This is a Guest Post by Brian Barela.
The two contending philosophies I have heard in relation to virtual ministry are:
- Virtual church/ministry IS church/ministry–that is the experience, although different from the physical, meets the same needs and produces the same RESULTS.
- Virtual church/ministry COMPLEMENTS church/ministry–similar to wheels on a vehicle, virtual ministry ENRICHES the overall experience of church/ministry.
Rather than debate each side, I wanted to share my experience in launching a virtual ministry through Campus Crusade for Christ on the campus of Chico State University in Northern California.
We have currently hosted six virtual meetings since late August that consist of:
- A live broadcast on our website via livestream
- A live chat option throughout our meeting which started with Ustream chat, but at the moment is a Meebo chat widget
- A recording of both the worship set and the main talk, which is then uploaded to our Vimeo page and then posted on our Facebook Fan Page the next day
These are some of the key observations/statistics I have made in making my college ministry virtual:
- We have averaged 60 viewers for the last six weeks; the average length of their online experience is under ten minutes, the majority being closer to two minutes.
- The majority of viewers have been FRIENDS–either supporters of our ministry, relatives of our students and staff, or curious/interested Campus Crusade staff members from different campuses around the country and world.
- Out of all of viewers so far (around 420), only one has been clearly identified as our target: a non-believer student that attends Chico State. We confirmed this by means of the student chatting with me during the broadcast (we are using the free version of Livestream, which does not provide robust analytic tools).
- The process of archiving the worship and the main speaker has gone from two LONG videos (15 minutes of worship, 20 minutes of speaking) to two SHORT videos (one song of worship, 2-3 minutes of the speaking). This has been perhaps our best insight into the process of making the experience more user-friendly.
Some key tips I would pass on to anyone considering launching a virtual ministry:
- EXPERIMENT, EXPERIMENT, EXPERIMENT: we started with Ustream, now are using Livestream and Meebo, and may be using an entirely different set of tools in a few weeks. The goal has been providing the user with the best possible experience given the parameters and values of social media–because of that the tools we use change constantly.
- REFINE, REFINE, REFINE: Each week find one element that you can improve, and seek out or dedicate the necessary resources to make it happen. I’ve been blessed to have an advocate in the corporate world that generously donates his time and expertise to help me refine the experience.
- CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT: Beware of spending lots of time on design details especially if you are just starting up. The biggest nut to crack in my experience has been figuring out how to aggregate and share the content of our meeting in a way that fulfills our mission, vision, and values, and is true to our context. College students are a transitory bunch–to focus initially on membership and attendance would have been a miss–instead we have focused on exposure and education.
If you do take a look at our site you will see we are a work in progress. I hope that encourages you to step out and try it even if you are not the best designer or coder. There are lost-people and disconnected Christians looking for you online. May your virtual ministry/church find and build them up!
[Images from Numstead]
Jason Krohn says
Hey Brian a couple of quick questions,
What type of conversation are you creating online with your ustream?
Do you find it robust or dry?
How many people do you have working behind the scenes during the live broadcast to start and engage with students in conversation?
Just wondering your thoughts on these.
Rev. Roger Wolsey says
As director of a Wesley Foundation, I do "virtual campus ministry' all the time in the form of loving people via posts and comments on their Facebook pages. However, I find that the students also need real incarnational ministry of actual presence too. We offer group centering prayer, Bible Study, community meals, and worship in our chapel every week – and that meets very real needs in their live. Not to mention offering the chapel as a safe space for them to be real, relax, get away from the dorms, and to serve as a home away from home. They also can bend my ear, cry on my sleeve, and get hugs too. Can't get those things online. ; ) http://www.wesleyf.org
Brian Barela says
hi roger it sounds like we have a different audience. the students we are trying to engage virtually are very skeptical of church and Christianity in general–they do not view our meeting as a safe place–which is where our live broadcast comes in.
hopefully in watching even for just a couple minutes they see that it's a place filled with normal students, but notice that something is different. the hope is that when they get personally invited to come to our meeting they would have some sort of context for what our meeting entails.
as we share our faith on campus we are seeing more and more students with NO church background–using social media to increase exposure is one of the ways that we are trusting the Lord to reach out to these students before they come to one of our events.
Rev. Tara says
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.
Brian Barela says
hey jason so far it's been tough to create a conversation online during the broadcast. we are still rookies when it comes to using all of Livestream's features, and posting topics solely in the Meebo chat for the listeners to engage.
tonight that's one of my goals during the broadcast–to take more steps at engaging the audience.
any suggestions or thoughts would be appreciated!
Steve Raquel says
The concept of "virtual ministry" is still pretty new with the use of social media, however, the key to social media/social networking is not the technology, but the connections it creates. Technology is the channel in which the communication takes place.
If the church is able to leverage social media to connect believers and unbelievers to share the gospel, it can really be influential as social media is being accepted more and more in society.
The big question you should ask outside what Brian has put up is the "why" question. Sometimes churches and ministries rush into social media because people say they have to be there, but don't know why.
If you can ask the why, then you are one step closer to being effective.
Benson Hines says
It seems like one application could also be providing the Cru experience for students who are away – in the summers, for instance. While that might not hit the unreached target, it is part of the group you're trying to build into. And for many college students, summers are a spiritually dull time – at best.
This is also a potential purpose for churches doing the same thing – allowing individuals who are out-of-town to experience church-family at a time they might appreciate it the very most! It's easy to overlook this application of "virtual church," but to me it seems like it could be the most low-hanging fruit of all.
Daniel_Berman says
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….
Mike Filicicchia says
I'm wondering: what led you to believe that students would want to see a virtual experience? Do you intend on seeing big results or is this still a giant experiment, and you're not quite sure what to expect?
Have you seen more of your target students join since you've made the improvements to your website?
Keith Seabourn says
Thanks for the thoughtful post, Brian. I also agree with Steve's comment "the key to social media/social networking is not the technology, but the connections it creates." And I'm a Chief Technology Officer! You've highlighted several important components: experiment frequently, measure the impact on your mission, be honest about results. Eventually, when you find something that works, lock it in.
@matt_mccomas says
Brian, you're the man. Thanks for leading the charge in innovating in this area of our organization.
We've streamed our weekly meeting for a few weeks now and the results have been encouraging. What kind of started as a novelty has become a legitimate way off helping alumni and ministry supporters see what God is up to at Montana State U. I’ve had ministry partners in Alaska, Georgia and Oregon send me messages about how they loved seeing our meeting. I’ve had staff around the region say they’re watching to see what we’re doing at MSU. Even my in-laws are watching!
So for giving ministry donors, alumni and personal ministry partners a chance to see what God is doing on our campus, it's a no brainer. Where it gets fuzzy in my mind is if we should try to leverage it to engage non-believers with the content? Is it effective (how would we measure this) and what are the best strategies to do this? I think the question I have to wrestle with is, "does it boost the life-on-life ministry of our staff?"
I wish I could get a back door pass to some of Northpoint online or Lifechurch.tv strategery sessions.
guy chmieleski says
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).
Daniel_Berman says
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.
Benson Hines says
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.
Brian Barela says
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.
RWR says
Technical questions, what equipment are you using for the stream? Since you are editing down to 2 – 3 minutes is the show really live?
Brian Barela says
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.
Brian Barela says
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.