9 Ways Churches Can Benefit From Digital Signage Solutions
Attendance in American places of worship has been steadily declining. To illustrate, church membership averaged 60% between 1998 and 2000 to 49% in 2018-2020. This trend is worrying for church leaders, who depend on the congregation for service and financial support.
The decline in church membership is particularly apparent among millennials and Gen Z, who want authenticity, engagement, and community in worship venues. Luckily, church digital signage will transform the worship experience in your center, making it more relevant and impactful for all age groups.
Traditionally, churches used static posters, A-frame signs, and painted signs to deliver important news. But, static signs get stale quickly, and you incur a lot of costs to update the content regularly.
In contrast, the content on your digital screens is easily updatable via digital signage software. Consequently, you can stream any content you want and even schedule messages to run at particular times in advance.
How to Use Church Digital Signage
Church digital signage is a one-time investment that modernizes your house of worship and appeals to tech-savvy, younger members. Explore nine ways to use this exciting technology below.
1. Attract New Members
Bright outdoor digital signs are superb tools to attract the attention of passersby and promote your church. If passersby see the same, tired plastic signs outside your church, they ignore it after a few days, and you lose out on potential new members. Instead, furnish your center’s exteriors with digital displays and extend warm invitations to community members.
Use the outdoor signs to broadcast service times so interested audiences can join your congregation. Additionally, share daily affirmations and inspiring quotes to enhance your visibility in the community and make passersby eager to view your signs.
Furthermore, combine digital signs with existing monumental signs to blend with your center’s architectural design. The screens will display brightly at night, unlike static posters that depend on sunlight for visibility.
2. Improve Wayfinding
Visiting a large church for the first time can be daunting, especially if it has no clear wayfinding signs. It isn’t enough to mark all the rooms in worship centers. Ideally, there should be directional signs outdoors, in the lobby, hallways, and near elevators and stairs.
Picture a modern lobby with a digital directory listing directions for the sanctuary, choir loft, kids’ area, and offices. Immediately, a visitor knows which way to go and feels confident when navigating your facility.
Further, install interactive digital signs in the entrance area, letting visitors immerse themselves in interactive maps and receive turn-by-turn directions to their destination. Interactive kiosks particularly appeal to younger church members, who love interacting with vibrant screens. The kiosks can also display welcome messages that make new visitors feel at home in your church.
3. Elevate the Worship Experience
When your congregation participates in the worship experience, they are more engaged and more likely to remember the sermon. As such, you should install digital screens or a video wall in the sanctuary to drive audience engagement during services.
For instance, the platforms can stream song lyrics during the praise session to encourage people to sing along. When introducing new music, run simple slides on digital screens to shorten the learning curve. Digital slides can enhance the sermon by showing scripture verses and prayers.
The prayer and meditation room can also benefit from digital signage, where visual and audio elements set the scene. Finally, share simple tips on how congregations can live by the sermon in their daily life.
4. Add Fun to the Kids’ Area
An engaging children’s ministry attracts parents to your church since the entire family can grow spiritually. After all, 58% of Christian parents report that children’s programs are the main reason they selected their current church. Fortunately, digital screens inject fun into the kids’ area and impress parents.
Above all, kids love songs and games. So, stream music that children can sing and dance to and use pictures to demonstrate bible verses. Additionally, display fun cartoons to narrate bible stories instead of reading verses to restless kids.
Interactive screens are also great additions to the play area because they let kids engage in faith-based online games and trivia. When new members drop their kids to the child’s ministry, use the screens to let them know of children’s activities like Bible camp, picnics, Baptism, and ice cream social.
5. Celebrate Ministries
Ministries are vital in churches, as they let people share their skills and passion with the community. Common ministries include outreach, children’s ministry, worship team, youth, counselors, home visitation, greeters, and substance abuse ministry.
When new members visit your church, they may want to be active in ministries but may not know who to contact. Hence, your digital signage content should include information about all the ministries in your church with contact information and signup procedures. As a result, new visitors can quickly become active participants in your church.
Digital screens are also ideal platforms to showcase the achievements of various ministries and recognize participants. By recognizing ministry members, you show them that their efforts have an impact and encourage more people to join.
6. Promote Upcoming Events
In the past, churches used paper bulletin boards to inform attendees of upcoming church events like weddings, baptisms, concerts, birthdays, conferences, worship nights, and game nights. Often, these bulletin boards were cluttered with outdated posters, leaving churchgoers to ignore them. Moreover, the static information on paper flyers did little to engage attendees.
In fact, by capturing 400% more views than static signs, digital notice boards keep church members informed of all upcoming events. Your content management system can integrate with the church calendar to update real-time changes and reduce confusion among event attendees.
7. Stream Social Media Feeds
Social media is a powerful mechanism to reach new audiences for most churches. In fact, nearly 85% of churches use Facebook to create events, invite friends, live stream services, and request prayer requests.
You can use church digital signage to display your social media feeds and invite members to engage with your posts. This strategy will appeal to younger members, who maintain an active presence on numerous social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter. Encourage this group to share their photos and videos at Church picnics, game nights, and other events under specific hashtags.
8. Revamp Your Fundraising Efforts
If your house of worship struggles with fundraising, digital signage displays can make your efforts much more effective. For example, if you are raising money for the sick and elderly ministry, stream videos and photos of the impact of their work in the community to encourage people to donate.
As you seek more donations, you must make it easy for people to give. For instance, digital church signs can feature QR codes that let donors donate from their phones. Then, recognize donors with personalized messages on video walls or sanctuary signs.
9. Inspire a Sense of Community
Churches play vital roles in local communities, offering pantries, legal clinics, finance seminars, and other services. With church digital signage, you can extend the reach of your community efforts by inviting members to take part in blood drives, visits to children’s homes, and other activities. Moreover, remind the congregation to tell non-member family, friends, and neighbors about your services to maximize the impact of your community events.
Digital Signage Solutions for Churches
Digital signage for churches has many use cases, from welcoming new members to promoting community events. As a result, the technology is most effective when you show varied content. Most content management systems have templates to simplify the content creation process, and you can focus on creating engaging messages to grow your audience.
