Nikki had grown up in a techie household and technology-mad world. So it was natural that Nikki found a role helping her church improve its technology. At first, she just volunteered. But soon, the church had hired her, making her its part-time technology coordinator. When Nikki had started, she mostly worked on the church’s website and social media. Yet then, the office manager had her updating computer software and recommending new tablets for the ministry leaders and desktop computer upgrades for the operations, communications, and finance staff. And then, Nikki was on to helping the facilities director upgrade the church’s wifi system, electronic entry system, video surveillance system, and electronic HVAC controls. She even helped the church’s communications director install a new electronic marquee outside the sanctuary and helped the finance director configure a cellphone app for online giving. Within a couple of years, Nikki could see that her technology contributions had revolutionized the church’s operations.
Technology
Don’t underestimate the challenge, significance, and opportunity that technology presents for church ministry, or its false allure, high costs, and constant distraction. We live in a technological time. The church that doesn’t climb aboard the technology train faces getting left behind, whether because of the failure to communicate with the membership and community, failure to provide sufficient convenience and connections for members and ministry leaders, or the lost efficiencies in operations. Yet the church that rides the technology train too far and hard can lose something critical to its mission. We use technology to distort and pull resources from the world, when the invitation of Christ is instead to make beautiful things, see the world clearly, and sacrifice for a better world. Help your church find the right balance of accommodating member expectations and increasing mission reach and efficiency through technology, while keeping things beautiful, human, authentic, and real.
Members
Church members are immersed in the virtual world. They carry cellphones, visit websites, send texts, and scroll and post on social media, constantly staring at and interacting with screens. They shop online, pay bills online, and check their bank accounts online. Church members also control their home thermostats online, order their groceries online, and let their vehicles do the driving for them. They watch television shows, movies, and podcasts, and listen to radio shows and music, through streaming services. Church members naturally expect their church to offer similar conveniences, so that when away they can watch their worship service online, pay tithes and offerings online, check the church schedule online, and text message their ministry leaders. Churches face a powerful pull toward incorporating technology into their member relations. Help your church find and deploy the right membership technology tools.
Operations
Churches also face a powerful pull toward incorporating technology into their operations. An electronic church management system can record members, member relations, and membership history, offer a member directory, streamline the task of messaging members, and track member giving. Bookkeeping and accounting software can keep books and accounts, prepare financial reports, do payroll, and prepare tax payments. Church communications today generally must include websites, social media, email, and messaging. A church’s electronic systems can and generally should include entry access, HVAC controls, wifi for church members and guests, and video security surveillance. Churches also have good reasons to stream services live or on delay, requiring abundant recording and transmission technology, while also good reasons not to do so. Presentation technology in the sanctuary is common, and music and vocalist production generally requires or invites abundant additional technology. Help your church choose the technologies most conducive to pursuing its mission. The following paragraphs highlight some of the key technology opportunities and challenges for churches.
Communications
Your church’s communications director should help move your church forward in the continuing development and adoption of new communication technologies. Electronic church management systems can aid mass emails to the membership with newsletters, service bulletins, announcements, notifications, invitations, and other communications. Management systems can also aid mass texts. Internet-based telephone services linked to personal cellphones have generally surpassed landline telephone systems. Presentation software can aid production of newsletters. Artificial-intelligence apps can design graphics and presentations, and improve text and websites. Your church’s communications director can also help the church maintain a social media presence fitting the membership’s interests, using electronic images and information ministry leaders supply. Your church’s communications director can also maintain the church’s on-site marquees promoting church initiatives and sharing event and activity schedules. Study your church’s communications program for opportunities to enhance it with current technologies.
Social
Social media has the aim of building community. The community that social media builds may be more digital and less authentic than churches and their members would prefer. But social media is the way in which large numbers of individuals, including church members, stay abreast of community developments, church news, and the views and happenings of church friends and acquaintances. A well-deployed church social media site may have hundreds or even thousands of followers, giving the church a continuous opportunity to promote its mission. But be thoughtful in using church social media. Put a wise and responsible staff member in charge to authorize and monitor use of the church’s official social media channels. Restrict posts to sensible authorized staff members. Develop posting guidelines for consistency and positivity in the way in which users represent the church, its mission, and its activities. Help your church maintain a healthy and inspiring social media presence, if your church determines to deploy social media in its communications efforts.
Website
Social media appeared for a time as if it would render websites obsolete. Yet for many technology users, websites remain a marker of organizational credibility. New members of a community, for instance, may be more likely to learn about local churches through their websites than through their social media. Websites also gather, organize, and present comprehensive ministry information in a single location, for members and guests to check for things like service times, sign-up sheets, staff members to contact, and ministries in which to participate. The bane of websites, though, is haphazard and unattractive presentations of outdated information. Don’t let that be the sad condition of your church’s website. Help your church’s communications director develop and maintain an up-to-date, attractive, and well-organized church website.
Streaming
Many churches live stream or record and delay-stream their full church services or the pastor’s weekly sermon. Whether to offer a live stream or delayed stream of church services is a significant church issue. Streaming can adversely affect attendance patterns. It can also have subtle effects on the conduct of the service, making everyone, from the preacher to the worship leaders and congregants, aware that others outside the sanctuary are watching and others outside the church membership may be able to observe the service online in perpetuity. Streaming also takes a significant devotion of funds to purchase, maintain, and continually update cameras, lighting, sound equipment, and streaming controls, along with a significant commitment of staff and volunteer time. Producing a quality livestreamed service can be exciting and rewarding. It can also make a church service look and feel more like a video production than a gathering of the body for worship, communion, and fellowship. Help your church make a discerning judgment about livestreaming services. Some digital waves are worth riding, while others are not.
Seminars
Churches have the opportunity today to stream into the church high-quality seminars and videocasts produced by well-known preachers, teachers, and worship leaders with large followings. Men’s groups, women’s groups, and youth groups may all make abundant use of video seminars in their gatherings, even using live-streamed video presentations for local worship. The production values of these seminars can be high, as can the insight of their teachings and the quality of their musical presentations. Streamed seminars, though, can have their own potentially negative effects, as the membership begins to look outside of their local church for inspired preaching and teaching, exciting and satisfying worship, and leadership on church and faith issues of the day. Video presentations by popular preachers and teachers can introduce doctrinal errors and emphases inconsistent with your church’s commitments. Help your church discern whether to use video resources from outside your church and, if so, what resources to use for which events and audiences. Involve your pastor in those judgments to ensure doctrinal consistency.
Videoconferencing
Churches should be using videoconferencing capability to reduce unnecessary travel costs and time. Church meetings in person at the church can provide important teaching, fellowship, and deliberation time. But some church administration may be better accomplished without inconveniencing members or staff to travel to church or to a distant meeting location at a specific day and time. A church may, for instance, better accomplish professional training of church staff and key volunteers by videoconference from the trainer’s remote location than to pay the trainer to travel to church and require all staff and volunteers to gather at a specific training time. Church staff members may also save substantial conference travel time and expense by using videoconferencing technology as a substitute, while still gaining most or all of the conference’s value. Convene and meet in person for important personal communication and deliberation. But use videoconferencing to save time, expense, and trouble on administrative meetings and communications.
Computers
Churches adopt differing policies on computers for staff members’ work use. Some churches purchase and maintain desktop and laptop computers for staff members, even using a computer server to connect and power the computers, while licensing software for on-site use. Other churches encourage, require, or permit staff members to use their own laptop computers, tablets, and other personal electronic devices, and to rely on cloud-based communications software and other software services. The latter churches may offer staff members a stipend for technology purchases necessary or helpful for their church work. The trend has been sharply aware from computer servers and other dedicated on-site hardware and software systems. The trend has instead been toward cloud-based services, mobile computing, and personal devices. Beware investing heavily in on-site hardware and software that may be quickly out of date and may need continual maintenance. Help your church find the technology expertise and guidance it needs to control costs while staying current on technology.
Reflection
How would you rate the sensitivity, currency, and efficiency of your church’s adoption and use of technology, on a scale from one to ten? In what ministries or operations is your church underusing technology? Is your church overusing technology in any areas? Does your church use an electronic management system for membership tracking, accounts, and communications? How would you rate your church’s website in its attractiveness, organization, information, and currency? Do your church’s ministry leaders make effective use of social media to promote their ministries? If your church does not stream its services, should it do so? If your church does stream services, should it stop doing so? Do your church groups use outside video presentations for teaching, inspiration, or worship? If so, has your church’s pastor reviewed and approved those resources for their consistency with your church’s doctrinal commitments? Are your church’s staff members adequately equipped with the mobile computing resources they need? Is your church treating staff members equitably in reimbursing them for church-related technology expenses?
Key Points
Technology adoption can be both a boon and challenge for churches.
Members may expect their church to adopt certain technologies.
Church operations may also require or benefit from technology.
Church electronic management systems can aid operations.
Church communications should include email and text technology.
Church ministries may benefit from controlled social media use.
A church website can attract guests and inform members.
Consider the costs, benefits, and challenges of streamed services.
Curate the use of streamed seminars for outside instruction.
Videoconference administrative work to save travel time and costs.
Prefer mobile computing and cloud-based software services.