I was reading one of my favorite church technology blogs, Church Tech Today, and I came across this great article title, “Online Giving Skyrockets”. After reading this article, I was very pleased to hear how technology could help the church financially, but that got me to thinking about an issue that I have come across with churches and finances over the last few years. I have worked with numerous churches over the last 5 years and one thing that I kept hearing was that church finances and attendance decrease in the summertime. Initially I didn’t understand how church revenue and attendance consistently went down in the summertime but according to what I was told, since numerous people take vacations and travel during the summer, attendance is down, which means offerings are down, which means finances are down.
Taking this into account, I started to figure out ways that people could travel and still remain connected to the church. And then it hit me, iChurch! The iChurch Method book that I have written and the entire iChurch concept is based on making the ministry accessible and taking church to the people. By that I mean take the church to the people, if they go on vacation then the church can go with them. When you integrate the iChurch Method into your ministry, you can do two things that will help your ministry keep revenues up. One, you can broadcast your worship services online and let people donate while they are watching from their computers and two, you can broadcast your worship services to mobile devices and let people donate and watch as well.
Online church and online donations are the key to keeping people connected to the ministry and thus giving them easy ways to continue to give their tithes and offerings no matter where they are located. As we learn that the people are the church and not the building, we realize that wherever we are we can have church. One of the best parts of having church is receiving the message and giving our tithe or offering. Once the church streams it’s services online, weekly television show and archived videos, anyone with a computer or mobile device can remain connected to the church. Likewise, with online and mobile donations, church members can worship God with their tithes and offerings from their computer or mobile device, anywhere in the world. Of course, this is based on having Internet coverage, but there are very few places that the Internet hasn’t penetrated and connected the world.
Finally, if your church is not taking advantage of online streaming (which can be done for free), online donations, mobile videos and mobile donations, then they are limiting how people can connect with the church and that is no longer an effective way to advance your ministry.....online.