5 Reasons to Start a Church Blog

You want to keep your congregation engaged throughout the week, and give new people ways to discover your ministry. You’re probably being told that social media is the key to meeting both of those goals, but you’re not really sure how to set yourself apart from the other churches on social media. If you’re doing the same thing every other church is doing—like sharing images with Bible verse and quotes—it’s not really going to communicate what’s special about your ministry.

A blog can be the perfect way to set yourself apart. It can keep your church involved during the week with encouraging and devotional content, and it gives members something tangible to share on their social media channels. When people discover your church by stumbling upon your blog, it gives them a real glimpse into your church’s priorities and values.

Here are 5 reasons to consider starting a church blog:

1. A church blog makes use of content you’re already making

You already have to create sermons every week; why not use them to their maximum potential? While you can definitely post your sermons’ video or audio, you can also turn the average sermon outline into two or three robust blog posts. This also gives you an opportunity to elaborate on ideas or questions that people raise from hearing the message.

You can work your presentation slides into your posts, and even create content around announcement videos, ministry updates, missionary stories, and prayer needs.

2. A church blog gets you found on search engines

Google’s amazing, but it has yet to send search traffic to you based on stuff you say in your sermon audio or videos. What it can do, however, is search your written content and associate it with the stuff people are looking for.

The more written content your website has, the more authority and relevance you’ll get from search engines like Google and Bing when people are searching for answers to questions you’re answering. This means that people are going to discover your church as they look for spiritual answers. Does it really get any better than that?!

3. A church blog gives tech-savvy members a way to serve

Many of the opportunities for church members to serve are generally for extroverts. There aren’t a lot of service-oriented options for people who might be more introverted and technically gifted. Running a church blog can be an ideal way to get these people involved in a way that will truly benefit the church.

If you have writers in the church, they can be tasked with creating your content. This might mean turning your outlines into blog posts (with however much oversight you need), or turning actual sermon audio into written content. You can also commission gifted writers to create content for the blog. All of those options offer an outlet for strong writers to marry their creativity with the material you’re creating. This can be rewarding for everyone involved.

There’s also the more technical aspect of managing the blog which covers wiring up posts, dealing with comments, choosing and updating plugins, and maintaining all of the stuff that needs attention.

4. A church blog can help share your church culture

Your church’s blog doesn’t have to be limited to content built around your sermons. You can also use it to share stories about your church in a way that reinforces who you are and what you’re about—and most importantly, what God’s doing.

Your church is full of powerful stories about people meeting Jesus, getting baptized, going on mission trips, creating ministries, and getting involved in the community. The key is in finding angles in these stories that can broaden their appeal to people who might not attend your church.

5. A church blog can get your sermons shared more widely

Sharing your sermon audio or video is valuable, but they don’t really have the same reach that written content does. Think about it. When was the last time that you’ve seen a sermon video go viral? Sermons are by nature deeper, thought-provoking pieces. People enjoy this content in written form because they can consume it at their own speed, either with an in-depth reading or a cursory scanning.

When you make the sermon content you’re already creating available to people in a written format, they’re more apt to read and share it—exposing it to a larger audience. And if it’s on your blog where search engines can find it, it becomes evergreen content that people can find and share years from now!

Your blog can be your content hub.

Think about it this way. If a sermon can be broken into two or three blog posts, in a year’s time you can have well over 100 posts on your blog. This is all content that you can link to in social media posts and send people to in regular email updates—and you can send people to these posts multiple times.

If you have a church app like Pushpay’s Total Engagement Package, your blog posts become an important element of keeping people coming back to the app. Once they’re in the app, you can communicate with them about other important opportunities and events coming up, and every time they’re in the app they have another chance to give.

To check out some ways to develop great content, check out these 11 engaging church content ideas.