Online Faith Formation: Getting Started

Social media, websites and the internet are not new. And yet, churches are still challenged to provide meaningful ways to help people grow in faith online. Us, too.  The question is, how do we get started with a limited budget?

First Steps:

I recommend taking a look at John Roberto’s work. He has applied Networked, Connected Learning models to faith formation on the Reimagine Faith Formation website. He’ll be a keynote speaker at CEF 2018, Curious.Church in October. I’ll be presenting there, too, and would love to connect face to face in Des Moines.

Create Content for Social Media:

Graphics are a great way to share prayers and Scripture on social media.  Prayer of the Week posts are one way to encourage people to pray at home throughout the week. You can also get the congregation involved in creating graphics using Scripture in this all ages activity.

Share what you are already creating:

For the past year, we’ve written a short, weekly, blog post which includes a faith formation activity to try at home. We recently created a Five Minute Faith for Families Facebook group and invited others from outside the congregation to join us. The same content we were creating just for our church families is now available to a wider audience. You are invited!

Try Online Learning:

Providers like ChurchNext offer hundreds of faith formation courses that have been professionally created.  If you want to create your own courses, Google Classrooms is now available to anyone with a Gmail account. We’ll be developing a Google Classroom based blended online/in person confirmation experience next year.

Online learning is a new adventure for churches. What resources do you recommend? What have you tried?