Make it Easy to Find your Online Service and Schedule
On your homepage, you should have a WATCH LIVE button that takes people over to a page where your Worship Experience Livestream lives. This is the place where you’re going to embed the Livestream of your service.
You can use tools like the Church Online Platform to make this easy for your church.
Let me offer a few suggestions here:
When your service is “Off the Air”, have a Promo Video that can be played in the player. This video can be a Church Announcement video, it can be a video from your pastor, it can be a Welcome Video. Something that is going to give me a taste of what your church or your Worship Experience is all about.
Also, Make your Service Times easily visible on your page. I’ve hit so many church websites where the side panel just says Offline or Off-Air or has an error because there is nothing there. Tell me when I can watch your services. You can even have the Church Online platform send you an invite or a reminder.
If you are fully online, there is no reason why you can’t offer your service at multiple times throughout Sunday and even through the week. Here’s how I would do it – on Sunday I would make your service available to watch as a Livestream event 3-4 times throughout the day. Like 9am, 11am, 3pm, 6pm. Then, Monday-Saturday, I would make your latest service available to watch on-demand.
The last tip for you is this: Visit your Livestream during the week and on Sunday to see what a visitor would see. Don’t just assume everything is running smoothly. I’ve seen a lot of Livestream pages where things were offline, there was an error, service times were wrong, and things just weren’t kept up. This is the impression you are giving visitors. So visit your page and make sure everything is up and working properly.
Also, you might not just post a schedule on the website of your Worship Experiences.
If you’re using Zoom for Small Groups, or if you have Kids or Student Experiences, be sure to post a schedule of Online Events on your website where people can easily find out what is going on in the life of your church online.
Carl Barnhill has served on staff at some of the largest churches and organizations in the country. He served as Media Director at Precept Ministries International, directing the television and radio program Precepts for Life with Kay Arthur, broadcasted to over 98 million homes around the world. He served as Video Production Director at Pinelake Church in Brandon, MS. He most recently served as Video Coordinator for Newspring Church in South Carolina. He currently serves as Creative Director and Owner of[twelve:thirty]media, serving churches and ministries all over the world through motion graphics content and church media coaching.
