Why Your Church Needs an Online Ministry—and How to Start One

3/22/2018

Center for Online Evangelism

The Center for Online Evangelism is a missionary project devoted to developing online mission stations.

Years ago, I worked as an English language assistant in Northern France. The nearest Adventist church was an hour away and the second church was two hours away. With no car and little money for train tickets, I wasn’t able to attend church every Sabbath. I turned to the internet for church. Via my computer, I was instantly connected to a family of faith. I sent in requests for prayer and explored Bible topics with this online community. For a whole year I remained connected to a church family, even though I was thousands of miles from home and didn’t have a home church. This would not have been possible if this particular church didn’t have an online ministry. Ten years later, although I have a home church, I credit much of my spiritual growth to an online church branch.

Here are the top three reasons your church needs an online ministry:

1. Half of the world’s population is online.
3.8 billion and climbing—that’s the number of people who currently have access to the internet. This means your church has access to people all over the world, if you’re online. This doesn’t mean that reaching all of these people is easy. But we know that the world is a much smaller place because of the internet. Every church has been given the mission to “go into the entire world.” Wherever the people are, we should make the effort to make the presence of God felt. Because of the Digital Age, the Gospel can reach the farthest corners of the world.

2. You can get your entire church involved in discipleship.
Most of the individuals at your church have a personal screen. Whether it’s their iPad, phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop, nearly everyone has access to at least one device. Every time your church members open their laptops or turn on their phones, they have an opportunity to share Christ. Online ministry gives each church member an opportunity to get involved. Everyone might not be able to go on a foreign mission trip, volunteer at a shelter, or preach an evangelistic series, but everyone can share God’s love online. If a person can type and have contacts online, they can share the personal impact Christ has in their lives.

3. People are turning to Google for answers
When was the last time you had a question and typed it into the Google search bar? From questions about how to get rid of a neck kink, to whether God is real, people turn to Google for answers. The answers don’t magically appear, however – someone must write the information and post it online. With an online ministry, your church can provide answers to certain issues people face. If your church’s online ministry focuses on drug addiction, challenges in marriage, or raising a child with a disability, when someone goes online searching for answers related to those topics, your ministry’s content could bring hope and healing. If people are googling, we should be there to answer when they ask.

Here are seven ways your church can launch an online ministry:

Start a church blog
Launch a YouTube channel
Create a podcast
Have online Bible studies using video conference software
Make sermons available online
Use Facebook Live to engage with an online audience
Engage with church visitors using unique text-messaging software

Of course, you can use these platforms in a variety of ways to reach different demographics. As your church seeks to fulfill God’s purpose, the Holy Spirit will lead and bring fruit from your digital evangelism efforts.

God has given us access to a powerful tool (the internet). By using it the right way and following the guidance of the Holy Spirit, your church can play its part in fulfilling the Great Commission. Our newsletters, blogs, and podcast provide information to help your church start an online ministry. If you have one going, using best practices can improve effectiveness.

Share below what your church is doing in online ministry.

Reposted with permission from centerforonlineevangelism.org.

4 Comments

denise mcfarland link

4/6/2018 08:20:59 pm

Hi, we have FB and church web site. Trying to expand outreach. Does your Big Data and Social Media segment plan to have any educational classes. I have attended 2 webinars, very nice. But the 7 ways to launch an online presence are way over my head. Care to teach me (and us at large) how to do those things?

Thanks! Denise

David Florey link

4/7/2018 06:29:39 pm

Hi Denise

I’m the AV Coordinator, Website Coordinator, and Media Leader for Springvale Adventist church in Victoria Australia. I’ve just read this article - it preaches my message: church should strive for a thriving, growing, relevant existence online.

We have not long (beginning of 2017) started our adventure to online video ministry. I started filming our services, post editing them, and uploading them to our youtube channel.

This year I’m trying to focus on perfecting this art before looking into live streaming...

In my travels, something I have learned: the technical part of this is relatively straight forward, what takes the most energy I have found is getting the rest of the church onboard with the vision, then executing the vision. Also once you are filming, getting the presenter at the front to take this into consideration when they’re presenting. They forget they there’s a camera which will broadcast their message to the world, and getting the service to run like clockwork for online streaming? That can be a challenge!

My advice is this:
1) visit other churches that do this well. Learn their craft, get to know the team, understand the media team dynamics, and become technically aquainted with the various technologies in use.

2) visit a couple of churches that do it, but aren’t very polished, just so you can see the differences in the team dynamics and if they’re new to it, you know what to expect when your church launches its online video ministry campeign.

3) when your church is technically ready, as in, has the equipment setup, running, and the team have basic usage training, don’t go live straight away. Use the first couple of months as practice & training. Record your services as if you’re going live or going to post online, so your team has something to review, analyse, and has something to build their improvement strategy on.

4) when your team feels its ready to go online, start with post uploads only - don’t live stream. Live stream is a totally different ball game to uploading recorded videos. Recorded videos can have post production editing done to fix mistakes during the take, edit out parts where something went wrong. You can’t do this in live streams.

5) frequently meet up as a team to discuss everything (in a positive light) from technical issues, improvement matters, training & coaching, timing of events in the services, and encouragement!!

6) almost forgot this: audio - make it sound great! I can’t stress enough, if the audio quality is poor, doesn’t matter how good the video is, or how good the shots are... if it sounds terrible, people will switch off!! Make sure the audio setup sounds as good as it possibly can, and get the audio feed from the soundesk into the video system so you’re not using the camera’s built in microphones! Can’t stress this enough!

I hope these pointers help you in the right path for your video ministry and if you have any questions, please let me know!

Simon Carron

7/5/2020 04:49:45 pm

Need help to set up online to evangelize in ISRAEL

John Carston link

8/12/2022 06:07:07 pm

I love that you talked that the people who are using internet reaches 3.8 billion people. My younger cousin informed me the other night that he and his buddies were looking for an online ministry for their youth group's spiritual development, and he asked if I had any thoughts on what would be the best option to consider. I'm thankful for this instructive article, I'll tell him that it will be much better if they consult a trusted condensed online ministry as they can provide details about their schedules.

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