The Role of Online Learning for Churches with WordPress

In my experience, churches have failed dismally in the area of providing learning opportunities to their members. Please don't get me wrong here...many churches have great learning opportunities, in person, one, maybe two, days a week. Typically, however, as it pertains to online opportunities, churches typically only provide the Sunday Morning message as a podcast, and that's it! It is true that some churches have more elaborate children ministries' resources for parents and children. Yet, for the most part, opportunities for teens are typically centered around social media (if at all) and for adults, abismally non-existent. Education pastors design and develop curricula, possibly even publish the curriculum. Rarely, however, do churches provide online member areas to provide more than just the sermon podcast. Churches rarely integrate the sermon with supportive learning exercises during the week.

Yes, there is power in the preaching of the Word of God. Recently, my own pastor of a larger church in Atlanta admitted from the pulpit that he doubts that any of his sermons will be remembered. Yet, he believes that the sermons in totality over the course of a year or more will have an impact. What if his sermons can have even more of an impact through online supporting materials? Journal questions? Discussion boards? Supportive online inductive Bible Studies? Etc. What if?

Almost any full-time Evangelist would admit that their job is "easy." It's easy to go in and preach and leave. They, however, would also admit that the difficult part of their job is knowing whether the church will effectively follow-up with the fruit of their labor. Many times, people fall through the cracks. So I am suggesting that online activities and opportunities, such as "I'm a new believer. Now what?" kind of courses. Just as new hire orientation greatly helps organizations orient new employees to their culture, the church can do something very similar.

Recently, I was contacted by one church who wanted to do a series where they gave the sermon, provided extra videos for Monday through Wednesday with follow-up discussion questions for their small groups Tuesday through Saturday. It's the first time they've done this! What a great idea! One very similar model would be Pantego Bible Church when Randy Frazee as described in The Connecting Church. They integrate the sermon with their community group curricula so that the big idea or the main proposition is studied through the week at different levels/depth, embodied, and thoroughly learned. So instead of the believer being bombarded with all sorts of knowledge on Sunday AM, Sunday PM, Wednesday PM, and any other day. It's tragic that though churches offer so much learning opportunities, the body of Christ in America is becoming more and more biblically illiterate and unaware (from Dallas Theological Seminary survey but supported by Barna here and here).

Now, if churches would provide online modules to supplement the sermons, life change can be reinforced during the week thus making a deeper impact and a deeper change. Furthermore, besides further formal (courses and workshops) or informal learnings (such as journal/reflection questions, more videos, other podcasts or presentations, blog entries, etc.), if churches provide discussion boards/forums (via bbPress) or various social online situations (BuddyPress), immense growth can happen, maybe even have exponential, grassroots growth. Not only can spiritual growth take place, if an authentic and dynamic community can be encouraged and managed, then the church becomes even more connected...more like the church. However, in larger communities and cities where members are greatly dispersed throughout the city (and with traffic as bad as it is in Atlanta!!), having an online arena would be a great place to connect during the week. Instead, churches depend on email newsletters (e.g., MailChimp & Constant Contact), and well...I have no idea what else.

Recently, a friend of mine developed a site for pastors to network about small groups, Small Group Network utilizing BuddyPress and bbPress. From their site,

Founded by Steve Gladen, the Small Group Network is a free world-wide network for leaders of small group ministry. Our goal is to provide these leaders with relevant information and resources while connecting them to each other so that they might build relationships and encourage one another in creating healthy small group ministries.

However, I believe this is completely doable with churches (Now the caveat with churches will be to determine the legal ramifications, forum moderation, etc. for extensions like BuddyPress and bbPress).

Many churches have classes or workshops for new members and new believers. However, they are often at the worst times. For example, my wife and I have been trying to become members of a church in Atlanta, but due to our schedule, due to sickness and other random circumstances (sometimes our fault even), it has been over a year since we began "trying" to become members. However, membership class is only offered either once a month or once a quarter. What if the church provided some online modules (via a Learning Management System, or also known as a LMS) and then only one Sunday morning discussion and conversation to finalize the memberships. This could be slated for one of the Sunday morning hours rotating elders and pastoral staff as needed/desired. In this manner, instead of a bottlenecked entry point, becoming members is entirely dependent on the member-to-be.

This can be done in WordPress alongside a church's WordPress website. If the church wants to accomplish a course-like feel (like Moodle) then consider what Chris Lema just wrote about in his recent elearning post. The other approach would be Learn Dash, which I haven't tried or tested. WooThemes will be releasing Sensei this month, which I am excited to see. WooThemes was nice enough to give me the plugin to test today, so I will be writing about it soon!

Yes, I can hear it now..."We like to have the interaction." Or, "We like to see their faces." Or, "As the church, we should be rubbing shoulders with one another." Yes, very true. But how much interaction really takes place at medium to larger churches? In all honesty, not much. I am not negating meeting face-to-face and the importance of gathering together as believers. However, I am encouraging churches to optimize the face-to-face meeting times. Most of the workshops tend to be question-less anyways even though most of them provide opportunities for members-to-be to ask questions. I've sat through these seminars, and I find them extremely boring and hope and pray no one asks any questions. For the average member-to-be, I imagine that people fear asking questions, or the questions have percolated yet, or spouses and families haven't had a chance to discuss what they've heard and aren't able to come up with questions in less than 5 minutes. Instead, if online learnings (and every church has a base curriculum that needs to be pushed to the potential member) to provide a base for discussion, then membership classes can take meaning.