According to the latest research by the Pew Research Center, 7 in 10 (71%) of American adults who go online now use video sharing sites. The current number
represents a five-percentage-point increase from the 66% of online adults who reported being video-sharing site users a year earlier and a 38-point increase from five years ago when the Pew Internet Project took its first reading on use of such sites.
So What?
Around the time the folks at Pew started this annual survey, many larger congregations started to upload video of their worship services (or at least the sermon from the primary weekly service) to YouTube (and later also to Vimeo). More recently, some of congregations have learned to effectively leverage video sharing sites for a variety of purposes that extend well beyond worship.
- In what year did your congregation first have a presence on a video sharing site? If you do not have a presence yet, is establishing one a part of your planning?
- What types of content have you posted on video sharing sites? What has been most popular to date?
- How could your congregation and its many ministries make better use of this tool?