This year hasn’t been a great year for many things like in-person events, large worship services, new visitors, growth, and outreach. Or are we just thinking about it the wrong way? Churches scrambled to come up with solutions for engaging attendees, members, and parishioners in March, but it looks like we’re in this long term, and Facebook live isn’t going to meet our needs forever.
Think about what would happen if you added streaming to your website. You now have a vehicle to meet your attendees, members, congregants, and parishioners where they are! Any member who isn’t able to attend in person can now worship with you from afar. This means that they will have the ability to watch the stream or a recording when traveling (it will happen one day), feeling under the weather, or for some reason can’t attend at a specific time. It also means that anyone from afar can also worship with you and participate in remote events, small groups, children’s ministry, and other ministries online. Now your reach can go beyond the 5 to 20-mile radius of your current attendees.
When things get back to whatever normal becomes, these new visitors who are now familiar with your church culture can join live services or continue with streaming. Now is the time to engage with these new visitors. Find ways to engage them on your site so you have contact information for them and their families. Add them to a new attendee pathway where you’re inviting them to events, small groups, and more. Have staff and other attendees reach out to make them feel welcome. Include them in your holiday services and other activities. Send a special welcome message during your service to new visitors and encourage them to reach out to you via a form or chat.
The future is a big question mark for all churches. Will members return to live services? Will giving increase or sustain at a functional level for the church? Will volunteers still want to participate regardless of interaction levels? Since we can’t foresee the future, we certainly can address the areas where we do have control. So take a look at your streaming solution and download our latest Ministry Guide: LIVESTREAM With a #Quaranteam.
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Question. In this article you talk about engaging new visitors to your streaming services, finding ways to engage them on our site to be able to get their contact information to be able to do things like including them into our new attendee pathways, etc. In your previous article, “Is Live Streaming More Effective”, one of your ‘pluses’ points was Anonymity. So my question is what ideas do you have to be able to get past this anonymity feature? We have been doing Live Streaming for a few years before Covid, and am able to see how many connections we have to our stream, but have no idea who they are, or how to reach out to them.