How to Achieve Successful Church Engagement in the Digital Age
If you’re like most senior pastors, the problem of how to grow church attendance and engagement poses a critical challenge for you and your staff. Successful church engagement in the digital age has emerged as a top priority due to two factors: the rise in dependence on technology and the decline in church attendance.
Declining church engagement stymied outreach efforts even before the COVID-19 pandemic, as a Barna study showed. That challenge intensified as people dropped out of church activities due to lockdowns and other preventative measures.
Unfortunately, many of those people who left never returned. A recent study from Lifeway, a major church engagement research firm, found that more than one-fourth of church attendees remain missing in action.
During that same period, people became increasingly dependent on technology for personal connection. Remote work, Zoom calls, and telehealth visits became commonplace across North America – and the world.
Clearly, church engagement ideas for this decade must incorporate these trends to be relevant in the digital age. Leveraging digital tools to turn data-driven insights into action at every point along the member engagement lifecycle is essential to growing your church in today’s world.
Make Member Engagement Your Digital North Star
As church leadership expert Carey Nieuwhof points out, engagement is likely to be the number-one driver of church growth in the near future. The reason? “Engaged people are passionate people. They know what the mission is, they serve in it, and they live it out. They’re passionate enough about it to invite their friends,” he explains.
For that reason, you need to anchor your growth strategy on the member engagement lifecycle. From the moment they first interact with your church to the day they pass on or move out of town, use every digital advantage to engage your church members and attendees at every stage of their spiritual journey.
StudioC’s church communications software suite empowers your church marketing and communications teams to laser-focus on each member from their first interaction, meeting their needs along the road to deeper discipleship.
Personalization with the ability to scale as your church grows? Yes, please!
Image via StudioC
Engage with Your Church Members at Every Step of their Discipleship Journey
StudioC’s user-friendly dashboards make it easy for members to engage with your church at every step along their journey toward a deeper relationship with God. Pastors and other church leaders, on the other hand, can use the insights and data analytics their dashboards reveal to identify the next steps they can encourage members to take.
Screenshot via StudioC
With StudioC’s targeted church messaging platform, you can send each member messages that connect with their life situation and strengthen their walk with Christ. With each connection, that member will engage more deeply with both God and your church, helping them grow in their faith. And, as they do, they’ll spread the word to others, growing your church in the process.
Even better, this solution integrates with most church management software for a 360-degree overview of your congregation and its members. Specifically, you can use its dashboard analytics to inform you about your members’ spiritual and physical health, how well your programs are performing, and assess whether your various ministries are connecting with your people.
Those data, in turn, can help you and your church leaders set engagement goals and devise a strategy to help you achieve them. After you identify those goals, StudioC’s church member engagement platform can help you monitor your progress in near-real time. If you and your ministry teams are ready to engage your congregation in a deeper walk with Christ and grow your church in the process, let’s talk. Schedule a consultation with the StudioC team today!