Here’s an online church mistake your probably making right now…

·      Your taking everything you do in-person and putting it online

·      Your online service is over 30 minutes long.

Here’s a question all church leaders need to ask themselves. When is the last time you watched a Youtube video over one hour? Almost everyone I ask that to lets out a little laugh and answers NEVER. If I’m honest with myself, I rarely if ever watch a video over 30 minutes long, and most likely I’m scrolling past some things to get to the part I really want to watch.

If that’s the case for most people and I think it is. Why do we as churches put online services of over an hour long online? We’ve simply taken what we do in-person and placed it online. But you see in-person and online are different. I would love to go to a soccer game at the stadium and cheer on my team together with 50,000 other people for a full two hours. The emotion and feeling you get from that experience is amazing. But when I watch the game online I would much rather watch the 10 minute highlight video than the full game.

Why is that? It’s because online and in-person experiences are created differently and that’s why you should never take everything that you do in your in-person service and place it online. They are different.

So, what is the ideal length of your online church service? The latest research says the average length of a YouTube video is 11 minutes and the average Facebook video is 50 seconds. While 50 seconds for an online church service is not possible, I do believe there is an argument to made to keep your online service in the 10 to 15 minute range. While there might be some push back to that amount and I understand that. There is the possibility to take your sermon, break it up into parts, and put multiple videos out a week rather than just one on the weekend. The YouTubers I watch the most post 2 to 3 times a week. I think the reason I watch them the most is I’m invested into what they are doing. I want to know what happens next. So there is an advantage of getting in front of your audience multiple times a week rather than just once on a Sunday morning.

So, what do we as churches do with our online services? I think the church of the future online will include multiple videos throughout the week that will be shorter in length. I believe the feeling that we need to include a worship song with the service will eventually go away and announcements will stop all together or might be included in a clever way similar to a sponsored video segment you see online. Those are my predictions and what I will be trying out in 2022. God Bless