The Benefits of Using Post-Launch Training Strategies for your Digital Ministry

Your digital ministry is like landscaping a yard. It looks great when you first plant everything in its respective place. But if you don’t maintain it, the whole project could die. It’s not as daunting as it sounds—a little goes a long way. Once you’ve built your website and initially put all the information in the right places, you can’t just give up. The most beneficial investment you can make post-launch is investing in training. In other words, train your church leaders and volunteers to properly use the website. Then your volunteers will be able to encourage church members to use the website to their advantage, too.

Training for Specialized Volunteers

Creating a website is a great start, but it absolutely will not be effectively utilized if your leaders and volunteers do not know how to support it. The best way that your church volunteers can support your church website is by understanding their relevance to it. Allow them to integrate their area of expertise into your digital ministry. For example, encourage a Bible Study leader to upload notes to the website. The more leaders know, the more deeply they can become involved in the digital ministry. Understanding how to use the website as a tool will surely lead your volunteers to eagerly share this tool with the rest of your flock!

Train Staff from the Beginning

To get the best result, input as much as you can from the beginning. Immediately after launching your website, begin training. Surround your staff with the digital ministry language, teaching them how to use it, when to use it, and how it can benefit everyone. You want to empower your church leaders rather than intimidate them. You want to start as soon as possible so that your church staff can jump right into learning before they can even begin to fear the idea of an online presence.

Reach out to the Congregation

The next step after training staff and volunteers how to use the website is encouraging congregation members to use it. The website should be user-friendly and generally easy to use and navigate, but that’s not necessarily enough to get active website visitors. To make the investment worthwhile, your website needs to be interwoven into the regular, person-to-person church activities. Allow traditional church activities– from the prayer chain to donations to Bible Study­– to exist on the website, too.

Empower all members of your church to use your church website, from the pastor or communications director, to the leaders and volunteers, to the wide variety of congregation members. Only by incorporating all members to use the website as a tool will you be able to guarantee that the website will be a worthwhile and effective investment. Anybody can create a website, but not every member of a church establishment will know how to use it. Although most digital ministry services do not provide follow-up training, it is arguably the most important part of the entire undertaking.

Consider a free consultation with one of our digital ministry strategists to discuss the benefits of follow-up training.