The Digital Mission Field
What Are You Doing to Prepare Digital Missionaries in Your Church?
By Josh Roberie
John Donne once famously said, “No man is an island.” That is never more true than it is today. The information age has connected people around the globe and across sectors of society through the internet. It has never been easier for you to contact a stranger or connect to someone digitally who is physically far away, but what does this mean for churches?
You can now use digital tools to reach more people with your church’s message as a pastor. A new crucial measuring stick that is now part of having a digital presence is engagement. You cannot simply broadcast your sermons and announcements and hope to generate an authentic connection. People will tune you out if you do this. You have to speak to them, listen to them, and respond to their feedback if you are going to thrive in the digital mission field.
How do you go from preaching to a crowd to engaging with many individuals online? The key is to train digital missionaries in your church. A digital missionary is a member of your church who will take the gospel and the heart of your church online to win people to Christ and see them connected to your local church.
5 Ways to Create Digital Missionaries in Your Church
Prioritize Digital Roles
You should make sure that having leaders and even staff covering digital responsibilities is a priority in your church. You would not hold a service without the worship team, service hosts team, and kids ministry team. Why? Because you know people will need those services while at your church. That is where people are.
If you are going to post content online, you need to have staff and volunteers in roles there because you are likely to encounter more people online with your content than you will in-person on Sunday morning alone.
Online Reviews
Ask your team to leave detailed reviews for your church online. As a church planter, you can do this in a pre-launch team meeting. Positive reviews are very significant for a new church in town. Reviews from people in the area will help build your reputation as a welcoming place.
An existing church can also benefit from asking for reviews. You can send a message to your volunteer team asking them to become a digital evangelist by posting their experience with your church.
Facebook Events
Create an event on Facebook for your next gathering and ask your team to like, comment, confirm they will be attending, and share the event on their page. This not only helps get the word out to their friends and family but increases your organic reach without paying for an ad.
Build Your Online Audience
Send an email to your church asking them to like your church page, leave a review, and invite friends and family to like the page as well. This is a simple way to build an outreach mentality in your church.
Chat Hosts
You need to have chat hosts engaging with people during your digital broadcasts. This is an excellent way to serve people watching online by answering their questions and making sure they are connecting to the right people and resources. You should train your team in how to prevent someone from taking over the chat in a negative way.
Bonus Tip
This one works surprisingly well. Post-high-quality images of people attending your church events (and tag them if you can). People love sharing great photos of themselves, and when they do, guess what? They are sharing about your church as well. When people tag themselves in a photo your church posts, it goes out to all of their followers. They are becoming a digital evangelist without even knowing it!
Whether you are an existing church or a church plant, you can build online momentum. The most important key is to ask your team for help spreading the word online about your church. Give detailed instructions to make it easy to help you, and you will see your digital presence soar.
Josh is a ministry leader, communicator, and creative who helps train and coach church planters at the Association of Related Churches (ARC). He has written Believe Again: Finding Faith After Losing Religion and has contributed to many ministry publications, including Relevant Magazine. You can stay connected to Josh through his blog JoshRoberie.com and Social Media at @JoshRoberie.