Continuing The iChurch Method TV series, here's the transcript from the video above where I am talking about Real Time ministry and the impact of Digital Ministry, positive and negative.
Let’s look at the positives first. What I stated before was social media; the Facebook page was one of three or four ministries that I’m aware of that has over a million fans. That’s a lot of people that you can reach via social media and minister to. We see maybe we’ll put out a daily devotional or some snippet from the sermon or something like that, you see real-time ministry. You see somebody watching a clip of a sermon or reading that daily devotional and you see them saying, “That helped me today. That transformed my life. That impacted me.” So, with those types of results you really get a chance to see ministry going on around the world in real time, and nothing can top that. That’s amazing.
Likewise, with the internet church, when we do conferences or if there are sermons going on over the weekend then we have chat modules that might be next to these online video players and we’re seeing people chatting and ministering to each other or our online ministers are ministering to them. So we see all that stuff happening in real-time.
Obviously if people are online they’re chatting more and they’re speaking more so you’re hearing more than you may hear if you’re in an actual sanctuary. They’re not worried about who’s watching and stuff like that because usually they’re in the comfort of their own home or on their mobile device or something and they’re saying how they really feel about what’s happening.
Now let’s look at the downfalls. Social media gives our pastor a voice, it gives our leadership a voice, but it gives everybody a voice. I’ve seen people who may disagree with the pastor or disagree with the ministry, disagree with the theological approach or just disagree because it’s Tuesday. Those people are able to voice their opinions and some of the things that they say—words are very powerful—and the way that they slander the ministry or slander the pastor or just slander other people who are trying to better themselves or just get ministry for themselves, you just see how hurtful it can be. It takes you back to your school days; if a child hears some encouragement, it really impacts them. If they hear discouragement, that really impacts them too. We see that in the online environment via digital media and social media especially.
For more information on this and other topics, get your copy of “The iChurch Method Volume 1: How to Advance Your Ministry Online.” or The iChurch Method Volume 2: Changing the World When You Login or even sign up for the iChurch Method Online School.