Speaker 0 00:00:00 In today's episode, we discuss how your church can get more online service views by making a few simple changes. The pandemic forced many churches to get online with their church services. And what most churches saw is a rapid increase followed by a steady decline. Well, we want to help you turn those numbers around and see more people watch your services each and every week. This is the retreat pod
Speaker 1 00:00:35 You're listening to the reach right podcast, the show dedicated to helping pastors and church leaders reach people the right way, hosted by me, Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost Ian Hyatt. We're here to help you your church see more visitors and grow.
Speaker 0 00:01:02 Hey guys, welcome to the retried podcast. So number 56, I am your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost Ian Hyatt. What's up Thomas. Hey, not too much, man. Excited for our conversation today. Going to be a good topic. I think a very appropriate right now. We're gonna be talking about how to get more online church service views, how to get your online church service use. I think it's going to be good. Uh, just in this God-willing late pandemic stage that we're in Lord willing Lord willing that I know a lot of churches, uh, the vast majority of churches, I think only my church still isn't meeting in person probably, but all the rest of them seem to be meeting in person still. Uh, but, um, as this season, even those that are meeting in person, uh, they are still doing online services, you know, thousands and thousands of churches embraced doing online services and they already made the investment and they built a team around it.
Speaker 0 00:01:59 So it only made sense to keep going with that. Uh, so the question remains is how do we maximize that? How do we get the most views that we can possibly get? And how can we reach the largest audience? I think good questions to ask that we know we want to take the gospel and the message of your church and what we're teaching about Jesus, but to take it to as many people as we possibly can. Uh, and there are several tricks. I think that we've picked up along the way that I think will help churches get larger audiences. And, you know, there's lots of normal stuff like preach better and have better worship that stuff I'll help, but we're here to give you some stuff that's easier to change probably than preach better. So this
Speaker 2 00:02:39 Ought to be good. And, and, you know, I've, I've been consulting with churches for a long time and, and since the pandemic, I still tell churches, Hey, this is something that you wanted to do, even if COVID never happened. Uh, you know, so this was already working for a lot of church, the growing churches, and I don't mean just mega sized churches, but churches that doing a good job of reaching people online, you know, before, even the pandemic, they would have people just watching online. And sometimes those people would turn into physical visitors, you know, after they watched a handful of messages, but they first were engaged online. Some of them will stay online, uh, would stay online and some now will stay online as like you said, even if we're, uh, Lord willing coming out of the pandemic, uh, it's still going to be effective. And like you said, the pandemic of course made all of this come to the forefront and helped churches invest in this stuff and get it set for the long haul. So this should be good.
Speaker 0 00:03:37 Yeah. I think that, um, you know, I think you and I are on the same page. We've talked about this before, about how our preference is to do church in person. I personally have, uh, I have missed greatly, uh, my family. And again, for those of our audience that doesn't know we live in Hawaii, Hawaii is still, um, closed down. We're probably the most closed down state in the country and a large number of churches, including mine have met in public schools and those places just because real estate prices in Hawaii are, uh, some of the highest in the nation. So we meet in public schools and public schools are not allowing any churches to meet in them right now in Hawaii, or so I have not been to a Sunday morning church service, uh, since, uh, March of 2020, uh, which has been a challenge for our family.
Speaker 0 00:04:24 We, you know, we doing the online thing, it can be really a challenging thing. So we can't wait. And we are of the persuasion that our family better experiences and connects with others and grows in our faith better in person. Uh, so, and, and that's, that's a conversation I think that's, that's worth having, uh, for, there are some people I am told that, um, not only do they prefer, but maybe they might even grow more efficiently and their relationship with the Lord in an online world. Again, that's hard for a lot of us to imagine, um, that, that, that would be the case, but I think that there's opportunity. And I think that we're still in the very early phases of what the digital ministry is going to look like 5, 10, 20 years from now when we are retired and old and gray Ian, well, some of us are kind of gray a little bit already, but as the years go on, I imagine that this trend of online church is not going away.
Speaker 0 00:05:22 So I think it's something that we really ought to be, uh, concerned with. So how question before we get into some of the points here, does your church, do you guys do, uh, do you do a specific, like, do they record a online, only version of the service or are they putting a recorded? Like what happens on Sunday? Are they putting that online? What happens on Sunday? So, yeah, I, I preach that at church the other day where we did a online service specifically, like there was a only online, only service that we pre-record on, like a Tuesday that airs. And then we did our actual in-person services. So you guys air live. That is the same thing on Sunday. Yeah. That's what I mean. And I'm not sure if there's a, we didn't talk about that at any of our points here today. That might be something that churches consider.
Speaker 0 00:06:12 I don't know if I don't have any research on which one's better there, but regardless, I think that we're trying to give churches today. Some simple things that they can do like, and I think if you just do a couple of these, you'll probably start to see a noticeable impact. Now, the thing about this is I don't have any, I wish I had some advice for churches that can like help them see a larger audience this week. And I think that all of these things are more like long-term plays. Uh, so it's not like you do this and this weekend, you're going to have, you know, triple your online audience or something. You might see a couple of people, but the idea behind each one of these is that you apply some of these here and you do it consistently weekend and week out for months and months and months, you will see slow, steady growth, which is really the kind of growth you want to see in an online audience. It's not, you know, if you see a huge uptick all at once, chances are, you probably said something you shouldn't have in your sermon, or you went viral for a bad reason or something like that. That's what that is. So I think that the content we want to share today is just more about how to, how to do it, right. How to do that. Slow, methodical growth, and how to do a few things that I think will help churches in the long run. Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 2 00:07:24 Well, why don't we kick it off? Why don't you kick off our first
Speaker 0 00:07:26 One? We'll do the first one is you need to acknowledge your online audience. This is a mistake that I see a lot of churches making is that they, um, the content they're putting online is clearly made for the audience that is in-person, they're watching the service and there's almost like no attention. Uh, even as much as there's acknowledgement of people, the fact that people are watching online, that's not even made. Uh, so I see this happen quite a bit where, um, just the, the illustrations don't work as well. You don't acknowledge people. You do give you give, maybe we'll talk more about call to action as we always do later, but give us a call to action. That's for the audience that's there, but it doesn't really apply to people that are watching online. And so I feel like a lot of times you just need to consider the question of how would this be perceived by people, not in the room before you go through your entire service. Think about that question before every Sunday. I think that's what the, uh, the main point is there. What do you have to
Speaker 2 00:08:29 Add? Yeah, there's a lot that goes into that. I think that, you know, when you're planning your, your sermon, right, as it, as a pastor, you're going to plan that message and be thinking of both audiences. That is, is what you're saying. Is it gonna, is it gonna come off, you know, just as authentic to the in-person audience as it does online, you referenced my church. It's a good example for all of this. So on Sundays, not only are we, is that the same message, uh, in person it's live at the same time, uh, and being broadcasted. Then we go into about eight different correctional facilities, uh, like prisons jails, uh, in the state of Texas, as well as our other campuses. Because as you know, the way our church does it is it's, it's one church, many locations, same preaching. The pastor at our main campus is the doing the preaching at these other ones.
Speaker 2 00:09:20 So, so, you know, he has to think through a lot. Okay. What is the, uh, what's the prisoner thinking? Uh, and then, uh, and then also what's this other campus in south Austin, we're up north of Austin. Uh, what are they thinking based on who they are down there, does the message apply to them? So he's got a tall task and does a very good job of it, but I will say this. So not only does the content apply at the beginning of each message, he's greeting everyone online, uh, kind of giving them some steps and things to think through before the message he acknowledges the, uh, correctional facilities and talks about, um, cause we even we'll go into those when we can and, and, uh, see them baptized and give them a pathway once they get out. So it's a great ministry, but, but the point of all of it is, is that even throughout the message, he'll jokingly say something about the south Austin campus and how probably a, you know, something he said probably offended them more than, uh, than it did, uh, our audience. So, uh, so, and it keeps people engaged. I think that's what it is. Right. It's keeping them engaged. If, if you're just recording it live and preaching your congregation, you know, you're, you're missing out, I think, on, on continuing to, like you said, having slow, steady growth and people staying engaged.
Speaker 0 00:10:38 Yeah. That's uh, that's so well put he and I, I, I'm a huge fan, as you know, I don't know if our audience knows they're not a prison ministry. I'm a, uh, my family is a product of prison ministry. My dad gave his life to Jesus when he was in prison when I was a kid and brought his faith home to our family. So I wouldn't be here without the prison ministry. So that's awesome to hear, uh, I think that it's so interesting, the idea of considering your different audiences, like obviously your south Austin audience is different from a Georgetown, Texas audience. For those that don't know south Austin is kind of the, uh, probably the most liberal part of all of Texas, I would say. And Georgetown has a reputation of being relatively conservative. I would say where you are so totally different worlds that those places are in.
Speaker 0 00:11:23 But yeah, I think that considering all your audiences, I don't know how you do that. You have to give, you have to communicate differently. Your, your connect card doesn't work on, uh, your, on my connect card, doesn't work for prisoners, right? They can't fill out an online connect card and those things are, or raise their hand on the live stream or something like that. So, yeah, lots of things about, and I just think having that thought when you're planning your services of what will my online audience think, and that's just something that's changed because most churches weren't doing online services before the pandemic now most churches are. And if your audience is primarily in what you're thinking of as your audience is just what happens on Sunday in your building. I think you're, you're going to be misunderstood or not come off the way you hope to get a lot of online context. So yeah, really well said with that. Cool. That's good. Well, I'll, uh, yeah, hit
Speaker 2 00:12:12 Number two, uh, aired on multiple channels. Um, this is something I'm, I'm very surprised what most churches, since the pandemic that, that all had to go live when everything was all shut down, uh, they went straight to Facebook live and for a lot of churches, that's still the only outlet that they use for live streaming. Facebook live is great. We're pro Facebook live and recommend it. You're there. You're going to get a certain segment of people there, but you should be airing it on multiple channels because you're going to catch other people that, you know, there's a lot of people are not on Facebook. Uh, so you want it, you want it on YouTube. Uh, you, you want it on your website. Uh, there's advantages to having it on multiple channels. Uh, and we consult with churches, you know, a lot on their websites. And one of the advantages to having the air on your website is that people can do a lot more there than they can on social media outlets. They can fill out forms, response forms and all of that, and they can, uh, and then they're there to get other information. And there's a lot of other advantages we can go into with that, but multiple channels is going to help you reach more
Speaker 0 00:13:16 People to totally. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is something that is actually probably the easiest thing on our entire lists that we have here today, that you can literally double your audience. I think for a lot of churches, if you just put it on an additional channel, so our podcasts, what we do, this, what we're recording right now, this video wise is going to go onto our website. We put it there and then it's going to be on YouTube and it's going to be on Facebook. Um, I'll take a second just to talk about the difference between YouTube and Facebook and how they have different advantages. I think so Facebook is great for getting your messages or your services out there immediately. So you'll get your largest immediate audience on Facebook because it will not only be a place that people go to find it.
Speaker 0 00:14:05 It will also be a place where it'll show up in people's feeds and you'll be able to engage with people that way. So I think in the first 48 hours, let's say most of your traffic will be there, but for longterm value, there is much more value putting it on YouTube because this message that you did today, or the service you put out, it's not like the value of a message on the prodigal son. It doesn't become less valuable on Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday. It has the same. This is something that will be, it's a timeless message, right? The idea that is taught in, in any message, there should be relatively timeless so that there is value to your messages. That'll be airing 1, 2, 5, 10 years down the road. There's still value. And it will still be on a channel like YouTube. It won't lose a lot of its search value in those things there.
Speaker 0 00:14:56 So anyway, all that to say that you are losing a huge part of your audience, if you are not doing that now, here's the great thing is that if you put it on Facebook and YouTube, the tie additional time it takes to do that is probably you're putting almost the same content on the two channels. It probably is additional, maybe three to five minutes of work uploading it. And then just whatever time it takes for your video to upload. Uh, so, you know, it takes me, it takes our VR podcast. You're probably on average, about 45 minutes to an hour to upload to both of those channels. Uh, but most of that is just waiting for the upload to take place. The actual data entry time is maybe five minutes on each one of those channels there. So here's the proposition you make this change, you put all the work into, uh, to recording it and to, uh, to the work you do on Sunday, the, the production value, the team that you've built around, getting the, all the computers that you've bought to make words, appear and lyrics.
Speaker 0 00:15:58 And those things you do, all that work. You could double your audience in five minutes of extra work, which is such a no brainer to me. You've got to do that. In addition, it makes sense to put it out to a lot of audio channels too, like Spotify, apple podcasts, Google podcasts, um, all these Stitcher, all these different ones that are out there. So to me, it's just something that easily you can do, and it makes a huge difference. Yeah, that's good. That's good. Once you get to get the next one, number three is include subtitles include subtitles in your online services there. This is big, uh, because, uh, the, uh, we've realized that most people, when they first encounter your online services online, they will be doing it with the audio turned off on their computers. When they first see it, think about the way you scroll through Instagram or Facebook or one of those channels.
Speaker 0 00:16:50 Usually you're scrolling through with your audio kind of muted. So that every time you scroll to a video, it doesn't blast you out with some new appeal. At least that's how I scroll. And I think I've, I've read data that shows that most people scroll through social media that way. And if I want to hear something, I click on it and then I'll get people to hear it. And those things that I click on, usually they have to do something to grab my attention before I'm willing to click on it. So the way you do this is as attractive as I'm sure you are. Your worship team is people might not be clicking on it just because they see you. It's because of what you're saying in those subtitles there. So including subtitles is really something valuable. Uh, I think that most churches should be doing it. What do you have to add?
Speaker 2 00:17:33 Yeah. And I think too, it helps people follow along the message a little bit more too. So, I mean, you know, you've, you've covered most of the benefits, but that was the one I thought of is that, you know, uh, just like the words on the, on the screen, uh, you know, when you're bringing up scripture, scripture references or sermon points or of those things, um, you know, I think that it's something that keeps it when I've noticed that on social media, on other video, not just sermons or, uh, but you know, other content out there when the subtitles are there, it kinda makes me tune in a little bit more. And I think every gastro could appreciate
Speaker 0 00:18:03 That. Right? Definitely. Yeah. I'll say one word of caution. Um, I was that most of these services have an auto subtitle or auto-generated subtitles you can include in there. Uh, and they are typically pretty good. But when we're talking about the gospel, uh, it can be a little bit, um, it can be challenging to if it's not exactly right. Like I saw a church recently at church with a good friend of mine was, uh, uh, it was actually in the worship time, a good friend of mine as the pastor of the church. Uh, and this, the lyrics of the songs that Jesus is Lord, but the caption read Jesus has turd is what it came off as. So, so not, not a good subtitle. So I, I guess the caution is be careful with that because that's probably the opposite message of what you want it to be saying. Uh, so, um, yeah, for what it's worth, check it out. I think different accents and stuff do better with those auto-generated subtitles. So watch your own, you can try the auto-generated ones and turn them on, on Facebook. It's just a button. You can click try them. If you find them consistently spitting out bad theology, then we'd probably probably time to take a look at maybe doing a professional service or something like that to do it.
Speaker 2 00:19:17 That's funny. That's good stuff. Well, uh, on that note, we'll move on to the next one. So that's to be social and talking about what we just did, where, where I mentioned subtitles can keep you engaged. You got to remember it's an online audience. We, we talked and joked about during the pandemic, how it was a struggle often to stay focused, uh, for an online message at home, you know, whatever. Then, you know, it was just kind of getting, you got kids around, you got, uh, other things happening, other distractions. Um, you got to really be, I'd say even a little bit more fun. You don't have a captive audience necessarily, right. They can leave easily, you know, uh, compared to someone I'm sure there's many people that have walked out of a, a church service for sure, for other, for various reasons. But I think being social, um, is going to keep people engaged.
Speaker 2 00:20:07 It's going to make, um, I'm not just going to, you should do that in every message, but I think especially for people that are online, that they could slip away and, and, you know, there that, I think it's, in some ways, even a little bit more of a sacrifice for someone to watch a whole message online than it is when you know what I mean by that is that know of course getting up and driving to church and all of that. That's, you know, there's sacrifice involved in all of that. And, uh, and, and just taking that effort. But I think, you know, I've found it's hard for me to stay fully engaged on watching an online message. So I think being social is going to be a big thing to help
Speaker 0 00:20:43 That. Yeah. I think what you're saying is that there's a lot competition for your attention. I think sitting in an online environment where, you know, I could be looking at Facebook and not doing this, or I could be scrolling through my Twitter account and not watching this, this message here. And so the fact is it's something you can try and fight, you know, tell people or make them feel convicted for looking at Twitter while they're listening to you online. But I think a better solution is just do your best to engage and live with the fact that that's the way it is. Um, I think that engaging people is so important and being social is the right way to do that. And I think basically the way you do this is if you ever, I, if you ever encounter some kind of a comment or a chat feature or something where people are saying something, even if someone just does an emoji of hands raised or something like that, respond always, always, always, always respond.
Speaker 0 00:21:39 Because think about it this way, if after your service, you're shaking hands. When people are walking out the door and saying goodbye, and they say, Hey, pastor, is this such a great message today? Which is the equivalent of the hands raised emoji, right? So that's the physical equivalent of that. You wouldn't just ignore that. You wouldn't just say, or just like move on. You would actually solve. Thank you so much. That means a lot to me. Uh, you know, uh, that that's kind of thing you should be saying. I also encourage churches to not say, oh, it's all glory to God. Don't do that whole thing. Just say, thank you. But yeah, I think that that is something that you should be social on. You should, if anybody does any kind of a comment, think of it as almost rude to leave that comment unresponded to, because you want to be engaging people on these platforms there. So yeah, this is so important. I would say as being social, it is. And, and
Speaker 2 00:22:30 One quick thing I'll say to that, I know it's, it's easy to think. Well, it's definitely different when they're online than they're in person. Uh, but I think that it having that mindset and we acknowledge that we know it is different to get an emoji or have hands raised, be with someone who's in front of you saying that that was an amazing message. There is a difference, but I liked that. Did you got to treat it the same? So to prioritize it and to know that that person is still looking for connection and interaction. So I
Speaker 0 00:22:58 That's it all right. Next one here, it's used SEO friendly titles, use search engine optimization, SEO friendly titles. Uh, this is a mistake. I see so many churches making and I get it. I feel like I've made this mistake before is we came from, if you went to Bible college in the era that I did in the early two thousands or before, uh, and you did preaching classes and stuff, I'm sure they told us at some point that you're supposed to use really creative, fun titles that grab someone's attention. And so if you've preached a message on the prodigal son to bring that up again, and you called it something like, uh, let's have a party because a there's a party at the end that he throws for the sun coming back, or you call it lost and found, um, you will not get as good of results as if you just use a generic title, like the prodigal son as the title of your sermon online. Now that's not to say that when you're giving the message on Sunday morning, you can't say let's call it. This is, this message is called lost and found, or let's have a party or whatever you feel like God's called you to name it. But I'm just telling you that the reason for this is nobody is out there searching for let's have a party in Google.
Speaker 1 00:24:14 Well, if they are, they're not, you're not looking for a sermon.
Speaker 2 00:24:20 So you might be thinking, well, that's the person that needs to hear, uh, the sermon, but I guarantee you, they're gonna, they're going to still leave. Uh, they're probably not gonna watch it. They're
Speaker 0 00:24:28 Not gonna click. Yeah. First of all, we may see that this is from a church. And then even if they do, they're going to leave really quickly. And what that does is it sends a signal to Google that says, well, these people don't usually like this content when they get on here. So let's stop showing it to everybody. Uh, so it's, it's just a lose lose for you. So you are almost always better off using a generic title, either about the passage you're preaching from, or about the specific topic. Uh, like in this particular one, it's like God's forgiveness or, you know, for the prodigal son. So that would be inappropriate title or the prodigal son, because when people are actually searching for that content, then they're going to find your sermon. In that case, they're not typing in lost and found. They're not typing in, let's have a party they're typing in specific things. And this is what that sermon actually answers. So as hard as it is, as much as your, uh, entry-level preaching PA a teacher in Bible college would have told you, you shouldn't do this, call it something generic, uh, and you'll get better results in search.
Speaker 2 00:25:31 That's good. That's good wall tackle the next one here. So that's a vantage of the Google grant, and this almost seems like it's out of field. What does that have to do with everything else we're talking about? But, uh, we've of course, uh, had many episodes, uh, on the Google grant specifically. It's something that we help churches with. Uh, it's something that, uh, uh, churches can help themselves with. Uh, it's been out there for years now, but the Google grant is a great to build your online audience because, uh, first of all, these are people doing searches out there. Uh, similar to what you just mentioned with SEO and people doing specific searches. There are people that are searching for online church services or online preaching, uh, dynamic preaching online. You know, the list goes on and on people do so many different varied searches.
Speaker 2 00:26:19 Well, what the Google grant are is, is Google ads. Uh, and it's a grant, as we mentioned, where Google gives you up to $10,000 a month, if you're a 5 0 1 C3, uh, in the form of, uh, of these online Google ads. So think of it as a way to, to where, if someone is looking for something, uh, church specific or sermon specific, an ad pops up, and once they click on that, it sends them to your online preaching to your, to your message online, your online message and your live streaming and whatever you're doing there. And that's great. So this is a way to build your online audience, because these are people looking for something related online. And the grant is just a huge thing to take advantage of to build your online presence, because these are people doing searches online that would see ads for your church and lead them to your message.
Speaker 0 00:27:11 Yeah. Yeah. Just for those of you that are new to our retried family, this audience here, maybe you haven't, uh, you're a newcomer to the podcast here. Uh, the Google grant is real. Uh, it is, I say it really clearly. It's $10,000 every single month of free ads on the Google platform. So those ads that come up when people do a search, you get $10,000 a month of free advertising. All you have to do is get out there and grab it. And then you either have to have someone help you with it, or, um, or learn how to run a Google ads campaign. But it is something that we, as a company, we pay for ads on Google. We pay this money, uh, you know, many companies do this, but for nonprofits, you are eligible. If you just get out there and grab it for $10,000 every month.
Speaker 0 00:27:59 And a lot of times, one of the big mistakes we see churches make with the Google grant is they will just use it for people looking for churches in their area, which is a very small audience, right? So if you live in a town of a hundred thousand people and you're targeting people that are typing in churches near me, there, you might have five or six searches like that, or maybe 30 searches like that every month. Right? So, whereas if you really broaden it and you look for people that are looking for all kinds of spiritual topics, I know one that we did a lot of was things to do in when we were pastoring in Madison, Wisconsin, things to do in Madison, Wisconsin, we could link to either our live services or online services. You could link to those things and people can have it. It is a thing to do, and people would search those kinds of terms all the time. So all that to be said, there is a huge, huge opportunity. We've said a ton about it. If you have questions about it, please get in touch with us. We'd be happy to talk you through how you can do it or how we can help you do it either way, but take advantage of that Google grant. It is a huge, huge opportunity to build your online audience. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:29:04 That's it. And I've one little thing I would add to that when you said it's broad searches. I mean, we mentioned dynamic preaching, preaching online, but it could be people looking for hope for my
Speaker 0 00:29:13 Life, prayer, spiritual answers,
Speaker 2 00:29:16 Uh, and all of that. And then, like you said, even things to do, it is a thing to do, uh, to, to watch a, a message online. So that's good stuff.
Speaker 0 00:29:24 Good. All right, I'll get the next one. Here. It is include a transcript, include a transcript. So we already talked about subtitles. Uh, those are great. Uh, and in addition to that, having a transcript of your message is something that really helps with your search engine optimization. Again, we talked about titles, uh, getting those titles, right, but one of the keys to good search engine optimization is having content and in general, more content equals equals more search results. Uh, so that's something that we kind of need to get through. And so one of the mistakes churches make is they'll put the website or the sermon on their website, which is a good thing, but they will just put a title and then the video, and then maybe a sentence or two at the most, but that's not enough content to start to show up in search engines in most cases, unless something really strange happens there.
Speaker 0 00:30:14 So you'll be better off if you are someone that writes a manuscript for your sermon to use that content and actually put that onto your post with your sermon content there, having the entire transcript there. And it might be two or 3000 words, and that's okay having lots of content on there. It usually helps gain momentum when it comes to search engine optimization in this area here. So if you don't do that, you can pay for a service that does this on average. There's tons of them out there. Some of them cost a hundred dollars for a sermon. I think on average, they're probably 25 to $30 per sermon, which is a small price to pay, uh, when it comes to a longterm strategy like this, I think it's probably worth it for a lot of churches to do something like that. So I think the audience,
Speaker 2 00:30:59 No, that was good stuff, Thomas. And, uh, what we'll do is I'll tackle this last one, which is always our favorite. What do we always end with? You got to include a call to action. That's right. That's, uh, a reoccurring for those that, uh, are part of the retread family and podcast. Uh, they always know we end with this, uh, pretty often it's very important. So include an online, a specific call to action for online. So, and there's a lot of different stuff you can do. Um, and, and there's some creative stuff that we've seen a lot of churches do. There's some online, um, streaming systems that allow you to have different kind of ending call to actions. Um, but some of them may be, uh, you know, like in filling out an online connection card. Um, and it, because we were talking about this earlier, when talking about this podcast, you brought up a good point. You know, you can give an altar call to the people in front of you to either come up to the front or make, I can eye contact with you, but, uh, people online can not do that. But what they could do is fill out a connection card with the option of, uh, include me in the prayer of salvation or give me, uh, I want to know what it means to become a Christ follower. What are the next steps? Get in touch with me? Uh, there's there's a lot you can do. Do
Speaker 0 00:32:18 You guys have chat on your, uh, your online services there? There's a chat line in there and I imagine, yeah, I think that's probably the best if you can, man, that I think if you have the ability to, to just, Hey, let us know in the chat, or I don't know if you can break off into something private there. I don't know if everybody wants to say, I need Jesus in a chat room with, you know, five other people that might be weird, but yeah. Giving someone, just making sure when you're preaching, acknowledging that you have an online audience, uh, and saying that, Hey, if you're here, let's raise your hand or come up to the alter or whatever it would be. Uh, but if you're online, one of the best things you could do is just click on this button on the right, and you'll be able to connect with someone or someone would want to pray with you.
Speaker 0 00:33:01 Hey, click here to go into a prayer room and submit a prayer request. We'd love to pray with you on this thing here. There's lots of different calls to action, but again, this is a common refrain for us. You need to ask if you want people to respond, you need to ask them to respond. And so if you don't ask people to respond online, they almost certainly will not respond online. You might get lucky once in a while, but this is something that is really, you need to put it past the point of, of lock, or obviously the holy spirit may convict people. And we want that by giving them an opportunity or maybe a prompt for the holy spirit to work through. I think that really goes a long way for people. So asking them to respond and doing that online always really important,
Speaker 2 00:33:40 Good stuff. Good way to end.
Speaker 0 00:33:42 Yeah, that's it. Well, good guys. I hope this has been helpful to you. Uh, we hope that, uh, your online audiences have been growing. I find that many churches, we talked to saw this big spike at the beginning of COVID and then a downward trajectory, uh, and not a ton of them have, start to pick back up again with this here. So we're hopeful that you will start to see some of that here soon that there will be a pickup in these areas. Uh, so, uh, we just, uh, hope this has been helpful to you. And if it has been please rate review, subscribe, it means the world to us. If you will do that and thank you for being a part of our retried family, and we'll catch you guys next week, see ya.
Speaker 1 00:34:21 Thanks for listening to the reach right podcast. We hope this episode will help you reach people the right way, looking for more resources for your church. Check us out
[email protected]. If this episode has been helpful to you, it would be the world to us. If you would rate, review and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening. And we'll see you next week. <inaudible>.
