Sliding Scale of Online Offline Engagement
Not all engagement is the same, and that's okay. The unwise thing is equating commitments. Someone who walks forward in a service publicly to say they committed their life to Christ is more engaged compared to a person who liked a post on Instagram. The like is still relevant, but not equal to the altar call. You have to think about engagement in terms of good to best on a sliding scale. A person who is sitting in your worship center on a Sunday morning is more engaged than someone watching at home. The person at your church had to get dressed, maybe wrangle up their kids, and get through traffic. Now, that doesn't mean the online watcher isn't engaged or doesn't have valid reasons for watching online, but let's not equate the commitment levels. A comparable commitment experience to sitting in your church for online watchers are those who host an in-home worship service. These online watchers had to get dressed, wrangle up the kids, but instead of traffic, pick up their house. I would say hosting church in your own home is more engaged than those who are only keeping a seat warm. Understanding the sliding scale of engagement is an important principle when processing the value of online engagement to your local church's goals.
Different types of engagement can be valuable for different purposes. For example, on many online church platforms, you have a button that says "Raise Hand" that allows real-time viewers to show they're engaged with the service. It's a great feature and valuable to measure, but the value is determined by how it's framed within your organization's metrics. You and I get in trouble when we try to compare what is engagement for one organization to our organization. Let's say one ministry says they had 10,000 people accepted Christ in the previous 12 months. That's amazing (and it would be amazing), but you may think the 500 that accepted Christ at your church as being small in contrast. Your ministry could be smaller, which is okay, or they may measure salvations differently on a sliding scale. Maybe they measure how many people clicked a button, and you measure how many provided an email address. That doesn't mean their metric is wrong. All it means is their number isn't helpful in comparison. The same is true for a local ministry that had ten people walk down the aisle for an altar call. I would say walking to the front of a church is a pretty high engagement metric on a sliding scale, the 500 email addresses is somewhere in the middle, and the 10,000 who clicked a button is low on the sliding scale. All are tracking life change. All are relevant. All are valuable to their organization, but not all are equal to each other.
I see too many ministries get wrapped up in comparing when they need to focus on what is and isn't genuine engagement for their ministry. 10,000 viewers aren't the same as 10,000 butts in the seat. 10,000 views on Facebook isn't the same as 10,000 views on your website. If you are treating viewers as equal to physical attendance, you are missing the point. Online has allowed us to provide easier ways for people to engage with your church. I will say with new opportunities, present new questions, and we are all wrestling with the answers. The value and place of digital commitments within our local church metrics is one of those questions. We may not have all the answers, but I do know we can't dismiss it. We have to think about how online fits into our local church strategy. Too many still say online is just for those who are lazy, and it's hurting the local church. That's small thinking. Shift to a growth mindset. Focus on what you can make of it.
Yes, the online world can be a scary place, but we can redeem it. The internet is merely a tool that is defined by the person who is holding it. The person holding the tool at your church is your leadership. I've often found online ministry is wrongly interpreted by leadership using limited data. It's usually their one neighbor who watches online and doesn't come to church anymore. That neighbor doesn't represent the 99% and what it could be with some vision. Think bigger than that misinformed individual. We live in a time and place that allows us to easily build crowds and cores online using Facebook Live, YouTube, podcasting, and more. You can either ignore this opportunity because of the complexities or leverage it to reach and disciple more people.
Online isn't the same as offline, and that's okay. Create off-ramps that lead to your local church or partner churches. Never equate engagement commitments. Talk about the differences. Build a funnel. Don’t let anyone say online isn't valuable. Expand their small thinking by bringing up the sliding scale of engagement.
