Media ministry is an essential part of today’s church to ensure effective outreach. Graeme Spencer of Media Mentoring has been a pioneer in Christian media for over 25 years. He shares how it all starts with a vision.
Having a vision for your media ministry is essential. It get’s everyone on the same page and working together strategically towards your goal.
I am a member of various online forums that serve church media techs. A common theme I see in posts on these forums is a disconnect between church leaders and church tech teams over the question of if and when they should upgrade their media set up. It seems to be a question that causes challenges for many but there is a solution to the disconnection – a media ministry vision.
Many churches, jumped into live streaming at the start of the Covid pandemic as a way of keeping connection with their congregations when everything went into Lockdown. Thinking this was a temporary situation they came up with what they believed was a temporary solution. But, two years on and the same set up is still doing the weekly broadcast.
If you were already broadcasting or filming at that point then you might have added some extra “temporary” things to your set up to improve it or make it more operationally friendly or to allow you to get more creative in how you did online church.
Whatever your situation, there is no question that most people had to make quick decisions to adapt to what was happening in the world but the things implemented have also created new challenges.
For many techs, they got up and running as quick as possible and I know most would have chosen to spend the minimum budget on their set up as it was only “temporary” – right? Of course, time has shown it wasn’t temporary at all. The “creaky/cheap” tech is still doing the job. But the temporary set up is now causing real frustrations due to its limitations. Yet, the Pastor’s response is often “if it’s not broken why fix it”. Hence the disconnect.
Online streaming is here to stay for most churches so there needs to be a new approach that allows us all to move away from “temporary”.
I understand the reluctance to invest in tech. We all know that as soon as I take my new shiny toy out the box the value goes down. Also, as soon as we take the plunge and invest, we often discover there is something newer and better coming on the market – we can’t win. Also, for a church leader who spent considerable amounts of money a year ago, to now be told they need to finance an upgrade is a challenge unless they understand why.
Take time out to reassess your media ministry vision
We all know we need to move forward so what do we do? I think this starts by acknowledging the incredible job the Church has done to cope with the pandemic and get up and running with their broadcasting. It is remarkable what has been achieved. I honour both the techs and the leaders for what they have done but, we need to ensure that the great work started continues and we build on our success.
The solution to this is communication. You need to work together to formulate a media vision for your church that can move you forward. These three steps will help. The best way to overcome any disconnects is to craft a definitive media ministry vision for your church/ministry. Get that right and the rest follows!
Visit Media Mentoring for more media ministry advice and tips from Graeme. He also has a TV production company called Cloak Productions.