Run Before You Walk

Lots of churches are trying to live stream on a shoe-string budget. That's technically possible, but we think it unwise. We think it's unwise because it's almost impossible to do that well, and the goal is not simply to live stream, it's to provide fairly high quality video. You know this intuitively. When you search for a video on YouTube, and you click a low-quality video, how often do you click away, looking for the same content with better quality? To do live-streaming well, churches need a budget starting around $10k, and a team of about 8 volunteers. Then, they need time to improve. Unless your church can commit to that, we think you should be doing pre-recorded. While many think of pre-recorded as more work, that's because they haven't considered how much work true live-streaming is.

Measuring discipleship online isn't much different from in-person, though the events you'll notice might change. All the sudden, liking Instagram posts might matter quite a bit. We walk through how to think about this in this episode.

We use a 5-stage discipleship system:

Uninterested, unengaged

Spiritually interested, but not connected to a church

Church-goer, but not engaged in sanctification/being more like Jesus, etc

Taking responsibility for their own growth

Taking responsibility for the growth of others

Essentially, you're monitoring for signs a person is moving from one category to the next. We give some thoughts on what sort of things you might see in an online worship community.

This episode was filmed at Aldersgate United Methodist Church in Tustin, CA. Visit them online at https://aumctustin.org/

In a previous episode, we outline 3 goals that churches might have for online worship. Most churches will be aiming at one (or more) of these goals.

This episode compares various models of online worship to these goals. We hope this helps you process the implications of various strategies, and how to work them out in the real world.

Roughly 3 ways of doing online church:

Zoom worship

Pre-recorded with one camera

Multi-Cam, Live Streamed

3 Strategic Goals for Online & Hybrid Ministry, for the local church:

Invitation to In-Person

Disciple the people who attend In-Person, or wish they attended

Create an extra worship service/community/campus

If you're picking an approach to hybrid/online worship, you need to know what your goal is. And goals can vary dramatically. If you know your goal, it will become clearer how to structure your online worship.

Matt & Stephen present 3 potential goals for hybrid & online worship, then talk through the implications of each. Keep an eye out! Our next episode continues on the same idea.

1) Be effective marketing to people who want to investigate your church before visiting.

2) Support people who really think of themselves as part of your in-person community (for example home-bound folks, or soccer moms who can’t come to church on a given Sunday morning).

3) Create a distinct online worshipping community, almost like adding an additional worship service/campus.

This episode was filmed at Palisades United Methodist Church in San Clemente, California. https://www.palisadesumc.org/

One service time… not dropped and then viewed at leisure. (remember to talk small church) (remember to talk stats. Matt’s 100 comments, 

Ask questions in the video that are meant to be answered in the comments.

Zoom room after worship.

Church Online platform.

Outline

1. Why have you changed your preaching style?

2. What have you changed specifically?

3. What are some concrete tips?

Tip Ideas

One point not three

Shoot for 8 minutes and consistently be under 12. 

Look at the camera, not the room.

This episode is all about adjusting to online worship. How do we do it well (when we’ve got no paid staff to devote to this)?

A few lessons:
There’s a format shift! Lean into it.

Use anchors of quality.

Support Volunteers with Simple Training (like this video)

Just like with in-person worship, basic standards of quality are perfectly reasonable.

Quality has been democratized.

Run Before You Walk’s first episode! Meet Rev. Matt & Stephen, and learn one of the most important lessons they’ve learned together: how to create a good vibe in online worship (and what that means).

We went through the same difficulties many other small/medium-sized churches went through. You’ll find some sympathetic voices here

Principle 1: Lean into the format change (in-person to online)

Principle 2: Focus on the “Vibe” (ie barriers to grace)

Lesson 1: Online worship should be shorter

Lesson 2: Sermons need to be shorter, too

Lesson 3: You need to work harder to be engaging

Bonus Tips: Learn the basics of camera angles (we’ve got a video to help with that here:     )

Bonus Tips: Add engaging elements, which helps make things more engaging