As I was lying in bed at 5 this morning half-conscious trying to decide whether to sleep for a few more minutes or get up and start my day an idea hit me. My mind drifted to a conversation I had with my pastor a couple weeks ago about the general trend of church websites. I told him I see church websites fulfilling three general purposes: to help people looking for a church home, to assist people already attending the church to know what ministries and activities are available for them, and to help people grow spiritually by providing additional resources that complement the services and ministries. I expressed how great I thought it would be to put audio of his messages online along with additional resources for people who wanted to go deeper on the topic.
That’s when it hit me and I got up and started writing…
A blog is the perfect format for helping people go deeper and apply sermon messages to their lives!
Imagine a sermons blog that would be updated each Sunday shortly after the services. It would include…
- A brief sermon outline.
- An audio “podcast” of the message.
- A “Going Deeper” or “Additional Resources” section that would recommend books, websites or other resources on the topic.
- An “Action Steps” section that would list possible action steps depending on circumstances, including a link to an online presentation of the Gospel on those Sundays when the Gospel is presented.
- A section where people could leave comments (anonymously if they like) about the service and how it impacted them.
- A “Contact Us” section where people could send a private message to the church if they wanted help or prayer, or wanted to let the church know how the service impacted them but not publicly on the website.
What struck me is how perfectly a blog lends itself to this purpose. A blog is easy to update weekly, it facilitates the posting of comments, it automatically archives messages by date, topic, and sermon series, and it’s searchable. Awesome!
So, I thought to myself… this makes way too much sense to be an original idea, and I went off to see if I could find a church that is already doing this. I went to BloggingChurch.com because it has a list of about a dozen churches that have blogs. I checked every one of them. Many of them have audio or video of sermon messags, but as far as I could tell the only church in their links that comes close to using its blog in this format is Watermark Community Church in Dallas. It includes a sermon outline and audio podcast, but no resources for going deeper or action steps.
I tried googling “church sermon blog” and after going through about a page and a half of results I heard, “Daddy! Daddy! Juuuuuuuuiiiiice!” It was 6:45 AM and that’s my two-year old son’s way of letting me know he’s ready to get up.
As of now I haven’t found a church that is using a blog in this way. If you know of one, post a comment with a link. This would be a very powerful way to use a blog to help people grow spiritually. What do you think?
In His Service,
Paul Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com
35 Comments
Yeah I agree Organized blogging is a good idea if it is consistent. Resources, videos and pictures will help you blog post more attractive to your reader. Sometimes we need to be more proactive to inform our religious readers about the update.
One of my Pastors has approached me with a similar idea that he would like to implement. He sent me the following message recently:
"In my mind the website will be pretty simple. It will have sermons with additional resources to pair up with the sermons. In addition, it will have articles and studies with a devotional/Bible study intent. That is at least a start. I'm very open to any other thoughts you might have."
Do you know of any websites that are doing what you described or are similar to what my Pastor wants to do? He's asking me to help him with something I am not great at but I'd like to learn more about. Any help you can provide would be wonderful. Even a link to a few examples would be wonderful.
Blessings,
Steve
Hi Steve,
We used to do it at my church – http://cypressmeadows.org/sermons/ – until we changed the way we organize our sermon media.
Here are a few other examples:
http://www.cbcjoy.org/wordpress/
http://sermons.wattswhat.net/
http://catholicchampion.blogspot.com/
The idea and concept is great but, as with all things in life, it does need to be consistently maintained with the weekly sermons going out at a regular time. This is the part where most blogs fail. At first it is new and exciting but after awhile it becomes a chore and people start to neglect the blog.
I do think that there is so much potential not only for encouraging your own church members but to also use the blog to reach out to a hungry world and let them know about Jesus as well.
Good luck with your new blog.
Amazing article 🙂