How does the global internet help my local church?

Do you remember the early days of the pandemic? If you’re like a lot of churches, you first tried to livestream in March 2020. You may have been shocked at the wide geography of viewers your livestream received. Perhaps you received viewers not only from other parts of your country but even from other continents!

After all, the internet is global (sort of). 

Well then, how can this global internet help you in your local community? 

Here’s the thing: almost everything on the internet is geography-aware. Google knows where you are (roughly), so it is showing you results relevant to your location. Facebook, Instagram (Meta!), and social media are all geographically aware. They want to show you relevant results, so they consider physical locations.

And that happens to people in your community, too. 

Go ahead. Go to www.google.com, and type in “church”. You’ll see results from near you (even if you ignore the paid ads). I guarantee you people who do that in France are not seeing the same results!

What’s the lesson? If your church is active online, it primarily connects with people near your church. Sure, there are occasional aberrations, but mostly…people near you are most likely to see your church being active online.

If you’d like to chat about how your church can meet your local community online, set up a Zoom meeting with me! I would love to chat about how you can reach your community in 2024.