Comments on: Making College Ministry Virtual

By: weekly review of college ministry online-ness! « Exploring College Ministry blog (daily notes about our field)

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 08:07:16 +0000

[...] Barela guest-posted at major church-tech site ChurchCrunch, discussing his college ministry’s live broadcasting and other online presentation. Brian is the director of Campus Crusade at Cal State Chico, and I actually plan to hang out with [...]

By: Brian Barela

Brian Barela — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:33:43 +0000

hey mike didn’t see your question before.

yes we’ve seen results related to exposure and awareness:

we had 62 pageviews this past wed on the chico cru live page.

i chatted with 3 students via meebo, and confirmed that one had joined the facebook fan page.

capturing and sharing one song of worship and segments of our talk has increased engagement on our facebook fan page (in the forms of “likes” and comments). we have also continued to add people to our fan page each week (2-3 new per week), which is significant for us because it means that new people trust us enough to become a fan.

the results are not perfect, and we’re very much learning from the whole process, but overall it’s been a great step at figuring out how to reach a larger audience of students.

By: Benson Hines

Benson Hines — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:19:56 +0000

I do think Guy asks a great question (or even THE question), and I'm not sure it's as easy as simply asking how much we're willing to risk for better results (if I understand what Daniel meant). Everything we do has an opportunity cost, so it's not deciding between trying this and doing nothing; it's deciding between trying this and working on countless other things any college minister (or any other missionary) has on their plate.

By: Brian Barela

Brian Barela — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:01:33 +0000

we're using two cameras–a mini-dv for the live feed (connected to a mac), and an hd camera that captures one song of worship and the talk, which we then edit into the 2-3 min segments.

it's definitely live, but we're also trying to format the content of the mtg in a way that's easy for someone to watch on facebook or vimeo.

By: RWR

RWR — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:29:18 +0000

Technical questions, what equipment are you using for the stream? Since you are editing down to 2 – 3 minutes is the show really live?

By: Brian Barela

Brian Barela — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:28:20 +0000

a story from last night speaks to the important of this:

we went live and had 2-5 people chatting with me via meebo. one was a student from the local community college who had too much homework to attend in person.

he was not only able to listen in on worship, and hear a talk about obedience, but also formed a new connection with someone in the group (me).

the last is NOT a given during physical attendance–with people already connected with each other naturally focused on building existing relationships, often times new people come and go without making a connection with a person.

By: Daniel_Berman

Daniel_Berman — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:52:14 +0000

Whether I was away at college, or busy with something during the tween college summers; interacting with my church was always a challenge. I never quite fit, into of the groups that had ministry leaders. So the responsibility to convey church family news and connections fell to the families of the college students themselves. While this was understandable it also attempted to use a generational metaphor that was only applicable some 30-40 years ago at best.

I heartly agree that "Virtual Church" is one of the initial low hanging fruit opportunities, that needs to be exploited if possible with something like this or even to assist with greater connections to their own home churches….

By: Daniel_Berman

Daniel_Berman — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:45:12 +0000

I think I can answer the first question with another question.

What are you willing to risk for the possibilities of more results in the ministry that God has given you?

In answer to your second question, the defining point comes when the interest shifts from reaching people and building relationships that could not be built otherwise, to a fascination with the technology for technology's sake alone.

By: guy chmieleski

guy chmieleski — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:21:28 +0000

this is a good, and important, conversation to be having… my big question is: what amount of our precious time/money to we put towards this? when does the technology become too much of a distraction from the life-on-life ministry? (ok, 2 q's).

By: Rev. Tara

Rev. Tara — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:10:26 +0000

Right on, Roger. I love the virtual world myself and find it often helpful- but there's something about that whole God-in-the-flesh thing that seems to call us to live out what it means to be the "body" to a generation of folk who long for meaningful connectedness and intimacy.