Remote Church: 4 Free Tools to Connect Your Ministry

These are unprecedented times. As far as we know this is only the second time in U.S. history that churches have been ordered to close (the other time was during the Spanish flu).

Please know that we at Servant PC are praying for you and your ministry as you figure out how to minister to people in these trying times.  Even in light of a global pandemic, the greatest need for any human being remains the Gospel.

As you continue to minister, here are some tools our team at Servant PC has been using to stay connected and work remotely. We hope they’ll help your remote church services and ministry teams as well. NOTE: None of these items are things that we make or support, however they are working so well for us we wanted to recommend them to you.

1. Slack – slack.com – FREE
Slack is a group chat tool that has been vital in keeping our work from home team connected. And it can help you connect your remote church teams. When you start an account on slack you can create channels for each your various ministry teams. For example you can have a channel for #elders, #childrensministry, #worshipteam #staff etc.  Invite the relevant folks to that channel and they will instantly be connected via a live chat stream.  They can use Slack on any device. For example:

#Elders channel
Pastor: is anyone available to pray with Bob Smith over the phone as he has tested positive.
Elder Jim: sure I’ll call him now!
Pastor: Thanks Jim!

Here’s a Slack tutorial someone (not us) made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c7_TpPUpL0

2. Zoom – zoom.us – Free up to 100 participants
Zoom is an awesome tool for holding virtual staff meetings, elder meetings, finance team meetings etc.  Participants have the option to show video, share their screen, or even call in via phone.  We use zoom everyday for video conferencing, one to one meetings, and conference calls.

Here’s a Zoom tutorial someone (not us) made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMUxzrgZvZQ

3. Facebook livestream
Facebook livestream is pretty self-explanatory and anyone with a Facebook account can do it. Simply start a new post and click on the “live” button. You can control who can view your Facebook live stream. If you select anyone even people without a Facebook account can watch your livestream.  This is a great tool for your worship service or even for virtual youth meetings.  NOTE: do not stream copyrighted music or Facebook will terminate your livestream, instead stick to public domain hymns or Sovereign Grace if you’re going to lead music.

Here’s a Facebook Livestream tutorial someone (not us) made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajRnToYSGyE

4. LightStock – Free Professional Graphics Package for Churches

Lightstock offers non-cheesy, professionally designed graphics, and stock photos for churches. They put together this free collection of images you can use on your social media, on your website, during remote church services and more.

They’re absolutely free to download here (you don’t even have to fill out a form). https://promo.lightstock.com/free-covid-19-church-media-resources

We hope these tools are as helpful to you as they have been to us, and the ministries in which we serve.

Looking for even more ways to connect your ministry remotely? We’re here to help! We’re ready to share with you how you can access your church database from anywhere, serve your members on the go, offer egiving, and more.

Contact us at sales@servantpc.com or 800-773-7570. Or read our other post about addressing challenges in managing church remotely here.

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