3 Uses for Wi-Fi in Church

Last week I talked about the general benefits of incorporating Wi-Fi in multiple settings. I think Wi-Fi also has its place in church. Below are three uses for Wi-Fi in church to build on my post last week.

• Blog during church services: Wi-Fi in your church would allow you to let people blog during the services. Crazy you say? Consider this, people from your church are telling other people about your church anyway (at least we hope they are) and what a great way to get church members to give your church free content to use on your website while giving prospective visitors an idea of what the church is all about. Set up a blogroll to your member's blogs on the church website and see what happens. Obviously you want to keep an eye on what's being said especially if you're linking to it from your church's site, but if you set the vision for this so that members see the outreach potential you could see some real benefit. If you do this be sure to contact the local paper and/or television news station also...churches and technology will almost always interest them.

• Community hot spot: Open the church (or specific parts of it) to the community. Let them know this is a Wi-Fi hot spot and have volunteers available to begin building relationships with the new guests. This would be great for churches specifically trying to establish a college or young adult ministry and will be especially attractive if Wi-Fi is scarce in your community.

• Staff meetings and appointments: This may be the most obvious benefit...or at least it seems that way to me...arm the staff with laptops so they can work from any spot in the church as they need to. It would be helpful for impromptu meetings or informal gatherings with members where Internet access could be necessary. I have actually seen Wi-Fi used well for this specific purpose at Community Bible Church in San Antonio. When they built a new building about two years ago they added Wi-Fi for the benefit of the staff and after having visited with them on several occassions, it's been extremely useful for meetings that can happen anywhere in the church.