Hey fam, this is Bobby King and I am with Hashtag Church. We wanted to start making some videos. We know it's new, it's different, but you are going to love the content that we are providing for you guys.
The first topic we wanted to touch on was the shift that happened in media when the lockdown happened. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was serving at a church in a part-time role and I was actually on my way back from Israel when the world decided to shut down. I left Israel on a Thursday and I landed Friday morning back in the States and then on Sunday we had church online. It was crazy. We developed an E cam system solution. Thankfully, I already had the equipment to be able to do a lot of the things that we needed to do, but it was still so brand new that no one else on the team knew what was going on. I was the only person that had any remote idea of how to randomly do a livestream in a situation like that.
Not all of us are like that. Not all of us have had those situations where it makes sense of this plus this equals C, which was for us having a high quality livestream option for our congregation two days after the world shut down. The following weeks after we upgraded some equipment and we got some more pieces that we needed.
We got a thing called a Cam Link 4k that then allowed us to make a webcam type of solution for the software that we were using to then livestream on Facebook and YouTube in the sanctuary of our church or in the hallway or wherever we were setting up during those online days. Now years after those initial decisions and those initial situations took place, we are still very much living in a post covid church world. All that really means is that we have an emphasis on digital media. That can look different for different churches. Hear me out, not all churches need to have a live stream, but every church needs to have a digital presence. That could be a prayer wall on your website, that could be a Facebook page of where you're engaging with your community, or for some churches it is putting on a quality live stream experience for your church.
All of these options are great. Not one of them is better than the other. I know churches that are doing a livestream option that shouldn't be. I know people that are doing amazing with just a simple Facebook page. These situations, the entire point of everything we do in the church world is to have more people in the kingdom tomorrow than we did today. Right? With that in mind, we need to just keep continuing to take steps forward in the digital world. What it looks like now is expanding that experience for livestream. Most churches were recording video announcements if they had a live stream or they were having a person standing out in the middle of their lobby with a microphone for their live. What I'm seeing now in the churches that I'm following and learning from, they're creating a unique church experience for their online viewer. It's not necessarily all in the room. It's not just, we're gonna do something beforehand, then we're gonna take you into the normal same experience that everybody else is.
They're creating custom online services for their online communities and church that they have. Churches have either decided to become a multi-site church, being in-person and digital, or they've just really hammered down of this is where we're at. This is our thing. yes, we may provide a digital option, but it's not a digital church. So like I said, that could be done a ton of different ways, but it's that mindset first. It's creating opportunities, creating situations, creating environments for people that want to be a part of your church body online.
As we continue in this journey, because it's a never ending journey, there's always something that we can be looking at for inspiration. There's always a unique environment and situation that applies to us that may not apply to the big box churches of where there are 50,000 or a hundred thousand people. If you're a church of Sub 1000, you don't need to be looking at them for inspiration. You need to be looking at churches of 2000, churches of 3000 because that's tangible.
What those churches are able to do, the team they are able to have are ones that you hopefully in the next few years are able to have as well. So keep it all relative, keep it all in front of mind that this stuff that we're doing is probably going to change in six months. Some of the things we're doing and how we're doing it are going to change in three months, and you always have to be ready for a thing that immediately blows up. If that's a new app that gets launched, or if that's a new feature on an app that gets launched, you always have to be able to quickly adjust on the fly in this post Covid church media world. If there was anything that you had questions about from this video or anything that you would like to ask us and our team here at hashtag Church, we would love to answer those for you.
So you can reach out through our website, www.hashtag.church, and you can reach out there and we would love to answer them either in video or we would even love to send you dms or emails back to you guys of how we can best help you.
Comments