Three Ideas for Digital Ministry

Thanks to Rev. Jim Keat, Digital Minister at The Riverside Church (NYC) and Director of Online Innovation at Convergence for sharing this three-ideas-in-one Great Idea!

Rev. Jim Keat offers a ‘booster shot of ideas’ to meet the needs of congregations and communities who have used the past three years to launch or improve online ministries.

He suggests:

• Starting a sermon talkback video series on YouTube
  • invite colleagues or a few congregants to discuss Sunday’s sermon, raise lingering questions, share actions inspired by it, etc.
  • upload it to your YouTube channel
  • give the video a searchable and engaging title
  • a great way to dual-purpose sermons and create regular, fresh original online content
• Crate a Sermon Prep Podcast
  • use a voice memo app in early prep to capture your thoughts and ideas
  • ask questions your still pondering
  • invite listeners to share their ideas
  • stitch them together and upload them as a weekly podcast
  • build your sermon off of these conversations
  • he offers specific hosting platforms and how-tos
• Turn Your Sermon into a Twitter Thread
  • tips for precisely how to turn soundbites into ‘engage content’ and how to develop a thread
  • folx will engage with individual tweets or the entire thread

All of these ideas allow you to use something that you create every week – your sermon – to develop fresh, new, community-informed content for diverse media platforms, which develops a lot more interest in your congregation’s online presence. This leads to folx not only discovering who and where you are, they also get to hear the Gospel proclaimed in diverse – and likely more accessible – ways – for younger/newer/more diverse listeners.