Is Your Church Website Serving You, or are You Serving Your Church Website?

Do you find yourself spending a majority of your time having to communicate with your church body? The answer should be a resounding YES, because the good news is to be communicated to the people of God, for the Kingdom of God. However, if you find yourself spending more than an hour or two

I will never forget hearing this sweet older lady named Pam tell us that she was in charge of church mass communication. She then explained that their church used mass emails to send church information amongst members.

Sweet Mrs. Pam then told us she sent out anywhere from 5-10 emails to each of their 120 members every week. We were impressed, and asked, which email newsletter service they used, to which she replied “Gmail.”

Kindhearted Mrs. Pam had been CC’ing every member by hand 5 TO 10 TIMES PER WEEK! This likely took 20-30 minutes for every email, meaning 2 ½ to 5 hours a week were spent just typing in email recipients. This does not include bulletins, and other church announcements.

This is a prime instance of a church serving their digital ministry rather than their digital ministry serving their church. With the proper tools in place for a successful digital ministry, pastors and church communicators will be able to free up hours of their week, giving time to truly minister to their congregation.

The following are some resources that can be used to ensure that your church website is serving you, rather than you serving your church website.

1.   PRE-SERVICE SLIDE LOOP

Whether you are typing up bulletins to be sent out each week, typing up emails like our hard working Mrs. Pam, or managing your church’s Facebook account, you are spending valuable time communicating with your church body.

Your time is valuable, and by implementing a pre-service loop that directs people to your church website for events and updates, you could dramatically free up your time. Additionally, think of the time you’d save post-service without having to have 5-10 minutes of announcements every single Sunday!

2.   EVENTS PAGE OR CALENDAR

Simply implementing an events page or better yet, an events calendar on your church’s website, can dramatically free up your time. Imagine, no more time spent typing up announcements, or constantly updating your church’s Facebook page.

You could simply add one event, and in within minutes your entire church body and visitors could have immediate access to new information. You could then add directions, service times, and additional information that would further clarify events, freeing up both you and any volunteer’s time.

3.   SOCIAL MEDIA AND APP INTEGRATION

While slide loops and even calendars certainly can enable your church’s website to serve you, the question of social media integration still remains. “But we’d then have to update the site, slides, AND our Facebook/Twitter,” pastors or church communicators may say. However, there are a couple of options that would further free your time.

There are a variety of ways to update social media, with the good ole fashioned manual way being the most popular. However, there are tools that synch with your church website, so that when you update an event, it automatically posts to both Facebook and Twitter!

This process is even furthered with church apps, which allow easy and instant access to all of your church content. With apps, you can even allow push notifications, which allow instant messages to pop up on any device that has your church app downloaded. This is great for events, directions, and even emergency information.

4.   PHONE TREE

One last service that works with your church’s digital ministry is phone tree. Phone tree works by serving your church communicators through the sending out of mass texts and phone calls within minutes.

While apps may be preferred, this is a great tool for churches that need to send out small information to a small to medium population. Though ideal for emergency information, this tool can be optimized to send out texts for special church events.
With all of these tools, it’s easy to get caught up in the exciting technology. These tools are very exciting, but remember that the goal is to free up your time, so you can efficiently communicate with your congregation. The time saved could be used to minister to your members, and effectively take the gospel of Jesus Christ into your community.