Conference Ministry and Online Ministry: A Comparison

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For my first thirteen years as President of New Commandment Men’s Ministries helping churches start men’s team ministries to their widowed and single parents, I focused on men’s conference ministry. I worked primarily with Iron Sharpens Iron, one of the premier men’s ministries, doing seventy-five minute workshops around the U.S. at over 150 of their conferences.

But for the last three years I’ve changed my focus to online ministry, developing a web membership training site and writing a blog that I post to three times a week: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Now the question is, how do these two types of ministry strategies compare in their effectiveness? Which one works best in helping churches start men’s team ministries to their widowed and single parents?

To answer that question, I’ve been running a test over the past four and a half months (January 1, 2019 to May 15, 2019) to compare the two approaches.

First, I went to two Iron Sharpens Iron conferences, one in Omaha and one in Buffalo, and did workshops at both conferences. The total attendance for both conferences was 1,000. At these conferences, I spent a large amount of money to get the maximum exposure I could possibly get: I updated my booth signage, purchased a full page ad in the conference brochure, handed out my training DVD to everyone at the conferences, and purchased “platform time” in the main plenary session so I could show a two minute introductory video about men’s team ministry to the entire conference.

The result? Five churches are starting a men’s team ministry. The cost to New Commandment Men’s Ministries was $695.10 per church, $3,475.46 total for all five churches.

Second, during that time I continued writing my blog and I also picked one blog to promote on Facebook, using Facebook ads. I spent about $105.00 a week for the ads over the four and a half months of the test.

The result? Two churches are starting a men’s team ministry. The cost to New Commandment Men’s Ministries was $765.53 per church, $1531.05 for both churches.

While these results are preliminary, so far it is about $70.00 less expensive to start a men’s team ministry in a church using conferences than using the web, a surprising result for me.

On the other hand, besides starting men’s team ministries in two churches using the web, some other dramatic things happened as a result of the Facebook ads.

• The number of people reading my blog tripled to 6,000 a month.
• The number of people visiting the website doubled to 360 a day.
• The number of visits to the website that lasted over one hour increased from 359 to 887 per month, a 147% increase.
• The post I promoted on Facebook went viral and has been shared by over 8,000 people. The ad itself has 4,800 “likes”, 736 comments, and has been shared 1,700 times.

My conclusion, therefore, is that both approaches are effective. Over the years, I’ve seen the value of conference ministry in providing a platform for me to help churches start men’s team ministries. But now I also know that online ministry is an equally successful platform.

This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.

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