5 Tech Advancements to Elevate Your Church
Religious institutions across the board have a reputation for being behind the times when it comes to technology. Whether this is true for your church or not, odds are there is something you could be doing to increase your online presence. Take advantage of these five advancements that you can use to help more people take part in worship with you.
The Website
For a church of any size, having a good website is incredibly important. In the age of information, it is rare that someone just shows up to a church service without doing any kind of research online first. The basic things you will want on your website will be the time of worship services, the church address, announcements and upcoming events, and a link to online giving.
Most of these things can be added to make navigating your website easy for anyone looking to check out your church. A new trend many people like to do before visiting a church is to go online and watch recordings of old services so they can get a feel for the atmosphere of your church. This leads to our second tip.
Live Streaming
In recent years corporate worship has changed drastically. In a post-pandemic world, the number of people attending services from home has increased. This has created a demand for churches to move their services to an online platform that allows for as much interaction as possible, and the answer for most was live streaming.
While this has unlocked new ways to minister, many churches don’t know much about live streaming and need a little help to get started. The first step is to choose the right streaming platform. Once you have that settled, finding the right equipment is next. Thankfully, for smaller churches, all you need to get started is someone with a smartphone and the right app.
Church Management Software
As your church gets larger, you may find it’s harder to keep up that feeling of personal connection that so many find in worship settings. It’s also harder to keep track of new faces and families and track all of their information. Thankfully church management software has been developed that can help you do exactly that. This software can help track newcomers to your church, reach your congregation with mass communication, and some can even help track online giving. Most of these software options are affordable for churches of all sizes.
Audio/Video
If the music team at your church uses speakers or microphones of any kind, you probably know that the most important “musicians” aren’t on the stage at all. The backbone of a morning worship service is the audio, video, and lights team. The importance of a good AVL team cannot be overstated.
Whether you have a whole team of people or one person sitting in the booth each morning, if there is one area of a church that is worth investing in, it’s this one. Give your tech team the best equipment you can afford because as worship services continue to move online, you will want to be able to keep up.
Video Teaching Libraries
As churches grow, they often begin to evolve and change. Usually, this ends up meaning “small groups” where people can get to know one another personally as they study and learn together. These groups are often in need of material to discuss, so one thing you can do is invest in some video teaching libraries.
Many teachers post lessons and other materials online for others to learn from. Some of these are free others might require a subscription. It might be worth it to help your small groups develop by giving them the option to have a video to learn from instead of expecting a volunteer leader to come up with a fresh lesson each week.
Use these different avenues of technology to your advantage to push the mission of your church forward.
