Enam Ami Agbozo writes: The Remote Church – Getting Started

Last week Sunday most churches were filled with anxious members who sought encouragement and assurances as they gathered as the saints to pray and fellowship. A week later however, the situation has completely changed. The government as part of curbing the spread of the worldwide pandemic Corona Virus in Ghana has asked all churches to postpone congregational worship until all is safe and sound.

For most churches, this is a difficult pill to swallow. Especially because most of our head pastors are baby boomers who were BBC (born before computers). And so, though they allow their youth to create social media pages for them, they never interact on it themselves. But all of a sudden, they will have to learn to engage their congregation beyond the Midweek & Sunday services. As if that wasn’t enough, they’ll have to figure out how to encourage their members beyond sending long WhatsApp messages which is what most are used to. 

This article is a form of encouragement to all the men of God, to assure you that you can still stay connected to your members and foster the growth of your church without necessarily meeting physically. 

Let’s start with where your mind should be in running a remote church. I say remote and not digital because remote is more descriptive of the current situation, i.e you can’t see or feel your people, but you can stay in touch with them.

The 5 important things you should note about running a remote church is that:

1. A remote church is more about constant connection and reassurance than regular weekly or weekend meetings.To survive this new shift, you need to start thinking “how can I keep my members encouraged and connected?”. In times like these where there is a worldwide pandemic, your congregation will need constant reassurances and direction to stay the course. You need to understand this to truly connect with them remotely.
2. You don’t need the latest technological tools and logistics to run a remote church. The temptation to focus on the tech or tools you have or don’t have can prevent you from making progress with your congregation in times like these. Don’t fret over the quality of your video camera, focus on the message you have to share. There are simple tools you can use with your phone or a laptop to achieve your goals daily. Focus on those ones, and don’t be in a hurry to attain the status quo.  
3. Your focus should be on more than just staying in touch with your members, think of how to keep growing and running in the midst of everything going on. Staying in touch with your congregation is important, but so is keeping your church running. The church isn’t the meetings that happen, the church is the family and the connections. Figure out how to keep reaching more people and still run your church (board meetings, harvests, tithes, offerings, etc.). Because remote or physical, your congregation still needs the blessing that comes from serving and giving in and to the church respectively.
4. You need a digital strategy to run a remote church. Running a remote church means you have to start thinking of how you can use technology to revolutionise your entire operations. How do you keep your people engaged throughout the period? How do you help various members in various stages of life’s journey without being physically present to counsel? How do you manage your church events (weddings, funerals, pre-marital counselling, revivals, etc)? There are options for using digital to achieve all this, you need to start seeing digital as the core of your strategy.
5. You can reuse your archives of messages, music, etc when running a remote church. If you have had your audio team recording your sermons for a long time, this is the time to repurpose some of those messages. You don’t have to fret over what new content you can create today or tomorrow. Go back to your archives for messages that are appropriate in seasons like this whilst you use the downtime to properly prepare to take on this whole remote church thing. 

Now that we’re clear on what your mindset should be, let’s look at some basic steps to get you started with this remote church thing.

1. Know your audience and what works for them: You need to understand the nature of the people you’re trying to reach. Choosing a platform and frequency of communication or the type of communication itself depends on who you’re trying to serve. If you’re looking to reach people above 40/50 or those 30 and below, there are channels each demographic is more comfortable with. If you’re now starting, don’t spread yourself too thin too fast. Focus on what your logistics can contain which will give you the most value for the least effort. A good way to gauge the type of people you want to reach is consulting your church records. This is the time to put your congregational data to use.
2. Use platforms that your congregation can get easy access to without necessarily having an account. I’ve seen a lot of Facebook Live images all over social media this week in response to the suspension of physical church services. I think that works, but on the other hand, not everyone is on Facebook or even remembers their Facebook account details. I will recommend using platforms that your congregation can access without having to sign in. YouTube is one such platform. At least everyone with an Android phone has it on their phone and you can watch videos without always having to sign in. There are also podcast apps like Podbean that allow you to record either video or audio podcasts. The most important thing about choosing a platform is choosing one that fits the needs of your audience, whilst making the most of your available and perhaps limited resources.
3. Use the traditionally digital methods (megaphones, information centres, etc) for your rural congregation. For the pastors and congregations in the rural areas with congregations more than the recommended 25 people, you can resort to the megaphone or information centres. Not everyone will use WhatsApp or Facebook for you to reach them, however you still need to send the word of God out there. Make do with what you have to reach who you need to reach.
4. Develop a digital strategy that is focused on your mission and objectives. Beyond one or two services streamed online, start thinking of incorporating digital into your operations. No one knows how much longer this pandemic will last. Your members will need to have communion, receive counselling, be comforted in times of trouble, celebrate great ocassions in their lives, etc. And as a church, you will still need to fulfil your social duties of donating to orphanages, prisons, etc. Think of how you can utilise digital with a touch of humanity to perform all these activities – a digital first thinking. Accept that times have changed and though your message and mission haven’t changed, the methods may need to change. Just like church moved from houses to big auditoriums with staff running it, you’ll have to envision what your digital church will look like and start working towards it.
5. Put structures in place to manage your finances properly. One of the biggest challenges I foresee with running the remote church in Ghana will be the management of finances. You can create a Mobile Money for payments, but how will you track who pays what? How do you handle the charges on transactions? Start looking into bank or third party solutions that allow you to manage where the money is coming from at the backend. A solution that allows you to know what is being paid, when and where, whilst allowing you to disburse money for welfare or running costs, track it, generate periodic reports to help you see the trends in your finances, etc. Remember the Apostles had to get someone to cater for the Hellenistic Jews so they could focus on the work of the ministry. In this age, it may not be food issues, but money management issues that could prevent you from focusing on the mission of making disciples and spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ to all nations and peoples.

If you can pay attention to the mindset and the starting steps I’ve enlisted, you can be on your way to overcoming this seemingly huge challenge. I stayed away from mentioning tools because they aren’t the most important in these times. The most important thing is deciding where you want to go and how you’ll get there. Once you figure that out, you can get so many tools to help you do that. 

However, these are a few tools for various objectives if you still don’t know which tool to start with:

1. Live Streaming: YouTube Live, Facebook Live, 
2. Church Management: ChurchTrac, Church Online, ACTS, 
3. Short Videos: InShot, Vimeo 
4. Designs (announcements, encouraging quotes, scripture etc): Canva, Pablo 
5. Surveys/Data Collection: Google Forms, JotForms
6. Other Resources by Life Church: Operations, Data Analysis & Reporting

All hope isn’t lost, remember your message and mission hasn’t changed as a church, it’s the methods that will need to evolve. Embrace the change and approach it without judgements and you’ll see steady growth. Moving on beyond these immediate steps, work towards getting a custom website or app that meets your needs as a church. 

NB: I didn’t add Zoom to this list because Zoom requires your congregation to download and install the app and gives you only 40 minutes for the free version.

The writer is a digital marketing strategist with QodeHub, a digital product agency building custom apps and websites that solve business problems. You can find her across all social media channels as Enam Ami Agbozo or visit her blog(mimispassion.wordpress.com) to get in touch.

Source: Enam Ami Agbozo (Mimi’s Passion) | wilheminaagbozo@gmail.com