HOW TO HAVE A SUCCESSFUL ONLINE CHURCH MINISTRY

CONTENTS Introduction: Why Every Church Should Have Virtual Worship ....................................................................... 3

Build the Foundation of Your Virtual Ministry with an App ....................................................................... 4

Giving Your Church a Virtual Home – Building a Website ............................................................................ 7

How to Conduct Virtual Church Services ......................................... 9

Offering More Than Just Sunday Services ................................... 14

INTRODUCTION:

WHY EVERY CHURCH SHOULD HAVE VIRTUAL WORSHIP

For your members and guests, your church is a key pillar supporting

their daily lives. But what happens when members are unable to

congregate and receive the spiritual guidance they require?

After all, members can get pulled away. Students go off to college in

the fall. Snowbirds head south for the winter. People take vacations

during the summer, and sometimes they’re just not able to attend.

Though these members can’t physically attend, it doesn’t mean

your church should forget about their spiritual needs, and its

responsibility to fulfill them.

This is where virtual church service comes in. Since COVID-19, virtual

worship has transformed from something only megachurches

and the most tech-savvy congregations conduct, to a worship tool

churches of all sizes use. Virtual church service’s move into the

mainstream proves that offering basic services can serve as an

extension to ministries. And virtual ministry is not terribly difficult or

expensive for even the smallest congregations to support.

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BUILD THE FOUNDATION OF YOUR VIRTUAL MINISTRY WITH AN APP. There are plenty of tools and techniques churches should use, which we’ll outline. But, before you begin building out your virtual ministry, you’ll want to have a centralized hub to host and organize all the activities and links to tools you’ll need. Vanco Mobile’s church app offers the central space you need, and it’s free.

C H A P T E R 1

What Our Church App Can Do for Your Congregation?

1. Build an Online Church Directory – According to a Gallup study, the number of members attending weekly has dropped 13% in the last 20 years. That’s why churches can’t solely rely on worship services to solidify their community. They need group participation such as prayer ministries and Bible studies. They need to encourage members to interact with pastors and their peers. They need to promote church events and fundraisers, and they need to gather volunteers to strengthen the community through good works. Vanco’s church app helps with all of these things, but at its heart is a directory that serves as a virtual hub for everyone to connect with online profiles.

Building a virtual church directory with the Vanco Mobile app is easy. Individual users can download the Vanco Mobile app and create their profile within minutes. They can select their avatar, enter their contact information (phone number and email) and choose to make that information private or public within your church’s community.

2. Manage Groups Online – Virtual Bible studies, prayer ministries, leadership committees and other gatherings allow members to take a more active role within the church community, but it can be hard for individuals to meet up at the church with busy schedules and restrictions on group gatherings due to COVID-19. Having the central, virtual hub that Vanco Mobile provides allows you to create groups, join groups, invite others to groups and share virtual meeting information. This all makes remote meetings much easier.

Managing groups within Vanco Mobile is simple, and it’s even easier for your members to join. It only takes three steps.

Step 1 - Send members a notification to join the group.

Step 2 - After selecting the invitation sent to them by their church, members will be prompted to accept or decline the invitation.

Step 3 - Select “Accept.“

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3. Accommodate Communication with Online Chats – We rolled out the Vanco Mobile just as COVID-19 was putting limits on social gatherings. To adjust to the new circumstances of meeting virtually, pastors and church leaders needed to scramble to create or ramp up their online gatherings. Vanco Mobile helped a lot.

With the group chat, members can also connect with new visitors, forming an online welcome committee. They can coordinate with volunteers and even check in with fellow members. If your members want to chat with another member or your pastor using Vanco’s church app, it only takes a minute to get started. Simply follow these easy steps.

1 - Go to the directory and type in the name of the person you want to chat with.

2 - Once you found them, select their name and tap the Direct Message button.

3 - Type your message and hit Send.

Make Donations Easy

Over the last two decades, we’ve helped tens of thousands of churches increase donations. We’ve found that simply making it easy to give has a significant impact on the number of donations. People are generous, and church members are especially giving. Philanthropy Daily found that 62% of religious households give to charity compared to only 46% of unaffiliated households. The most common reason members don’t give is that they forget. With work, family and a ton of other concerns, your church’s mission can easily slip to the back of your members’ minds.

With the Vanco Mobile app, giving is easy. You can quickly connect links to your online giving pages or connect to your giving platform, such as Vanco’s suite of eGiving products. By using our suite of eGiving products, we found that churches were able to increase donations by an average of 26%.

One of the biggest reasons for that 26% increase in giving was an uptick in recurring donations among the churches who began using our product. The eGiving tools within our suite, such as text giving, allow donors to easily make their gift recurring within seconds.

Simplified Virtual Worship

Since COVID-19, many churches have expanded their virtual services and several congregations have opted to include them in addition to in-person worship. As many communities found out, these services are inexpensive to offer and relatively easy to maintain. However, many members can lose your virtual sign in information or have troubles finding it. Our church app offers one hub to broadcast all the necessary links and files.

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C H A P T E R 2

GIVING YOUR CHURCH A VIRTUAL HOME – BUILDING A WEBSITE. For your virtual ministry to be successful, your members, guests and newcomers need to be able to find it. This means you’ll need a website. If you already have a website, you can skip ahead, but if you don’t, or have an out-of-date website that is difficult to manage, consider these low-cost options that won’t require you to hire a web developer.

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The days of needing to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to build a professional website are over. With DIY website builders, all you need to do is choose from a list of available templates, make a few edits to match your church’s distinct personality, and that’s it. Even the least tech-savvy users can build a website from the following providers in just a few hours.

Wix

What’s nice about Wix is that you don’t even need to commit to buying a website before building it. This allows an aspiring virtual ministry to see if this solution is right for them. Wix is used by many small businesses because it costs very little and doesn’t take professional skills to use. If you’re looking to see what the system looks like and how to use it, Wix has put together a list of ten video tutorials that will help you go from a website newbie to a master in no time. At Vanco, we built a sample church website in the Wix platform to demonstrate the quality of pages churches could produce within the editor. The process involved choosing one of the many templates Wix had available. Then we simply entered our unique text and images within the template.

Squarespace

Squarespace is very similar to Wix, and it is used by individuals in churches and small businesses across the country. This means there are a lot of resources for creating a Squarespace website. If you’re looking to see what creating a website on this platform is like, check out this video, describing how you can build a webpage within minutes.

Each of these providers charge very little per month—under $20 in many cases—and the plan covers your domain name and hosting, expenses you would need to pay for any website.

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HOW TO CONDUCT VIRTUAL CHURCH SERVICES Churches have a lot of options. With so many different technologies at their disposal, there isn’t a single way to do it. But if your church is like most, you’re looking for the simplest and least expensive options.

Here are a few ideas.

C H A P T E R 3

Getting the Equipment You Need—It’s Cheaper Than You Think

If you have a smartphone, you can easily create professional videos while spending less than $100. Here are just a few inexpensive tools that can help you turn your smartphone into a high-end piece of recording equipment.

1. Smartphone tripod adaptor and tripod – This equipment will allow you to connect your smartphone to a tripod to give a steady visual display. The tripod adaptor lets you easily mount your smartphone to the tripod. Many companies manufacture this equipment, and it is easy to find a kit at a low cost. This adjustable adapter and tripod is less than $20.

2. Lighting – For your online visitors to feel as if they are attending in person, you’ll need to address the lighting. Using a simple ring light attachment that connects to your smartphone will make a world of difference. When it comes to light attachments for a smartphone, you can spend anywhere from $10 to a few hundred dollars. Whatever you decide, any sort of attachment will improve the quality of your video.

3. Microphone – Many smartphones have high-grade cameras included within them. Unfortunately, they don’t have spectacular microphones. Because your online viewers need to hear the messages conveyed by your pastor and the songs from your band or choir to be uplifted by your Sunday services, you will need to have some additional hardware. But don’t worry, this piece of equipment won’t set you back much.

Any external microphone will significantly improve your sound quality, but if your Sunday services focus on the pastor and their sermon, you’ll want to use a lavalier microphone that can clip onto a shirt. This is a cheap way – you can find one for less than $20 – to focus on your pastor’s voice as they deliver a sermon or convey key messages.

4. All-in-One Rig Set – This is one of the easiest ways to get all the necessary equipment to maximize your smartphone’s video recording capabilities. These portable sets generally work with any type of smartphone. They come with easy-to-use lighting systems, a microphone and a tripod. In many cases, they are less than $40, such as the set demonstrated in this video. What’s particularly neat about the set demonstrated in the video is that it has handles, which allow you to smoothly pan and adjust the camera without shaking the picture. This will help your camera operator provide better footage of the service for online viewers.

If you have a large budget, you can opt for the more high-end equipment for each piece of hardware, but it isn’t a requirement. Plenty of professional broadcasters use only their smartphones with a few accessories. In fact, Think Media, a popular YouTube channel, has a video illustrating how any user can make their smartphone into a high-end piece of production equipment on the cheap.

For many who haven’t tried setting up virtual ministries yet, it may take a few attempts to find your grove. But don’t worry. Most members and visitors won’t expect studio-level videos right away. They will simply be grateful they’re able to view services online when they aren’t able to physically attend.

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Livestreaming

Once you have the equipment you need, you’ll be ready to begin livestreaming. When livestreaming church services, there are a few cheap and easy-to-use options.

1. Facebook Live – Did you know 69% of adults in the U.S. use Facebook (Pew Research)? Facebook’s livestreaming service offers the perfect solution for churches wanting to offer worship online. You can use it for free and setting it up is easy. Just how easy is it? Well, in just over two minutes, this pastor demonstrates how to set up a livestream for a church service.

2. YouTube – Using a similar phone setup, you can also stream virtual church services with YouTube. Creating a live stream with your smartphone is simple and takes only a few minutes. You can also use your computer and its webcam to create a livestream on YouTube by following these tips.

3. Stream to Both YouTube and Facebook – Many churches have used Zoom as a result of COVID-19. Although it’s not necessarily free, it isn’t cost prohibitive, and it simplifies the process. One nice thing about this software is that it allows you to livestream to multiple services at once including YouTube, Facebook and a custom link of your choosing. The process for it is surprisingly simple.

Recording Sermons or Services and Making them On-Demand

As we mentioned earlier, many of your members might not be able to attend services regularly. Make sure their spiritual needs are met by recording your weekly services and sermons. With one or two volunteers, you can easily record your worship services for members to view online.

As for getting the production just right, it may take a few Sunday services, but your congregation will forgive the technical blips as you streamline your production from week to week. You can also easily edit out any kinks for free with the help of a determined or tech-savvy volunteer using free software like OBS. OBS’s studio is easy to use and has several instructional videos to help volunteers get up to speed. Check out this 30-minute video tutorial to see if this software is what you’re looking for.

Recordings of sermons and services offer a powerful new way to reach members. Share your recordings wherever you can to let your congregation know that they can catch up on last week’s services. Use social media posts, your website and emails to keep them informed.

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Tools to Promote and Broadcast Your Virtual Church Services

Once you have a recording, you can easily broadcast your services to the masses. Doing this will not only help you better serve your members by letting them know when a new video recording is available, but it will also let prospective members and guests see all the great things your church has to offer. Here are just a few promotional tools that don’t cost a thing, but provide plenty of value.

1. Social Media – When it comes to promoting a church on social media, we’re specifically talking about Facebook. Facebook has far more online users than any other platform, and it is usually among the top search results when individuals search the web for your church’s name. Although Facebook will require you to pay for expansive reach, there’s plenty you can get for free. By creating a local page, you can have your church’s information such as name, address and phone number prominently displayed on search engines like Google. You can also share important events with members and connect private Facebook groups for individual members to have conversations with each other. If you haven’t created a Facebook page yet, here are the instructions to get started.

2. Google My Business (GMB) – Don’t be fooled by the word “Business” in this tool’s name. GMB works great for churches. By creating a listing for each of your campuses, your guests can easily receive driving directions. Your church’s GMB listing will also display at the top of the search results with a panel that details your information for queries relating to your church. And most importantly, it will help you appear at the top of local search results when new residents are looking for a congregation to join. If you don’t have a GMB listing for your church or wish to optimize an existing listing, check out this video.

3. YouTube Channel – We already mentioned livestreaming, but you can also create your own YouTube channel, upload videos to it and share video links with your members. This provides a simple method of distribution for content and a free way to store all those gigabits of video. If you’re interested in using YouTube as a part of your church’s virtual megaphone, you don’t need to worry if the process is too difficult. Creating and verifying your channel and uploading videos to it doesn’t take a lot of effort. Just follow these instructions.

Create a YouTube channel Upload a video

4. Blog – A blog is a great way to expand your reach into the community and beyond. However, it can be hard to find time to create the content for it. One simple solution is to embed your videos from your YouTube channel onto your website’s blog. The process of embedding a video is easy if your website uses WordPress, Wix or Squarespace. Because almost a third of websites in the U.S. use WordPress, we’ve included the instructions for embedding your YouTube video to your WordPress blog right here. For instructions on Wix, click here. And you can get the instructions for Squarespace right here.

5. Canva – If you’re looking to give your church’s promotional material a professional look without hiring a graphic designer, Canva is the perfect solution. With thousands of readily available templates and photos, your church can quickly create professional materials without spending a lot. Canva has a free plan that includes thousands of materials. You can browse through the available templates that include presentations, social media posts, flyers, newsletters, Zoom backgrounds and more here.

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Overcoming the Challenges of Recording and Streaming

Music and prayers can be a challenge for virtual church services. Unlike a sermon, your technology needs to capture more than one person and one voice. It becomes even more difficult if your church’s choir or members need to connect remotely as with COVID-19. Whether you’re recording a fully virtual church service or a hybrid with some members viewing remotely and others watching from church pews, these tips will help you with your presentation.

1. Prerecording – Prerecording can help your worship team prepare for the main event, Sunday services, while creating an on-demand experience that’s available before the service even starts. You can even livestream that prerecording on Facebook Live and YouTube.

2. Editing – We talked a little about OBS studio and other free and user-friendly editing tools. Aside from offering a convenient way to cut out the quirks in your live broadcast, you can film and edit the recording before the church service.

3. Enlisting Help – It’s important that everything doesn’t fall on the shoulders of your main presenter, your pastor. As the key presenter, it’s difficult for them to troubleshoot issues. That’s why it’s important to have a host for live and even recorded broadcasts. The host or hosts can help the presenter if any difficulties arise or assist individual church members with technical issues.

4. Muting Microphones – For live streams, it’s simply a must, especially if it is a Zoom with a hundred-plus people. Although many pastors want to do their best to simulate an in-person experience, you don’t want background noise interrupting the sermon for your virtual viewers.

5. Create Detailed Instructions – Whether or not you’re livestreaming or recording, offer members and guest the direction they need, such as where they can access the material and how to access it. One of the best places to include these instructions is on the church’s website. If you don’t have a website or a particularly easy way of doing this, you can also send links and updates through text or email using your church management system. When creating the steps, it’s best to be as specific as possible, and one of the simplest ways to do that is with screensharing. There are several free tools that allow you to share a recording of your screen and add narration, OBS Studios is one of them. However, with Screencast-O-Matic, you can highlight any section of your computer screen, capture video and add audio within just a few minutes.

6. Lighting – You don’t need to be a director or have expensive equipment to make your video shine. As we mentioned earlier, you can turn an iPhone’s video camera into a high-end machine with just a few attachments, such as a mini ring light. Whatever equipment you use, make sure the focus of your shots is well lit. This may be as simple as tinkering with the sanctuary’s light switches before service to determine what combination of lighting provides the best viewing experience.

7. Create Detailed Instructions – Whether or not you’re livestreaming or recording, offer members and guest the direction they need, such as where they can access the material and how to access it. One of the best places to include these instructions is on the church’s website. If you don’t have a website or a particularly easy way of doing this, you can also send links and updates through text or email using your church management system. When creating the steps, it’s best to be as specific as possible, and one of the simplest ways to do that is with screensharing. There are several free tools that allow you to share a recording of your screen and add narration, OBS Studios is one of them. However, with Screencast-O-Matic, you can highlight any section of your computer screen, capture video and add audio within just a few minutes.

8. Practice – If your presenters and your video volunteer or volunteers can do a quick dry run before the service, you’ll catch a lot of the quirks before they start.

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OFFERING MORE THAN JUST SUNDAY SERVICES Churchgoers rely on the spiritual guidance provided by their churches. But for many, they only receive that guidance once a week or less. Continue to be a spiritual resource for your members throughout the week by offering a virtual church experience to supplement Sunday services. Here are just a few of the limited or no-cost virtual worship opportunities churches can offer members.

C H A P T E R 4

1 - FACILITATING CONVERSATIONSAside from offering spiritual guidance and support, churches are key facilitators in the lives of most of their members. Through the church, members connect and support each other in times of need, but when members are suddenly cut

off from the congregation by travel, work or other events, many lose access. Help members stay a part of their community with an online church directory app. With tools that let churches create, edit and invite users to small groups and subgroups, members can get together for quick check-ins. They even allow direct messaging to an individual user who is away but needs the congregation’s support and prayers.

2 - ONLINE WELCOME COMMITTEESDid you know 90% of new visitors will return if someone from the church reaches out to them right away? Even when that new visitor goes unwelcomed for a few days, they still have a 60% chance of returning (Tony Morgan). You or your congregation can work to connect with newcomers, ensuring the church is welcoming them and providing for their spiritual needs. There are a number of chat-based tools that can help your church organize and delegate outreach.

3 - PRAYER AND BIBLE STUDY GROUPSChurchgoers understand the power of prayer and group Bible study, and they value it. But with busy weeks, many members can’t make it to church during the weekdays. Help members organize virtual groups so they can join from their homes.

To help you create your own virtual groups, we’ve provided a few steps we’ve taken from our work with tens of thousands of churches who have successfully engaged their members in person and remotely.

Decide on a Cadence

For your online prayer ministry or other virtual group, you’ll need to have a set meeting time. It’s important to be consistent. This helps people to integrate your prayer ministry or Bible study into their weekly or monthly routines. As the group grows, you may find that you’ll need to split it into multiple meetings to offer availability to members. Splitting the groups also has the benefit of encouraging more engagement among participants. When there are fewer individuals in the group, it encourages participation, rather than passive listening.

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Promote to the Congregation and Beyond

Once you have the schedule for a meeting set up, you’ll need to find a way to get new group members to join.

Announce it from the PulpitHaving your pastor or clergy announce the start of the group and issue reminders to join is the easiest way to get started.

Place Reminders in BulletinsHaving your pastor or clergy announce the start of the group and issue reminders to join is the easiest way to get started.

Use Your WebsiteBoth members and guests interact with your website. Make sure you use the tool’s potential to inform. Place announcements detailing your group’s time and information.

Email Potential ParticipantsDon’t just email your members. Reach out to past visitors and members. The online prayer ministry, Bible study or other virtual group is a great way for these people to reconnect with your congregation.

Send a LetterFor some members or guests, a letter feels more personal, which could lead to a response, while an email might be ignored.

Post on Social MediaYour social media accounts, such as your Facebook page, offer a public space for those in the community and beyond to connect. That’s why a simple post can help draw new guests to your online prayer group. You can make sure your post stands out on your Facebook Timeline by pinning it. By pinning a post, it will remain at the top of your timeline until you remove it. Here’s how you can get started pinning posts for your church.

Encourage Members to Pass the Message With the help of members, you can bring your online prayer ministry or Bible study to individuals within your community and beyond. One of the best ways you can encourage word of mouth is by providing the information in an easily accessible way. This would include putting the meeting details and login instructions in your social media posts or on your website. Doing this makes it simple for members to share with friends, family and acquaintances.

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Choose a Video or Phone Conference Platform

For your members to connect with each other during your online prayer group or virtual gathering, you’ll need video or phone conferencing.

Phone ConferencingFor less tech-savvy members, phone conferencing is easier. Using Zoom, you can dial in by phone and enter a meeting identification. However, there are limitations with Zoom if you don’t have a paid account; the most significant is time. If you want to use their free solution, you’ll have to keep your call under 40 minutes. Fortunately, when it comes to phone conferencing, there are plenty of free solutions including this option.

Video ConferencingIf you’re looking for free video conferencing, there is an option many churches have adopted, and it’s really easy to use. Google Meet lets up to 100 users connect for free for up to an hour.

Group Chats

By facilitating group chats, members can engage with conversations on the gospel and create a stronger community. Much of the group chat technology is easy to use and inexpensive.

Quiet Rooms

Broadcasting apps can allow churches to stream their service directly to a monitor or TV inside the church. This allows parents to continue watching the services while they step away to take care of their children.

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Want to Engage Members and Guests While Growing Donations?

Vanco has helped 25,000 churches and counting increase giving and better engage their members with easy-to-use tools. And we can do you the same for you. All you need to do is...

1. REQUEST a demo to see our tools in action and have one of our engagement and giving experts guide you to the most optimal set of tools for your church.

2. LAUNCH – Don’t worry. You don’t need to be tech-savvy to implement our programs. We assign you a dedicated launch specialist that will coach you every step of the way, helping you reach your church’s goals.

3. ENJOY the increased engagement and giving within your church!

Request a Demo