Digital church use cases -- Sunday on Monday

Altar Live's Technology Evangelist and CEO, Andy Mahon and Stephanie Leathe, along with Online Pastor Rob Perry of Lifepointe Church, and Jeff Reed of Stadia, share how some churches are breaking -- or rewriting -- the rules for Sunday service online.

Andy: There are a bunch of people who don't make it to the live livestream. So they watch the worship service and message on-demand later. But of course, they are watching it solo. They can't participate in the chat; the chat is old now. There's more than one person, there are quite a few who go to see it on-demand later. Some of them are working, some are visiting family -- dare I say it, some of them are at their soccer league -- regularly missing Sunday service.

There are churches that have the exact same service from Sunday and do it again on Monday. It's recorded. But, it's an event, it's not on demand! So, you go watch it at a specific time, along with all the other people who missed Sunday as well. They sit together in rows and tables, and now they have community. They didn't have to sacrifice community; they are doing more than just on-demand livestream. They're still part of the life and rhythm of the church. I call it Sunday-on-Monday.

Rob Perry: I'm writing that down, Andy!

Jeff Reed: That's beautiful.

Stephanie: Another one I've seen is churches who do a panel discussion with pastors or church staff about the sermon. They think about how to take stuff from Sunday morning and stretch it further, it doesn't just have to sit on Sunday only. They move people between the auditorium and the lobby where they can actually talk with each other, and then back to the auditorium to facilitate some of that dialog between members as well.

Rob: I wonder if we'll ever get at a point where you could have a flash worship -- where people are going on-demand, and all of a sudden you set a metric. Like, there's 14 views going on! If we could assemble them all together and get 'em in a worship space! That's exciting to think about.

Stephanie: It is exciting. That's one of the beauties of digital. You can have church anywhere. You don't have to have even necessarily a highly produced event either. I think that's going to be a really cool thing that comes out of post-pandemic -- realizing, what is it that people come to church for? They sometimes come for the content, like how great your preaching is, how great your band is. But they really stay for the people. That aspect of it is what people want. They want to be able to connect and have a personal connection with somebody in this space.

Having tools that allow you to throw that up a lot easier, and with less headache, I think that's where technology is catching up to now.