Run Before You Walk Capital Hope Media

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/

Growing community in a virtual space is possible, but it's not always easy to see how. This episode helps consider how to do that well.

We have to adjust our preaching for online worship. How do we do that?