Real Data on Church Online Viewers
Ryan Burge is a solid follow on X. He is the Nate Silver of Christianity, which is a good thing. He posted a great article a few weeks ago that a friend sent me. It's called "Who is Attending Online Church?" and breaks down a Pew Research Center study of 11,000 people from November 2022. Check out the article for the full data and all his amazing graphs.
My Takeaways:
Your primary audience for digital investment will not hurt your local church. In fact, Ryan's data shows that most people watching your church service online are already engaged in-person. Not shocking to me.
Online is amazing, but in-person is here to stay. Invest in digital expansions, but pay attention to in-person in the long term. Figure out how to bridge and connect them. Ryan's data support the idea that most prefer in-person over online, and it is obvious why.
Lastly, Ryan's data hints at this, but a group of people are super devoted to watching Christian content online. They jump around, wanting to consume anything. Know the difference between those who want to get connected and those just peeking into a stream. The back row of your church got a bit bigger post-COVID with putting your content online, and it is sometimes confusing what you should do with all these viewers. You don't have to "pastor" everyone who watches online because they may want to digital churchhop for the rest of their lives.
Read "Who is Attending Online Church?" to fully nerd out on the data.
Be on the lookout for my book called Online Church Is Not The Answer: Beyond Just Streaming Church To Hybrid Disciple Making. Print and Audible versions will be coming out in August. I unpack these ideas above in annoying detail.
