3️⃣ Flourishing Churches: Turning Digital Engagement into Real-World Community
How Churches Can Create a Culture of Invitation That Leads to Meaningful Relationships --Third in a Series
A Series of Articles by John Wallace on the Digital Turn Around Story of Apostles By-The-Sea.
1️⃣ From Invisible to Inviting: How Apostles By-the-Sea Found Its Voice —David Roseberry
2️⃣ Flourishing Churches: An Experiment with Promising Results —John Wallace
3️⃣ Digital Engagement into Real-World Community
APOSTLES BY-THE-SEA IS SURROUNDED BY WATER. We’ve got the Gulf a few miles to our south and the bay just to our north. You don’t drive too far around here before you come to a bridge connecting one community to another over some body of water. It’s beautiful!
But I want to tell you about another kind of bridge, not the physical kind, but the digital kind that has connected new people to our community.
Rethinking Our Web Site as a Digitial Bridge
Apostles By-the-Sea is one of the most welcoming churches I have ever been part of. I know many pastors would say the same thing about their parish. Fair enough! But Apostles By-the-Sea is a warm and genuinely friendly parish.
The problem is that it was difficult to get people to visit so they could experience the warmth of this community of faith.
Our church had become somewhat hidden – not physically, but in the awareness of our community. We realized that despite our genuine hospitality, people couldn't experience what they didn't know existed. That's when we decided to reimagine our digital presence not as an end but as a bridge to something more meaningful.
As I mentioned before, I wanted to find a way to bring greater visibility to our church. We were tucked away in an office building on a busy street, practically invisible—no one knew we were there.
There’s an old real estate adage: If you need a sign to tell people where your church is, then your church should be where the sign is! That wisdom stuck with me. I realized we needed to take that principle and apply it to our situation in a new way.
Where were the people we wanted to reach? They were online. If we wanted to make our church known, we needed to be where the people were. We needed to be online.
The LeaderWorks Trust
Applying for a grant for this was necessary. We knew we had to spend some money, but we had concerns about it. Would it be money invested or wasted? Would we learn or simply try and fail?
And I am thankful to David Roseberry and the LeaderWorks Trust because they caught our intention, our heart, and their grant helped us see a plan forward.
When we decided to launch a social media awareness campaign, David Roseberry suggested bringing on a new member of our staff who would serve as the main contact person for this effort. His reasoning was that someone needed to “own” the effort, get to know future visitors, and help shepherd them into meaningful engagement in our church.
We trusted we would see real visitors!
The Human Connection
Emily was the perfect choice. She's warm and kind attends each Sunday with her young family, and, along with her husband, leads one of our small group missional communities.
Emily became the human connection behind our digital presence. Each time someone responds to one of our ads, Emily reaches out personally with a followup text and voice message thanking them for their interest and inviting them to come to a service and experience the joy of Jesus at Apostles By-the-Sea.
This was the personal touch transforms what could be a cold, digital interaction into the beginning of a warm, personal relationship.
In truth, many people have visited our website and filled out the requisite information, only to never be seen. (Although they may eventually come; people’s onramp to visit a church can stretch for months!) But it is valid for all of our churches: Many people ‘visit’ us online and never visit our churches in person.
We've learned not to be discouraged by this reality. Each person who explores our online presence is one more person who now knows who we are and what we're about. And for some, that exploration is the first step toward joining our community
Our Website Renovation
Our website needed to show our Church as we are. So, we updated it. This was a big deal.
We filmed and added new video that plays when the site first loads.
The site shows different aspects of our community. People want to know what to expect when they attend, so we describe it on our website, but showing it with a video is so much better. It gives potential visitors a glimpse into our worship, our fellowship, and our mission before they ever walk through our doors.
We made sure to link to our recent live streams and sermons.
This allows people to "sample" our teaching and worship style. Many new members have told us they watched several online services before feeling comfortable enough to attend in person.
We're learning that digital engagement isn't about accumulating views, likes, or followers. It's about extending a genuine invitation. Our online presence serves as an extension of our hospitality, creating multiple pathways for people to connect with our church family.
When Digital Becomes Face-to-Face
The most beautiful moments come when digital connections transform into face-to-face relationships. When someone who has been watching our services online for months finally walks through our doors on Sunday morning. When a family who discovered us through a social media ad becomes active members of our community, finding friendship and purpose they'd been searching for.
In some ways, this approach mirrors Jesus' ministry. He met people where they were – at wells, in marketplaces, along roadsides – and invited them into deeper relationship. Today, people spend lots of time in digital spaces. In order to reach them it makes sense that we would meet them in those digital spaces as well.
For churches seeking to build bridges between digital engagement and real-world community, I offer this encouragement:
Be authentically who you are online.
Don't try to project an image that doesn't match your real community.
Designate a real person to be the voice and face behind your digital presence.
Create content that gives people a genuine sense of what to expect. And most importantly,
See your digital ministry not as separate from your "real" ministry, but as the first step in welcoming people home.
The digital world offers us unprecedented opportunities to extend an invitation. But the invitation is always to something more – to worship together, to break bread together, to serve together, to become family together. That's the miracle we're witnessing at Apostles By-the-Sea, as digital clicks become a real-world community, one relationship at a time.
Next Up: Investing in Welcome – Why Every Church Needs a Culture of Hospitality
John Wallace, Rector
Apostles By the Sea, Santa Rosa, Florida