The Role of Social Media: Digital Ministry or Online Marketing?

As churches start down the path of online content and social media, there is a very important question that needs to be answered:

What is the purpose of the content we’re creating?

Before you start any project, it’s important to understand what you’re trying to accomplish. Creating online content for social media is no different.

The pandemic in 2020 forced many churches to quickly react to closed buildings and congregations that were unable to meet the way they’ve been gathering their entire lives. This emergency reaction led to a lot of quick changes. As the pandemic came to a close and in-person services returned, churches were forced to decide what to do with the online content and processes they had created during the pandemic.

In my opinion, there are two pathways. Both pathways are valid and can lead to people meeting Jesus, but they have very different goals.

Digital Ministry

The first pathway is Digital Ministry. The goal of this pathway is for the online content itself to be the ministry, rather than the online content existing to get people to attend services in person. This looks like online services, complete with prayer ministries, online classes, and online small groups. Digital Ministry looks like podcasts and YouTube videos designed to have an impact on people’s lives without the goal that the people consuming the content ever set foot inside your church.

This is an exciting pathway that I hope more churches choose to participate in as time goes on, but this pathway is not for everyone. Creating quality content is hard and very time-consuming. Seeing a podcast’s audience grow or a YouTube channel’s subscribers grow to large a following usually takes years. It takes years of regularly creating quality content and investing resources into a ministry before you start to see a lot of growth…that’s years of grinding away before the ministry has any hope of financially supporting itself.

If that sounds like more than you want to take on, that’s 100% ok. Our churches don’t have to compete with Mr. Beast and TikTok influencers to make a real impact in our communities.

Online Marketing

Did you just read the words Online Marketing and wince a little? Let’s frame it up differently and put it into a modern church context. Online Marketing is using online tools to reach people who have not yet visited your church. Your church websites, social media, and online advertising are some of the best tools to reach people in your local communities.

The Online Marketing pathway is all about using modern tools to reach people with the goal of them deciding to visit your church. It’s all about where the life change happens. For Digital Ministries, the goal is that content itself produces life change. With the Online Market pathway, the content invites someone to visit your church where the life change happens through in-person relationships.

Think about how Jesus operated His ministry. He traveled from place to place reaching people with his message. He regularly performed miraculous feats to show that He was who he said He was. Let’s put that in a modern context. If we had someone traveling from place to place preaching radical content and performing miraculous feats today, they’d likely be labeled an influencer creating viral content.

Do I have to pick one or the other?

Well, yes…and No.

I would suggest that every church should utilize online marketing as part of a larger communication strategy. But if you have the time and resources to devote to digital ministry, it should not keep you from your online marketing efforts.

We’re Losing The Fight

Fewer and fewer people regularly attend church services and we have to adjust our strategies to reverse this trend. If you’re pastoring a small church, many tasks are competing for your time. From writing your weekly sermon to counseling church members going through a hard time, there are many worthwhile activities on your to-do list. If you’re not careful, you can quickly end up not spending any time reaching out to people who have not yet visited your church. But if we hope to see our congregations grow, it’s imperative to have a strategy in place that results in new visitors regularly visiting your church for the first time.

My Name is John Mann. I started Axio Social to help churches utilize social media to grow their congregations 1 visitor at a time.