With more than 87 percent of American adults online, churches of every size can benefit from a variety of technological tools. An increase in options during the past decade has led to more advantages—yet it's also caused confusion for many churches. Pastors and staff often feel overwhelmed by the shear amounts of work involved just to keep up with changes.
Let's look at several technology-related initiatives, broken down by church size (although all of them should be considered by churches at all levels), that can help your church and its goals without becoming overly complex.
Small Churches (fewer than 100 members): Tweets, Blogs, and Facebook
If your church is just getting started, or it's been around for a while but doesn't yet have a strong presence on the Internet, several simple and inexpensive technology projects can help you build awareness for your church, keep in touch with people within your congregation, and achieve broader communication goals.
Start Posting
One of the easiest projects that can have the most benefit on your ministry is to start a blog connected with your church website. WordPress makes it surprisingly simple to set up your blog, create posts, and upload images and videos. With a blog, your pastor or church leaders can elaborate on points mentioned in the sermon, discuss ministry aspirations, hint at goals for the future, and even bring up personal issues to begin a more authentic communication channel within your church. Set up the option for email subscriptions to ensure your congregation can receive blog updates automatically.
Start Tweeting
Twitter is the third-largest social networking website, next to YouTube and Facebook. It can't be ignored—and it can be an effective tool for ministry. Twitter, known as a micro-blogging service because it allows users to send and read other users' updates (known as tweets), publishes text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Users send and receive updates for free from any device with an Internet connection, making it simple to share church news, what your ministry is working on, and blog and website updates to extend an online hand of friendship. Using a social media management solution such as Hootsuite can help you manage your social networks and schedule updates for the future.
Start Networking
Facebook is a wonderful, free tool to connect with people online. You'll find that many people in your congregation are already members. After you set up an account for your church, you can "friend" members already on the site, usually by e-mail address. It is also helpful for your pastor and church leaders to develop their own Facebook pages to authentically share and engage with members.
There are several other social networks that churches can harness for marketing and evangelism such as Instagram, LinkedIn, Google Plus, YouTube, and more. But Facebook is probably the most popular network with the broadest range of ages from preteens to octogenarians.
Resources:
Medium Churches (100–500 members): Websites, Management, and Donations
As a mid-sized church, you may have a technology budget that allows you to take on a few more projects that extend beyond what's free. As your church grows, you'll find that building a more interactive and purposeful website is critical, using a web-based management system can make ministry run smoother, and the ability to take online donations becomes critical.
Start Building
A study done by Monk Development in 2012 found that 46 percent of people said a church’s website was important in picking a church to visit. That’s a huge percentage of people looking to your church website as the virtual front door of your church. What does your website say about your church? Does it reflect your church values, missions, and physical presence?
There are a number of good website options out there that range from a low, one-time setup price and monthly fee to thousands of dollars upfront to completely customize a website. Work with a company that specializes in the church market and builds sites that are innovative, interesting, and easy to use. Consider using a provider that offers a content management system, which allows anyone with or without tech training to make updates and layout changes with ease. The overall win is to find a solution that allows your site to:
- Get a strong feel for what your church community is like, including style of worship and programs and classes offered.
- Connect members and reach out via social media links.
- Access the church’s online calendar, giving options, and registration for events.
Start Connecting
The Internet has spawned a new generation of church management software (ChMS) applications that are completely web-based and offer many new features. Social networking and project workflow tools are now available in ChMS solutions, in addition to managing church membership data and financial records. A web-based ChMS is hosted online, in a secure environment, and does not require monthly software updates since everything is done online. With most pastors and leaders on the go, the ability to access data from the web is critical for maximum efficiency. Most ChMS providers charge according to the number of records or members, making it an affordable option for nearly any sized church. Overall, effective web-based ChMS packages seek to:
- Provide multiple access points to data.
- Reduce the duplication of work.
- Streamline tasks and workflow so people at your church don't slip through the cracks.
- Integrate more easily with the church website to get more people connected and involved.
Start Accepting
Providing online giving through your church website can increase the size, frequency, and regularity of people's giving. With 41 percent of churches seeing an increase of 5 percent or more in online donations this year, according to the State of the Plate 2016 survey, digital giving should be a priority. Most people do not carry cash and checkbooks, so debit, credit card, and even text giving are viable options.
There are fees involved with nearly every online giving option, so it's important to take a close look at the costs and processes for setting up a merchant account, and what the percentage fees are for every transaction. The majority of web-based ChMS providers now offer online giving, in addition to the ability to take online registrations and payments for events. However, it's wise to evaluate stand-alone online giving providers in order to weigh all options. Pay close attention to security. An online giving provider should be Payment Card Industry Compliant (pcisecuritystandards.org) in order to protect your members' credit card data, and to help protect your church from liability.
Church Website Resources:
- Grace Church Sites
- Ministry Designs
- Ministry Brands: Clover Sites, Ekklesia360, E-Zekiel, FaithHighway, SiteOrganic, BridgeElement, Build a Church Website
- Rad-Ideas.com
Church Management Software Resources:
- ACS Technologies
- By the Book
- Church Community Builder
- Ministry Brands: Elexio, Fellowship One, Parish Soft, Shelby Systems, Church Office Online, SimpleChurch CRM
- Touchpoint Software
- Rock RMS
- Seraphim Software
Online Giving Resources:
- Ministry Designs
- Mogiv
- PushPay
- Tithe.ly
- Ministry Brands: easyTithe, eGiving by NCS Services, SimpleGive, eGiving.com, Giving Kiosk, EFT Plus, eGive
Large Churches (500 or more members): Streaming and Integration
Many large churches have the same ministry desires and goals as smaller churches, but they do things on a much bigger scale. As a church grows, its technology needs change drastically. Most large churches and mega churches incorporate cutting-edge technologies into their ministries. In fact, many ministries grow to mega church size because they incorporate technologies and tools often used by secular organizations to instead impact people with the gospel message.
Start Delivering
One way large churches use technology well is by creating an Internet and media ministry team for multi-site streaming. When churches grow beyond their physical facilities, some open additional locations and stream the same live sermon message from a video feed sent through the Internet. This allows churches to duplicate their efforts in order to reach more people. As of 2015, about 10 percent of all Protestant churchgoers attended a multisite church campus, according to Mulitisite Solutions.
Many churches of all sizes also use audio and video podcasting, creating online audio and video files of sermons and making them available for listening, watching, and downloading online. This can be a very effective way to expand your ministry beyond the walls of your church. Many churches use iTunes to podcast sermons for free, then link to them from their church website.
Start Integrating
As churches grow, their departments can become disjointed. At some point, it is necessary to integrate all ministries so everyone is on the same page aiming to meet the same goals. Churches can accomplish this through church management software that offers task management and workflow, or through online collaboration tools, such as Basecamp, for a reasonable monthly fee. There are also newcomers to the market each year like Roco CPM, which specializes in “church project management.” The end result is a website integrated with internal management software that pulls together the public and private sides of the church to form one unified organization that engages everyone.
Start Pushing
Finally, with Internet-ready smartphones in everyone’s pocket, apps have become extremely popular. Many church management software providers and online giving providers have started including free apps with their solutions in order to sweeten the pot, so to speak. If you start online giving, people can easily download the app and use it to give, streamlining the process. As with everything, weigh out the positives and negatives to find the least expensive and the most helpful tech tools to best fit your congregation’s needs.
Church Live Streaming Resources:
Church Podcasting Resources:
Church App Resources:
Lauren Hunter is an entrepreneur, freelance writer, and founder of ChurchTechToday, where she encourages churches to better use technology to improve every aspect of ministry. She's also a wife to a pretty awesome coach, mom of four great kids, worship leader, and poet.
