By Russell St. Bernard
How we worship has been fundamentally transformed. Hybrid worship, meaning online and in person, now provides congregants with greater access to and choices of places of worship.
For pastors and faith leaders, one of the key takeaways is this: Hybrid worship is here to stay.
Hybrid ministry existed before 2020, of course. However, in the last few years, it became more of a grand experiment to test the innovation and resilience of churches challenged with not being able to gather in our buildings as a congregation.
But now, hybrid worship must be permanent. Going backward is not an option. During the last few years, your church most likely made investments in your digital strategy and technology.
You also likely built ministry teams to operate new social and streaming platforms. Given these investments in your digital ministry, sidelining your gains should be a non-starter.
Yes, we are excited and are so happy to see our members and supporters back into the building. Gathering in person for worship is a time-honored tradition that will hopefully never be disrupted again as it has been during the last few years.
But what about those worshippers you’ve gained online? What about those who could have connected with any ministry in the world online, yet chose to connect with yours?
Online Worship Creates Access and Choices
Givelify’s annual Giving in Faith report features several key findings, including 71% of congregants attended their churches and places of worship virtually (45%) or in a hybrid format (26%) in 2021. Further, 59% of worshippers believe that online attendance is acceptable for belonging to a church.
Now is the time to double down on the online audience you have gained during the last couple of years. You may never see them in the building. They may not live in your state or even in the U.S., but they still may consider your place of worship as their home church.
Almost all of the places of worship that participated in the Giving in Faith survey said they intend to continue offering online worship services. So, how do churches elevate their worship online? What are some of the characteristics the best online churches have in common?
Although many pastors and faith leaders have embraced worship online, it still may look different at many churches and places of worship. As you may know, live streaming your worship services is any method of streaming video of your services on the Internet.
Yet live streaming covers the spectrum of someone simply holding up their mobile phone and broadcasting the services on social media, and it can range to advanced 4K multicamera setups.
Whatever your circumstance, you need clear focus and simultaneous attention on two audiences: in-person and online worshippers.
You may consider your in-person worshippers your primary audience. They are the people who are right in front of you. They most likely include those who worshipped with you before the pandemic. Some of them are new to the congregation. And for others, this might be their first time participating in live worship in months. Others might already have been attending more consistently.
As for your online worshippers, 1 in 5 plan to attend multiple places of worship, according to the 2022 Giving in Faith report. That means your online worshippers might be new and have never experienced worship with you before. Some of them might be part of your faith community who are traveling and unable to attend in person.
A clear focus on both of your church’s audiences is important because each person, whether they are in worship in the building or joining online, still needs your thoughtful focus and attention.
To accomplish this, there are a few components you must add or develop. Here are three tips to elevate your online worship experience:
- Create an online tech team.
The top priority of this team is to ensure that audio and video are of the best quality you can produce. Making sure you have the best equipment and software is a financial commitment in some ways. But it doesn’t have to be expensive. Some enhancements, like graphic design software, are free.
Constantly monitoring the audio levels and video quality during your worship service is important. The person who does this doesn’t even have to be in the building. They just need access to whoever is on site and can make audio and video adjustments as needed.
For instance, an online viewer may comment in the chat that they cannot hear a certain microphone or they can’t hear the worship celebration at all.
Whoever monitors the chat or the stream can quickly communicate with the right person in the building to correct this. The same is true if the video stream has an issue. Someone from this online tech team can address the issue because they’re focusing on it.
- Engage in the chat.
One of the biggest differences between attending a worship service and watching one on a live stream is, unsurprisingly, the feeling of connection.
Online worshippers should feel connected to your church or place of worship even without setting foot inside the door. It’s easy for live streamers to start feeling like spectators rather than members of your congregation.
One way to alleviate this is to designate a person who’s in the service to facilitate live chat, which allows for real-time social interaction.
The goal here is to create an online worship experience where you are intentionally interacting with those online in the chat and even those who might be watching the chat but not posting any comments.
- Make eye contact.
It’s also important to have those in front of the camera in the building making eye contact with your online worshippers. Plentiful eye contact through the camera with those streaming your worship service will help them feel less like spectators.
To make sure the online worship experience is engaging, we must have a clear focus at all times on both audiences – those who are in front of us and those who are joining us virtually.
A “Test Kitchen” for Worship Online
In the food world, a test kitchen allows chefs to research, test, and develop recipes. In the faith world, this concept allows you to test out various elements of worship before Sunday.
For those pastors and faith leaders who want to institute a rehearsal day, but may not have the resources to do a full rehearsal, start with focusing on the most important elements that contribute to Sunday.
You can test the worship songs that will be sung and the videos that will be used. You can ask those who will be part of those elements to come in and work their areas during this time.
Everyone involved in worship won’t need to attend the rehearsal. You also won’t need to look at every aspect of Sunday worship. But you can start with just pieces to help the worship experience to be more impactful.
You and your in-person and online congregation will see the difference this rehearsal time will make on Sunday mornings!
Choose a Digital Giving Platform
Not only is worship now digital, but so is giving. The last two years have helped many churches and places of worship realize not only the usefulness but also the need to have effective online and mobile app giving solutions for your congregation.
According to Giving in Faith, 92% of givers intend to make religious donations to their places of worship digitally. Further, 21% of religious donors intend to give to multiple places of worship, according to the report’s church giving statistics.
Just like hybrid worship, online and app giving aren’t fads nor are they going away. In fact, the adoption of digital fundraising increased during the pandemic to 99% for those who participated in the survey.
With a mobile giving app, the giving experience is specifically optimized for faith donors. A mobile fundraising app has the features your congregation needs to share their generosity with you instantly and securely from anywhere, at any time.
It doesn’t matter where they are in the world, which is an ideal feature for online worshippers.
As a pastor or faith leader, you may focus and prepare for Sunday worship in different ways. However, the goal is that we all recognize the need to consistently make our online worship experience better.
Why? Because worship online is still oftentimes the first way people engage with our churches. It’s also the way more and more people are choosing to attend worship.
Russell St. Bernard is the director for ministry operations at Kingdom Fellowship AME Church in Maryland. This article is courtesy of Givelify, a leader in mobile and online giving for churches and nonprofits, www.givelify.com.
