“Why To…” Instead of “How To…”

Posted on February 11, 2010 by Greg Simmons

Here at CTM, a good bit of what we post is related to the ‘How To” for a particular subject.  This could be Audio, Video, web site, podcasting, video casting, using new tools or expanding on old tools.  Sometimes, as tech ministry leaders/volunteers, I believe we can get caught up in the “How To…” and forget the “Why To…”  I know I am guilty of this. In this post, I specifically wanted to humanize the technology and provide a few small examples of “Why To…”  Please understand, these examples are not meant as bragging about what my small church is doing.  These are simply meant to remind us (me) WHY we really do what we do.

Video Streaming / Archiving

It may not be that big a deal to those of you that are involved in churches on TV, etc., but for our church it was pretty cool.

RRBC has been live streaming via Ustream for a couple of years now.  The church is  small – 200ish on a Sunday morning – if we’re lucky. The video gear is cobbled together (a Sony Handycam over firewire into a desktop PC), but it’s accomplishing what we need it to for right now.

Anyway, to the cool part.  We had a guy call the church recently.  He just wanted to talk to someone a little about the church in general. He said that he and his family have been looking for a church and they had been watching our services online for the last three weeks and had enjoyed being able to do that.   Since that call, this family has visited the church in person.

Podcasting

Podcasting has been around for some time now.  At no time has it been quicker and easier for churches to make their messages available to anyone that has web access anywhere in the world.  So too, it has never been easier to share the message with those you see regularly.

One of our former Youth shared this with me about a year ago.  Her mom, due to work, was unable to be there every Sunday.  So, she would download the sermons and burn them to a CD for her mom to have on her way to and from work.  Her mom loved being able to listen while she drove and she felt more connected.

YouVersion

YouVersion is the new kid on the block.  Like many other churches and ministries, we have created a YouVersion LIVE group that people can access during the sermon whether they are on site or watching via the web.  This has been a great new way to interact with even more people.

I saw another church leaving their LIVE event “open” during the week.  That seemed like a good idea so we decided to try it.  We now leave the event “open” from Sunday until Saturday at 11:55 PM with a link to the video replay.  The first week, I decided to check the prayer requests during the week to see if we had any. This is when the stories of those touched outside our walls began to develop.  Via the prayer request function available in YouVersion, our church has had the opportunity to:

• Pray with a young lady about her finances and new business
• Reach out to a family in severe financial need just around the corner (sadly, she told our pastor that our church was the only one she contacted via the web that responded)
• Pray with a woman about her aunt’s health
• Pray with a man whose daughter was being admitted into the hospital.  (Both are in Nigeria. He found our event on his BlackBerry in the waiting room)
• Reach out to someone with addictions

From a tech standpoint, we have hiccups each week and things don’t always go the way we want them to go.   But, I’m trying to let go of the worry about the “How to…” and focus on the “Why to…”  God has still been able to use the tech/media and the operators – with all their imperfections – to reach people in need.

And that is the “Why to…”:

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» Tags: podcasting, streaming, YouVersion

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