Short Form Videos for Churches
I talk to so many pastors and leaders who have experienced so many mountaintop ministry moments lately. Their church has momentum, people are visiting, families are deepening their walk with Jesus, and God is doing incredible things on Sunday mornings in the congregation.
The problem is, that social media doesn’t always reflect that spiritual impact.
Oftentimes, they have an excellent 1.5 or 2 hour long Sunday experience, and the other 166 hours a week are crickets. They’re not leveraging their sermon content to go further than Sunday.
The problem is not awareness – most pastors know all too well how quickly people can forget even the most dynamic teaching.
It’s also not a lack of content – every church is producing hours of content every month, that is consumed once, and then sits on a hard drive or Livestream archive, collecting digital dust.
Nor is it access to tools: Today, every social media platform is prioritizing one piece of content – short, vertical videos. YouTube Shorts, Instagram and Facebook Reels, and TikTok are all competing for viewers’ attention, and each’s algorithm is prioritizing valuable, engaging content. Here’s a video YouTuber Mr. Beast posted recently about this phenomenon:
So if what the most successful video creator on the planet is saying is true, why don’t we implement short form vertical video?
The problem is time.
Every small to medium church I know already operates at its staffed limit. And adding another animal to the church circus feels stressful, daunting, and like a recipe for burnout. They can’t afford to hire someone new to handle pro-level video content creation, but they also can’t afford to increase their staff workload.
One church that approached us a few months ago had this same issue - they had seen our website advertising “the virtual creative pastor” for teams like theirs, and they trusted us to handle their content creation and social media.
They had around 700 followers on instagram, and up to this point, their average Reel viewership was 250-300 views on a single post. Once our team was fully onboarded and creating content, we saw a nearly 10x increase in reel views within the first 3 weeks.
We didn’t just see spikes in one-off Reels – we saw sustained growth over the next several weeks and beyond.
I’m a visual person, so let me show you what I mean.
Here’s a shot of the past few reels that they had up before the DigitalChurch.Co team took over:
Then, the third reel we created and posted (it’s a message clip from the pastor during their Christmas series):
Wow!
I will say, this pastor is a great communicator and made it easy to make dynamic content!
BUT
It was not just a fluke piece of content. It has led to MASSIVE growth in reach on Instagram and Facebook:
Look at the numbers and the direction of those line graphs – even if you’re not a numbers person, those are good looking visuals for four weeks of intentional creativity:
Still with me? Good, there’s more, and it’s super interesting to think about.
Let me show you the other side of viewership growth.
As another example, in the same time frame (December 2022), I personally had an Instagram Reel go viral out of nowhere, and it got over 300,000 views in a couple of weeks.
I have approximately 1000 followers, and the average Reel I post on my personal account gets 300-1000 views usually.
This Reel caused my viewership to spike WAY above normal – but do you know how much my following grew?
.07%
Yep. I added 7 people to my followers out of 341k. HUGE SPIKE of views…and then nothing remained. Here’s a visual of the behind the scenes of that personal reel:
So while the initial numbers were really impressive, they didn’t translate into real-world growth.
That’s what I love about what our team at Digital Church is helping small churches with: excellent social media content that translates into real views and sustainable reach growth.
Cutting weekly sermons into short videos is about more than creating a viral hit on your social account.
Here are four good reasons to start leveraging your sermon videos into shorts and reels as soon as possible:
1. You already have the source material.
Your sermons you produce every week, and spend hours on research and development for, can be used in a more effective way. You don’t have to come up with a new teaching or series for social media.
2. It's an affordable and effective way to reach people outside your normal weekly service
Most Reels and Shorts get exposure to Non-followers. Think about the 1 sheep vs the 99 – short videos are a great way to reach out to the “1”, while serving your “99” in the congregation simultaneously.
3. It stretches your Sunday message through the whole week, and beyond.
Have you ever felt like a message you preached was just dynamite? You put your all into it, and then Sunday at 1pm…it’s just over. Shorts and reels help capture the sticky thoughts of your message, and amplify the key ideas further. Oftentimes, due to the nature of the algorithms, many videos will even appear in user’s feeds for even several weeks after they were posted.
4. Social algorithms are pushing this content right now - strike while the iron is hot.
The nature of social media changes very quickly, so while video content is the priority of social media platforms right now, why wouldn’t we leverage our messages into that delivery system?
If you’d like to see some more data behind this, and talk about how we can help your church with sermon short videos, let’s talk: click below to get in touch about how the Digital Church team can serve your church.
In addition to helping create Reels, we offer full church creative services like design for sermon series graphics, or full social media management as well.
Looking forward to helping your church level up,
Luke Gajary
