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.