I do want to back up to a 30,000-foot view. There are three approaches for online church or expressing your church’s paradigm using the internet. Your church should consider all three strategies when making decisions from investing in a social media presence or why to launch a stream on Facebook. It all needs to connect to your church’s goals, and high-level conversations with leadership need to happen for success to clearly be defined.

Your church needs to dial your CRM. Yes, I’m talking about Customer Relationship Management software. I explore two reasons why a killer CRM is essential for 2020 and moving forward. It’s going to be the foundation of everything in the years to come.

Not all engagement is the same, and that's okay. The unwise thing is equating commitments. Someone who walks forward in a service publicly to say they committed their life to Christ is more engaged compared to a person who liked a post on Instagram. The like is still relevant, but not equal to the altar call. You have to think about engagement in terms of good to best on a sliding scale. A person who is sitting in your worship center on a Sunday morning is more engaged than someone watching at home. The person at your church had to get dressed, maybe wrangle up their kids, and get through traffic. Now, that doesn't mean the online watcher isn't engaged or doesn't have valid reasons for watching online, but let's not equate the commitment levels. A comparable commitment experience to sitting in your church for online watchers are those who host an in-home worship service. These online watchers had to get dressed, wrangle up the kids, but instead of traffic, pick up their house. I would say hosting church in your own home is more engaged than those who are only keeping a seat warm. Understanding the sliding scale of engagement is an important principle when processing the value of online engagement to your local church's goals.