Online ministry. It has been discussed quite a bit from the start of COVID-19 until now. Many churches that had never conducted their ministries online had to migrate to an online platform to continue ministering. However, those same ministries that elected to try online ministry, may have never considered the theoretical or theological foundations for for how or why to do ministry over the internet.
Online ministry is valuable to churches of all numerical sizes for many reasons. One, it provides an additional channel of communication between the church congregants. The pandemic illustrated the need for improved and more modernized and organized church communication. Many churches relied on a decentralized manner of communication primarily reliant on in-person contact. Once the pandemic restrictions obliterated the possibility for in-person ministry, at least temporarily, quite a few churches struggled to stay connected with their congregants. As a result, some congregants that did not stay connected with the church through the immediate and abrupt transition from in-person to online ministry, because the church was either slow adapting and migrating their ministry online or never did, never returned to the church. Had those same churches already been conducting ministry online when COVID-19 commenced, all they would have needed to do was amplify their ministry efforts online, and they would have retained more of their congregants. This concept has to do with community. Once it was not possible to continue to engage the community in-person, and there was no other alternative option for engagement, it became easier for some congregants to leave the church community. This phenomenon occurs because a person no longer feels connected to the community. Communication, whether in-person or online, is a means for a community to be formed and maintained because it helps connect people.
A second reason why online ministry is crucial is that is provides an additional channel into the general public. While in-person church ministry will always be needed, online ministry is an added ministry format. While in-person ministry should have primacy over online ministry, online ministry is essential in modernity to reach an ever-expanding online audience. Research shows that approximately half of the world's population is online on some social media platform, with most of them on Facebook.
Third, and related to the second reason, online ministry provides an effective way to reach and evangelize people on social media platforms. As stated before, roughly half of the global population is on some social media platform and they spend significant portions of time each day on those platforms. This reality means that there is a tremendous opportunity for churches that leverage online platforms and tools to evangelize many people that may have never attend a church building or heard the Good News about Jesus Christ.
Next week, the final four reasons why online ministry is important will be covered.
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