How To Build The Best Church Media Team

Many churches have run their online services like live streams or social media pages themselves, using good old Zoom and PowerPoint to varying degrees of success. In fact, more often than not churches would rely on a single person to handle all their media and communication needs!

But 2020 very quickly changed all that. Churches having to go fully online meant suddenly their small media teams (if any) were their only way of continuing to reach their congregations. 

Now, with many churches deciding on making use of hybrid virtual and in-person services, the job of the church communication and media teams has become more essential than ever before.  

If you have never built a media team before, this can seem to be a daunting challenge. At the same time, your church cannot afford to pass up on the opportunity to expand this team and their online offerings now or they’ll be surpassed by others that have.

Worried about the skills needed? Only have a volunteer or two to rely on? Whatever your concern, we’ll teach you how to build the best church media team below.

The First Step To Creating Your Media Team

Most churches don’t have much money to dedicate to an outsourced media company or hire a group of professionals to run this aspect of their ministry for them. This is also the first concern that most churches have - what they can afford when it comes to hiring people.

But don’t underestimate the power of volunteers from within your congregation - some of the skillsets under your steeple may surprise you! 

With the accessibility of the internet, it has become much simpler to learn skills like managing online events, social media and even running websites. Find one or two people within your congregation that are eager and willing to learn and the chances are good that with time they’ll be able to train others and expand the team from within. 

Why The Right Media Team Matters

Whether it’s running your services as live stream events or managing a Facebook group for your church, having the right team in place is key to the longevity of your church. 

A big part of this is not just choosing the right volunteers for your media team, but also thinking carefully about the roles they need to fulfill. Beyond the technical skills they may need, they’ll also need the following:

• Commitment. Working on events like live streams will take consistent efforts from your team, and you want to make sure there is very little turnover in terms of who forms part of this core team.
• Availability. This type of work will take more than just showing up for Sunday service - there will be extra hours put in to ensure everything is running smoothly.
• Being flexible. When it comes to technology and events, things can change quickly. Your church media team will need to be able to adapt depending on the challenges thrown at them.
• Teamwork. Working together well as a team will keep your digital ministry team running for years to come.

Place a priority on the above soft skills along with technical skills, and refine your requirements until you have a keen understanding of what will be best for your media team.

When it comes to technical skills, your church will want to look out for:

• Audio/visual editing skills with experience in live streams
• Social media and communication material skills
• Website management and content creation

These, along with a host for your live streams, will form the core of your church media and communications team. 

Hot tip: Remember that the youth of today is more technologically inclined than ever before, and you can also look between your more senior youth groups for assistance.

What Your Church Media Team Will Do

Your church media team will be responsible for a variety of branding-related tasks that are key to growing the presence of your church online and in real life. 

Some of the most common tasks that church media teams fulfill are to deliver information to your congregation and to create an open method of communication between attendees and church leadership. In a world that is increasingly relying on the internet to communicate, this will bring longevity to your church. 

All churches differ in terms of what they are hoping to achieve, what kind of growth they want, and whether they want to embrace live streaming or not. The problem is not doing so may even cause your church to permanently close its doors in the future.

With a media team in place, you can be assured that people will continue to be drawn to your church and the online services you offer.

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Hot tip: As your media team takes ownership of branding and communications, your hosts are then freed to focus on "welcome to church" messages, moderation, and prayer.

Hiring A Church Media Team To Use A Platform For Churches

As a church leader, it’s part of your task to always be evolving and keep your church relevant to the times and what people need.

The pandemic quickly proved that working with platforms like Zoom or Google Hangouts were workarounds, instead of being platforms dedicated to the needs of churches specifically. 

Since you’re planning to start or expand your church communications and media team already, why not get them started on an application that is built to set them up for success right out of the gate?

This is why Altar Live exists. During the start of the pandemic in April 2020, we had a conversation discussing how the disruption of COVID was affecting churches and decided to start interviewing and listening to faith community leaders. 

Online engagement is measured in likes, shares, comments, and views, but real human engagement is about transformative relationships. “Is there a way,” they asked, “to not just do services online - but be a community online?”

We heard those calls and made them possible with Altar Live. Alongside faith community partners, we began to build a worship and event platform designed for real human-to-human interaction.

So stop making use of cold likes and emoji reactions to see if people are engaging with your live streams and small group events. With Altar Live, hosts can initiate conversations with every person who joins the event, answer prayer requests, and check in on people to name just a few of the features.

Don’t delay - get your church media team started with Altar Live today using our online church training platform Altar Academy or reach out to us for a free trial!

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