Your Church’s website might be the most important communication tools you have at your disposal. It is often called “the front door” of your Church for people looking for more information before that attend in person. It communicates what your Church is about and shows people through videos and pictures what people experience at Church. In addition, what makes a website very valuable is that it is completely owned by you. You pay for it and you control what is and is not shown.
But what happens when your website goes down? While you do own it and control it, the reality is that your site is always hosted by a server. While most of the time that server will be fine, there are situations where there will be an outage and you will not be able to access it. As great as technology is, it can fail at times.
When a website fails, that does not mean you can longer communicate or get vital information out. There are other options. So how can you continue to communicate without a website? In this video, the audio and the bullet points below, I highlight 3 easy ways to communicate, build disciples and keep people engaged without a website.
Just because your website goes down doesn't mean that your Church can't share important information or disciple online. Here are at least 3 ways you can communicate without a website. Click To Tweet
Email. Email is a powerful tool that can be used in a variety of ways. You can use it to update people on upcoming events or campaigns, you could disciple others by sharing devotionals (written, audio or video) that will encourage them in their faith as well as give them the tools on how to grow in their faith. While people tend to open email, it’s still not a given that people will open your email communication. Here are some tips on how you can make your email “open worthy”.
Social Media. Social media has a tremendous reach opportunities. Not only can you use it to communicate about what lies ahead at your Church or ministry, but you can also use it to disciple those in your community or reach and evangelize to others not yet followers of Christ. You can use videos (via YouTube, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram), Twitter threads (those are increasingly popular) and Facebook Groups to inspire, engage and inform others. Are are 3 ways you can use Facebook Groups for ministry.
Text. While email is a relatively traditional digital way to communicate to people, text messaging is a very effective way to communicate. In fact, the open rates for text messaging is 95%. Not only can you share updates via text messaging, but you can disciples as well. In fact, Text Discipleship Groups are really effective.
- Themed Text Groups that Can Start the Online Discipleship Process
- Using Text Messaging for Digital Discipleship
- How to Use Text Messaging for Your Ministry
While a website is a key tool to have to communicate to those in and outside of your Church or ministry, it’s not the only way. There are other ways you can do that, especially if your website goes down unexpectedly. While a lot of people prefer looking at a website for information, others enjoy getting email, checking social media or receiving a text just as much. Continue to look at different digital tools that will help you communicate and look to diversify where and how you communicate so you can reach as many people as possible.
ACTION STEPS:
- What do you think? What are other ways to communicate without a website? Share below or on social media.
- Join the Digital Bootcamp Facebook Group to learn how to be more effective using digital tools for your ministry join the group. This is for ALL Ministers, not just Church Communicators or Social Media Managers.
- If you are in Digital Ministry, be part of the Digital Ministry Twitter Community. We share daily encouragement and support to help you do ministry in this online world more effectively. Click here to be part of it.
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Looking for Digital Ministry Coaching? The Church Digital is offering a variety of digital, phygital or metaverse ministry coaching and cohorts. Just click here.
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