When you first navigate to a Church Online Platform service (see an example at https://live.life.church/) you see two main components: a video player and a chat window. We sometimes hear, "Why does your Church Online experience have chat…isn't it about watching the sermon?"
Church online is about watching the message, but it's so much more than that. For many attenders, Church online is their complete church experience—from worship to teaching to community. It's more than a content delivery system; it's a place for those who might never walk through the doors of a church to find hope, prayer, and relationships.
So, we put a lot of emphasis on chat in our online experiences. Trained volunteers host every service, and they reach out to attenders with prayer, encouragement, and answers to questions. With Direct Chat, a host can message an attender in a private chatroom to handle sensitive topics. Through Live Prayer, a volunteer can pray with and on behalf of someone in a one-on-one chat.
The tool we built and use to host our online ministry is called Church Online Platform, and chat is a core element of the tool because we believe online church is about more than watching a video. Learn more about the platform and use it for free at https://churchonlineplatform.com/.