The future of digital discipleship. 

Purpose built community and subculture. 

Discord is the best equipped online social media platform For church discipleship And fellowship. 

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Discord gives the environment and the tools you need To grow closer with one another. 

I believe now more than ever churches need to meet online and understand this new technology. We as a church need to claim our online space. 

We need to meet together online, we need to pray for each other online, we need to worship with each other online.

We need to talk laugh and cry together online. 

Why does your church need a Discord Server? What is a Discord server? 

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The Seven reasons your church needs a Discord server right now. 

The power of Synchronous Communication and Asynchronous communication. 

1. Asynchronous communication, it's like riding a letter and waiting it's like posting a comment, and waiting it's like uploading a video and waiting for comments. Asynchronous communication is communication that doesn't happen at the same time. 

2. Synchronous communication is when everyone is talking at the same time. This is a much more natural human weigh I'm having conversations. 

3. The vast majority of social media platforms today are primarily asynchronous communication platforms. Users typically comment on post over the course of several hours or days. These types of conversations always tend to end up in digital messaging tools. 

4. Discord is a  synchronous platform. 

Discord is a  synchronous platform. The majority of conversations happening in a Discord Community is happening in real-time. this builds a sense of community. You can create voice chat room Friends. Which is like the 21st century of a party line. Or you can be talking back and forth with text chat Fast and fluid way.

With synchronous communication people tend do you have a more natural Human Experience, instead of handcrafting an unnatural posted response.

This leads to a much more relaxed and human conversation. Rather than the crafted personalities we often see on social media platforms.

Live conversation Allows people to be more vulnerable and promote a closer relationship with friends and family.

From the ministry perspective, it promotes a deeper spiritual relationship With other people in the church.

Discord is not what you think.

Just anyone can pop into your community and make a comment.

People are fleeing from social media platforms that are suppressing speech or thoughts and even spiritual and religious liberties.

We can set privacy standards in our social media platforms.

Discord security is very important. Discord servers are as secure as you make them.

This platform is not for reaching out to get new followers likes or comments. This platform is for communicating and cultivating and nurturing your church community.

No one just stumbles into your Discord server you have to be invited.

You can set permissions to for only pastors and digital door greeters or volunteers can send invites to new members.

You can keep your digital door open to potential Visitors by setting roles permissions for that purpose. So even if your new visitor has ill intent towards your digital Church the farthest they would get is the digital Lobby. Make sense?

Administers of the Discord server can lock the digital doors where are the youth meet, or men ministry meet or women’s retreat or even young married couples chat rooms.

Pastors can give the digital keys to the trusted members of the congregation to help Direct the conversation of the church.

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5. Your church is Discord Will not be a big digital online nonsense mess. 

The conversation will be divided into individual channels And categories Four different groups of people. 

You can have a chat room setup for the Youth to have conversations throughout the week. 

You can have a channel specifically for your Men's Ministry. 

You can have multiple channels within a single Ministry Four different types of conversations. Like prayer requests. General conversation. Bible studies, dinner parties, volleyball on the weekend. 

You can make these conversations only available to those that are members of that Ministry. 

The Men's Ministry cannot chime in on the women's ministry and the women's ministry cannot chime in on the Men's Ministry. Permissions and roles can be set for men's and women's Ministries. 

Strangers cannot access the youth chat. 

These permissions allow members of the church to connect with other members of the church throughout the week In a safe and secure way. 

That allows them to be more honest with other members better in the same chapter of life that they are in. 

You don't even have to limit it to traditional Ministry categories. You could create channels for each small group to connect throughout the week. 

You could break up your youth channel conversations based on interest. Musica talk throughout the week about sports, video games School Etc. 

Discord allows for up to 500 channels per server. 

This allows you to be very creative on how you break up your channels Conversations for your online campus. 

6. Voice chat and streaming. 

It's absolutely possible for all of your online congregation to To watch your Sunday morning live stream while it's happening and chat back and forth to each other simultaneously all On Discord.

Unlimited hi-def and video streaming for as long as you want. 

You can restrict chatting And streaming to a channel Two people who just want to join  the livestream and talk with people in the church while never leaving the platform. 

Mom groups, they want to get together throughout the week can use private voice chat With video and audio just like Zoom. No time limits no confusing invite links. you are part of the Church’s of the server. A notification pops up your answer it as easy as answering the phone call to a five or six-person study group. 

You can create your own Bots that will broadcast Christian music Stream music in these voice chats live. It's like being a Christian DJ and a small group leader. You're creating a community and an environment of worship. 

Theoretically, you could have your own personal  Church worship radio program Any member of the congregation can jump into listening together worship together 24/7. Praying without ceasing… Suggesting upcoming songs.  That's Powerful.

7. Announcements

Set up your Discord server into basic Ministry categories.

Men's, women's, youth, children's ministry Etc.

There is an upcoming men's event you want them to know about Using the Discord platform You can send a push notification to Anyone in your Discord server That has permissions with the men's channels. 

Emergency announcement -  push notification. 

Child acting up in Nursery -  push notification. PM the mom on Discord. 

Need permission slips for an upcoming youth trip Set up a channel specifically for parents With a link to the form to fill out. 

What's awesome is you only get notifications for Ministries that you're involved with. You're only involved in the things that you actually care about 

It's like a digitally Dynamic church bulletin that edits out all the nonsense you don't want to read. 

Everything that you see on the platform Specially tailored to the interest and Ministries that you belong to. 

Discord will require training and understanding on the administrative side and some teaching on the congregation site I'm currently working on this process thank you.