5 More Video Ideas Your Church Is Going To Be The First To Try

Posted by Mike Robinson on July 07, 2010 in Marketing, video tagged with ,

In the first article in this series, I sort of started the idea of thinking of creative ways to use video on your website to promote programs within your church other than the obvious candidates for video (obvious candidates like sermons, music, dramatic productions, etc.). Last time, we talked about promoting your Sunday School department. This time I’d like to try to hit upon the men’s organization within your church.

Our men’s group (which is actually the Baptist Men’s group within my church’s Brotherhood department) meets once a month and we’ve struggled over the past couple of years with several issues related to attendance. One issue has been up-and-down attendance (for example, 12 one month, 24 the next month, then back to 12 the following month). Another issue has been alternating participation where we might have 12 people two months in a row but they might not be the same 12 people. The two main problems with having a different group each time is that a) if you’re trying to conduct business and make decisions from one meeting to the next, you find yourself having to start over each time you have folks who didn’t hear the prior month’s discussion, and b) if you had both sets of 12 people at the same time you’d have twice the attendance at that meeting.

So, how can you use online video to help solve some of these issues as well as enhance your group in general?

1. The tradition with our men’s group is to have a meal with each meeting. And most months we prepare the meal ourselves. One of our favorite meal ideas (and probably yours as well) is to grill out (hamburgers, hot dogs, etc.). So why not capture some fun candid video of the guys cutting up and enjoying the festivity of the meal portion of the meeting?

2. Another standard element of our regular meeting is a 7-minute devotion. Post this to your site and it not only promotes the value of your monthly meeting but it can also minister to a much wider audience than just those who were actually there in attendance.

3. Community projects. Beyond the regular monthly meeting, our men’s group gets together for special weekend projects in the surrounding community. One example is a tradition we have of raking leaves in the fall for elderly families and widows. Occasionally we might remember to report back to the church during the Sunday morning announcements that we had a successful Saturday raking leaves, but posting video of this — with both a fun side and a serious ministry side — could encourage someone to join the group and be a part of that important service to the community.

4. Mission trips. Our men’s group just got a disaster relief trailer to help with recovery efforts following a disaster such as a flood, hurricane or tornado. Especially since this is a new project for the group, it would be a great idea to get video of any excursions with the trailer so that the church can see the equipment — as well as the men of the church — in action. And, there’s the same point I made about the community projects: men in the church who aren’t already involved may be inspired to get involved after seeing video of a meaningful mission trip.

5. And of course for practical purposes, it might not be a bad idea to capture the business portion of your meeting on video so those who miss a meeting can get caught up between months.

This might be as good a place as any to throw in a few thoughts on the video production itself. Personally, I’m a big believer in being true to who you are as a group. Don’t try to “fake an image” for your church by having expensive looking, highly polished, over-edited video just for the sake of having that, that simply doesn’t represent who you are as a congregation. And don’t feel like you have to spend a fortune on professional video production if you don’t have the budget for it. Round up a video camera, hand it to someone in your youth group and tell ‘em to go to town with it. Casual, candid video content can probably tell a prospective visitor to your church a lot more about who you are than an expensive production can. And you certainly don’t want to mislead anyone and have them be disappointed when they physically visit your church.


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