method Volume 2: Changing the World When You Login or even sign up for the iChurch Method Online School.

http://www.ichurchmethod.com/use-video-to-enhance-church-online/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=use-video-to-enhance-church-online