10 December 2007

Problem: It's a Saturday. The forecast calls for severe winter weather during the night. And you want as many people as possible to be able to attend the three services scheduled for Sunday morning.

What would you do? Business as usual? Pray for better weather? Just accept that what happens, happens?

Or would you be willing to try something outside the box?

Opportunity: This is exactly what happened last weekend. And we decided to step out of the box. Instead of waiting until Monday morning to put up the streaming version of the message, we transcoded the 7:30 service Saturday night and had it uploaded by 3 a.m.

Next, a short email was sent to our enews mailing list letting people know if they were unable to make it to church, they could watch it online (on Sunday).

Kudos: Since this wasn't my decision, I can say (without being arrogant) that I thought it was very insightful. Those making the decision took the time to think outside the box, allow technology to solve a problem and in doing so endorse an element of our ministry that has been growing in popularity since it was introduced in January of this year.

The Stats: So this is how it all shook out with the streaming version of the message:

• Total page views on Sunday: 881 (compared to 237 the previous Sunday and 528 the previous Monday which is typically the first day the new message is available)
• Total page views from Sunday and Monday: 1672 (942 on Monday and Tuesday of the previous week)