Tech Trends: Mass Text Messaging for Churches
Churches are finding it more and more difficult to reach their audience as the speed of life increases, and as chaos continues to grow, fueled in no small part by technology. As ironic as it may be, a number of churches are finding ways to turn the very technology that has disrupted them to their advantage with the use of mass text messaging for churches. What role might texting actually play in the life of the church, or in the body of believers?
In this article we’ll dive a little deeper to better identify the opportunity for mass text messaging for churches.
The Potential Uses for Mass Text Messaging for Churches
While text messaging can have any number of roles within a church, we’ll discuss some of the most important of these below:
- Devotionals: How many congregation members have asked about daily devotionals, but there simply has not been a convenient way to create that program? With text messaging, you can send out a devotional each and every day to every person on your list. Not only is this a great way to help build the faith and strength of your congregation members, but it can be an invaluable tool in community outreach. Imagine being able to reach those in the community on the fence about attending church with a daily devotional that will help their faith grow and ultimately may encourage them to attend services.
- Important Church Notifications: How often has your staff struggled to call everyone involved in a church event to let them know about important changes, or even cancellations? Bulk text messaging allows you to instantly reach everyone who needs to know and provide them with crucial information. You can use text to alert congregation members about changes in service hours, about changes to church events, cancellations due to weather, or with safety alerts and much more.
- Emergency Updates: Many churches become community hubs during dangerous events and weather situations. From flooding to earthquakes, churches are at the heart of it all. You can use text messaging to provide important information to congregation members or community teams, including updates on weather or other dangerous situations, missing persons, the number of available spots for displaced community members within the church, and more.
- Group Communication: Because mass text messaging for churches can be customized and segmented, it makes an ideal way to communicate with specific groups within your church. For instance, suppose the youth group needs to stay in touch with members about an upcoming camping trip. Text messaging would provide a simple way to do that without having to call each member individually, or try to catch them in person during a service during the week. This fosters better understanding, reduces misunderstandings and miscommunication, and helps any group work as cohesive whole.
- Added Value to Sermons: Generally speaking, the sermon is one of the most important parts of a church service (for the body of believers as a whole). However, there is often supporting information that would be helpful for congregants to know, but would be difficult to squeeze into the sermon itself. Text messaging can provide a simple, effective means of doing just that. For instance, you could provide further background information about people discussed in the sermon, about the history of Biblical nations, and a great deal more. It’s all about building a better understanding in the minds of your congregation.
How Do Churches Benefit from Mass Text Messaging?
Now that we’ve discussed some of the most important aspects of bulk text messaging and how this powerful tool can be used within a church, it’s time to take a closer look at the benefits texting might offer your church. Again, there are quite a few, but we’ll discuss the most important below:
- Connecting Your Congregation: One of the most important benefits for churches in using text messaging is that it allows you to keep your congregation connected. That bears on communication, certainly, but it goes deeper than that. It allows you to weld disparate congregation members together into a single body of believers, making each person feel more like they’re an integral part of the church.
- Improved Outreach: One of a church’s most important responsibilities is outreach within the community. From feeding and clothing the needy to ministering to the sick and witnessing to spread God’s Word to those who have not heard it, this is made much simpler with text messaging.
- Improved Engagement: Every church knows the struggle of dealing with low congregation engagement. You strive to get volunteers for important projects, to find leaders for youth groups or excursions, or to help with specific events and more. With text messaging, you can dramatically improve congregation engagement. That offers a host of benefits, including everything from filling empty leadership roles to ensuring that there is adult supervision at youth events.
Moving Forward
As you can see, there’s a lot of value to be gained in the use of mass text messaging for churches. However, using this technology is not as simple as it sounds. Individually messaging congregation members would be just as time-consuming as making phone calls. You need a trusted SMS provider to ensure that you’re able to benefit from texting technology but also that you don’t suffer from any drawbacks.
What should you look for in the right SMS company? There are quite a few important elements, including the number of users the company has, the average delivery rate (and open rate), and the number of texts sent per month. Pricing is another important consideration, too. Of course, the provider should be comprised of an experienced, dedicated team that is committed to ensuring quality customer service every time. If you would like to learn more about mass text messaging for churches from Sakari, please contact us at: https://sakari.io.
About Author
Sakari provides mass text messaging for churches (and businesses). Our cloud-based software sends customized alerts, reminders and notifications to your contacts. To get started with a free trial, visit: https://sakari.io
