Online services are hurting your church more than helping :(
When was the last time you watched a YouTube video over one hour long? I’ve asked this question to countless numbers of people, mostly Christians, and the answer is always the same. A little chuckle with the answer: I don’t watch videos longer than an hour. I followed up that question with another. “Well, why do we as churches, put our hour-plus-long services online?” As churches, we need to ask ourselves, are we providing a “product” that most people are not looking for, and could there be a better way to help people online?
How putting your services online could be hurting you.
The quality of the audio and video of your online service makes you look bad
You are burning out your technical volunteers
Your YES to online church is saying NO to something better
Making a good online service is challenging. It's really hard, so don’t feel bad if yours isn’t what you want it to be. From purchasing the right equipment to ensuring volunteers are adequately trained. Mixing a separate audio feed for the band and ensuring everything is in sync, the chances that it will all turn out well are slim for churches with limited resources. Whether we like it or not, people look at us and judge our churches online. They are trying to determine if they could fit in with your church. Do you have the same values as them. So, if we put our services online and the video is dark and unclear, if the band is not mixed properly and that one off-key singer is louder than everyone else, it says something about us no matter what good motives we have. For most churches, your online service is hurting you more than helping you. But there could be an easier way. More about that later.
We have all chased after that professional lighting guy out to the parking lot. Technical volunteers are so valuable in the church world. I tell my team all the time they make me look way better than I actually am. But technical volunteers are so rare, and the time and investment to train someone to become technical is significant. So, for most churches, you are probably on the brink of burning out your technical volunteers. We need to ask another question. “Is this the best use of our resources? Both physically and financially. For most small to medium-sized churches, I believe the answer to that question is No.
Lastly, the older I get in life, there are two questions I’m constantly asking myself. Number one is “What would a good leader do?” and the second is “By saying YES to this request, what am I saying NO to?” That’s the question we all need to be asking when it comes to our online services. For each of us, that could be something different. A volunteer appreciation event, a staff retreat, or something to help build the church's core. We are all busy, but it’s vital to carve out some time in your schedule to find the answer to that question and then live with whatever wise decision that might be.
A Better way to share your church online
My suggestion for most churches is not to stream your services online but instead record your sermon and put it online in a couple of different ways. Use the soundboard to record the audio and have one camera on a fluid head tripod at the back filmed in 4K, or use a phone if the lighting is good in the room. Use editing software to combine the excellent audio and video and upload the sermon only to YouTube. Then, edit that same sermon down to a minute-long highlight video in a vertical format and upload it to your social media channels. If you don’t have the technical expertise to edit the video, I suggest going with a company like Social Sermons. They take your sermon videos and edit them for social media. Check them out at https://socialsermons.com/
For ninety percent of the churches out there, the amount of views they get from a weekly service is not worth the effort it takes to put a service online. I want your church to be the most effective it can be at reaching people for Christ and growing them as disciples. Sometimes, that means saying no to some good things to say yes to the best things.