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Interactive Devotionals with Church Connect
Everybody loves a good devotional. They’re like little nuggets of truth that we can apply to our daily lives.
Chances are, you and your church people all have one or two that you like to read on a regular basis.
Right now there are a multitude of devotionals available. Whether it’s a daily women’s bible study with Beth Moore, a daily blog from Andy Stanley, or even a 30-day devotion challenge you found on the Bible app. I’m personally reading one that takes you through the Bible chronologically in a year.
What’s an Interactive Devotional?
An Interactive Devotional is a devotional that talks back to you.
Beth Moore isn’t going to hear your struggle with trusting God in your finances. Andy Stanley isn't going to ask you what you thought of today’s scripture. My devotional book isn’t going to ask me questions that are relevant in what’s happening right now.
Imagine being able to create a daily or weekly devotional for your people that will challenge and encourage them while also giving your people a way to have 2-way communication with you?
Creating an Interactive Devotional with Church Connect
1. Create a Form Card for your devotional. If you don’t know how to do this, learn how to create form cards
HERE.
2. In the Page Content, go ahead and write your daily/weekly devotional. Some really good devotional topics can include a condensed version of your sermon, a deep dive into specific parts of your sermon, topical or current events, or a specific study for a period of time.
3. After you’ve created your devotional, it’s time to create your form fields. This is where the rubber hits the road. From here you can ask your people questions about the scripture, ask them their thoughts on a particular point, or simply have a section for sending a prayer request. Check out this sweet example below:
Their responses can be emailed directly to you or you can easily access them in mass from ChurchTrac. You can learn more about form responses
HERE.
How to get your people to read and interact with your devotional
Just because you spend the time to make an awesome devotional doesn’t mean your people will read it...let alone actually give feedback in the responses. This is not an “if you build it they will come” type of thing. It takes work!
Talk about it digitally
Email, text, Facebook post, Instagram, etc. Wherever your people live digitally, they need to know about your Connect Page link and the devotional you put there.
Talk about it in person
Talk about your devos in your sermons. If you see a member in person, let them know about it. If you’re on the phone with them, make mention of it.
Why should I make an Interactive Devotional?
For starters, most of us are meeting remote due to COVID-19. Any way that we can get our people to connect and interact with us we should take. Having our people read and react within a form response is a great way to do that.
Another big plus of doing an Interactive Devotional is that it gets your people on the same study and spurs conversation. Much like a book club, people will start asking each other things like...
“So what did you think of how the Israelites turned away from God so quickly? Do you think that’s something that we struggle with too?”
When you get your church people reading more of the Bible, talking about it with other believers, and communicating with the church leadership (you), something else really cool happens...
Your People Grow
Takeaway
Interaction is important in the church. God didn’t make us to do life alone. In his image, he crafted us to desire fellowship. Interactive Devotionals encourage fellowship with other believers who will walk beside us. As we run this race chasing after God, our fellowship with him becomes even stronger.
Till next time 👋