How to Use Your Church Livestream to Connect With Your Community

You want to use your church’s livestream to connect with new people in your community. That’s a great idea. Fortunately, there’s a simple solution. The best resource your church has is currently sitting in your pews.

Lifeway found that teaching pastors spend 8-10 hours preparing weekly sermons. Sadly, all that research and prep time is often limited to whoever shows up at the physical building on Sunday morning. What if you could double or triple the exposure of that sermon in local spaces? Pastor, the Internet is your best friend! You just don’t realize it yet.

Using resources like Resi to livestream your church service, Resi On Demand to turn your sermons evergreen, or even connecting Resi to solutions like Sermon Shots gives your sermons influence and life way beyond the building. Mark Venti, Director of Ministries at Churchome, says, “We can reach thousands of people with our buildings, or we can reach tens and even hundreds of thousands of people digitally.”

Pastor, as overwhelming as that idea may be, he’s not wrong. Resi is the key to unlocking the power of your sermon digitally.

Step 1: Assemble your army: Call them “Brand ambassadors” or “Disciples”

The best digital resource your church has is not the money you spend on new cameras or the studio you’re trying to build. It’s not even the GenZ digital pastor you’re trying to recruit. The most valuable digital asset your church possesses is not software or hardware, but the individuals occupying the pews every Sunday morning. These congregants exhibit unwavering loyalty, eagerly visit the church, and hold deep love, respect, and trust towards you and your leadership. To expand your reach within the community, harnessing the potential of these individuals to bridge connections with their friends and family stands as the most effective growth strategy at your disposal. Unlocking the full potential of your church livestream hinges on these individuals.

Using digital resources built from your physical church services and church livestreams is a surefire way to equip your army with tools for connecting and sharing with the people within their circle of influence.

The corporate world calls these people “brand ambassadors,” crucial in any effective marketing campaign today. Ironically, Jesus had the idea first, some 2,000 years ago. He called them “disciples.” Can your church equip these “digital disciples” with digital resources? Can your digital disciples make disciples utilizing your church’s digital resources?

Step 2: Equipping your army: Convert your church livestream into shareable content

The beauty of digital technology is that its power adapts to different contexts:

Your church should have a digital strategy that maximizes the effort that goes into creating that weekly sermon! There’s so much energy that goes into that presentation. How can we best maximize the sermon’s effectiveness in connecting with people digitally? Let’s unpack some methods (and discuss how Resi’s best-in-class technology is the lynchpin in your plans).

Livestreaming church services using Resi

According to Pushpay’s 2024 State of Church Tech Report, 91% of churches livestream their services, indicating a significant trend. Livestreaming has become deeply ingrained in American churches. In Resi’s The Digitally Resilient Church series, it was highlighted that potential visitors tend to watch church services multiple times before attending in person. Merely hosting a stream on a website is not enough; it is vital to encourage disciple-makers to invite others to experience the worship online. Consider the idea of a “sim-live” service on Sunday night. Imagine concluding each Sunday morning service by prompting attendees to think about who in their life could benefit from the message and inviting them to join the online Sunday night experience.

Making sermons shareable via Resi On-Demand

It’s crucial to acknowledge that while livestreaming church services and fostering a sense of collective worship online are powerful, on-demand views typically surpass livestreaming statistics. Promptly making the sermon available and ensuring effective communication are vital. Consider encouraging the Sunday morning audience with a challenge: “If this sermon resonated with you or if the Holy Spirit brought someone to mind during the message, share the link. Text it to them and invite them for coffee to discuss further.” A well-planned on-demand strategy generally garners more views for the sermon compared to those present physically at the worship venue.

Massive Exposure via Reels, Shorts, & Sermon Shots

Today, social media algorithms heavily prioritize shorter content, aiming for around 60 seconds. Crafting a concise, impactful message within this timeframe is challenging, but those compelling mic drop moments and memorable one-liners you painstakingly create can be easily shared across platforms. This shift towards short-form videos is crucial for churches to engage with a wider audience online. Embracing this trend on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube can significantly boost your online presence and attract new followers.

Pastor, I understand your time constraints, and that’s where Sermon Shots truly shines. By harnessing Generative AI, Sermon Shots can analyze your sermon content and craft impactful, memorable clips. No need to sift through the entire sermon to find the right moments – let AI take the lead. When paired with Resi, the process becomes even more efficient. Your church can seamlessly stream from Resi to Sermon Shots during the first Sunday service, allowing a volunteer to create clips during the second service. Thanks to Resi + Sermon Shots, the heavy lifting can be completed before the Sunday services conclude!

Post shorts on your social media channels to help your branded accounts meet new people, but then give your shorts to your team of digital disciples to share powerful moments with their circle of influence, creating opportunities for dialogue.

Watch Parties & Microsites – It’s time for your disciples to leave the building

We’re thinking outside the box here. Shareable content can be sent via text or social media to friends. Then, conversations about the shareable assets can happen digitally, over coffee, or during a meal during the week. What if shareable content looked a little different? What if some of your disciples opened their homes Sunday morning and invited friends and neighbors to watch the church service in their homes? Or, workers would bring in a free lunch on Thursday for the office and ask their co-workers to experience the online church service.

Going to a church building for the first time is intimidating, even with friends. This is why potential visitors will watch church services up to six times online before they come to the building. Watch Parties and Microsites are a simple way to build trust with potential visitors via proxy of their friends. These smaller gatherings are a simple way to create a safe space for new communities. Empower your digital disciples even to make a new physical community!

Create a hub for sharing resources from your church livestream with your digital disciples

It’s one thing to have digital assets floating around on social media, encouraging your physical attendees to share them with others online. You will see sharing happen organically through this process. You will see far more sharing done if your church intentionally asks and recruits key leaders to share… think guerilla marketing. Hold back some of your material for your disciples to share online. Create an unlisted webpage exclusively for them to access where they can peruse and download material. Send them updates and encouragement as lifechange happens within the group. These digital disciples are a new ministry team waiting to be unleashed upon your physical (and digital) community.

Step 3: Mobilizing Your Army: Trust God enough to lose control

If you build and equip an army with resources from your church livestream, you must ensure they are mobilized.

Pastor, culture is evolving, and as a result, the church needs to pivot: The goal of the church cannot be for one person to stand behind a pulpit exuding his spiritual gift in front of hundreds or thousands. Instead, what if the church became a place where those hundreds or thousands were encouraged to exude their spiritual gifts in front of the tens or hundreds within their circle of influence? Can you imagine what this would look like at your church?

Tip: Trust God enough to let go of control of the situation. Your digital disciples may do things differently than you would. Give them room to explore different avenues and try different things. They will learn through the process… and you will, too!

Directing resources intentionally towards your digital community, the worshippers in the pews, may seem challenging. These individuals may or may not grasp the concept of sharing the church’s digital assets within their social circles. Many churches opt for alternatives, such as investing in Google Ads or Facebook Ads. Notably, Google offers AdWords Grants, providing non-profits like churches with up to $10,000 in AdWords credits monthly for promotional activities. While these strategies are commendable and should be pursued by your church, the conversion rate resulting from paid advertisements is typically low. Conducting tests is advisable to evaluate whether the return on investment justifies the expenditure.

To counterbalance, approach your elders, deacons, or small group leaders. Give them digital resources weekly for two months and ask them to intentionally share the resources with someone each week. Then, challenge the digital disciples to talk with that person about the resource. Compare the ROI of shareable resources with paid ads.

Building and empowering a team of digital disciples is the best way to get started if your church is serious about reaching your community with your church livestream and other shareable assets. What’s stopping you?