The recent COVID-19 lockdown across the country has given me time to reflect on how glad I am that the Lord led me to transition New Commandment Men’s Ministries to an online ministry. Had I not done so, the ministry of training men in men’s conference workshops to do men’s team ministry to their widowed and single parents would have ground to a halt by now.
Instead, New Commandment Men’s Ministries continues on unabated. To date, seventy-one churches are using or have used Meeting to Meet Needs, New Commandment’s online training site, to start and maintain a men’s team ministry. In addition, several thousand people read my blog posts.
Online ministry is not for everyone, of course. It will never take the place of face to face contact. But it does have a place in the panoply of effective ministry tools. Here’s why.
Online ministry is efficient.
The cost, the time, and the effort that it takes to help a church start a men’s team ministry online is about 1% of what it takes to help a church start one using “direct marketing.” (i.e., make plans, fly to a destination, rent a car, stay in a hotel, eat out, do a workshop, provide published material, return home, and then do follow up). There is just no comparison. Period.
Online ministry is durable and scalable.
The material that I produce online is much more robust than a book or video that sits on someone’s shelf. It is permanently available on the Internet and will continue to be on the Internet long after I am gone. (New Commandment will be set up as a foundation and that foundation will be able to maintain the website for less than $200 a month, which will be paid by membership fees.) The material will continue to be accessible – as it is now – by anyone in the world who makes a simple Google search on terms like “men’s ministry,” or “new ministry ideas.”
Online ministry is flexible.
I can do this ministry at any time and from anywhere. (Don’t worry. I’m not moving to the Bahamas.)
Online ministry is personal.
While I will never personally meet most of the men I’m ministering to online, online ministry is still personal, just in a different way. It’s true that doing workshops at men’s conferences allowed me to meet the men I was ministering to face to face, but it was still is just a one-time meeting. Most of the men I have met in workshops I will never see again.
On the other hand, with my blog, I have the opportunity to “meet” with my men three times a week. And in that blog, as you well know by now, I share my heart and soul. I can communicate on a much deeper level, over a much longer period of time, and with far more men, than I ever could with breakout workshops.
Online ministry trends from difficult to easy.
I must admit that it was almost overwhelmingly difficult to make the transition from conference ministry to online ministry. I like to say that starting an online ministry was the equivalent of learning three different professions simultaneously: digital coding, online marketing, and writing. There were days when my head was just swimming with incomprehensible jargon. But I eventually got through it and, as with everything else in life, online ministry became second nature.
While it’s true that online ministry is not for the faint of heart, it’s also true that if the Lord is leading you into it, then he will provide the means for you to accomplish it. I know he did for me.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
Since 2003 New Commandment Men’s Ministries has helped hundreds of churches throughout North American and around the world recruit teams of men who permanently adopt their widowed and single parents in their congregations for the purpose of donating two hours of service to them one Saturday morning each month. We accomplish this with a free training site called New Commandment Men’s Ministry
Learn how to mobilize your men’s ministry to meet every pressing need in your church here.
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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
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2 thoughts on “3 Years into Online Ministry: What I’ve Learned”
Wait … you are moving to the Bahamas?
Keep up the fresh work, Herb. Always strong content.
Thanks, Paul. I appreciate your encouraging words!