 But it's going on. Anyway, at least we must keep going on. Okay, good morning and welcome everybody to this class. BC 314 on media and technology in ministry. Let us pray. And then we will get started with the course. Can somebody just open up with a time of prayer for all of us please. I'll pray fast. Let me pray. Lord Jesus, we give our glory in honor to you for placing this another new year. And Lord Father for giving us privilege to step into another new semester. Lord, as we begin to learn new things from your word, Lord Father. I pray in thanks for your wisdom and understanding so that, Lord Father, we will be tip rooted in your word to other chenic. So Lord Father, I submit our results this semester. This session into your loving and in Jesus name I pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you. All right. So I'm excited for all of you because this is going to be your last semester. And in a few months, all of you are going to graduate. You will be finishing up your three year course, your bachelor's and first Sunday of May, which was I think May 8th. The 8th of May is going to be the graduation. And I don't know how things are going to be this year. It might be just online, I guess, or for those of you, if things are okay and those of you can come to Bangalore. That's wonderful. If we are able to have, so I think we should be able to have a service. But anyway, I'm really excited. All of you are going to be graduating in May. This is your last semester, the last set of courses you have to do. And we have purposely in this final semester, we have of course courses that are studying various books. It's a first by worst chapter by chapter study. But then we also have somebody practical courses, things like Youth and Children's Ministry. And then we have one, the independent research paper, where it's the whole idea is to develop the ability to research something independently, study it, look it up, and then to write down, to develop the skill of doing that. And this particular course, media and technology in ministry, again, is very practical. So the goal of this course is just to inform us, right? So it's not, don't worry about the exam, I will introduce the course, what we're going to cover. But it's more to, you know, make us aware of certain things. Now let me, let me just introduce the course. I will share the PDF here, what we're going to look at. Now, in this course on media and technology in ministry, what we want to do is to inform us ourselves about the opportunities that are there in leveraging media and technology for ministry. That's one objective. But we also want to get into some of the practical details on these aspects, so that, you know, you will have to make decisions, especially those of you, you know, who are maybe pastoring or you may be leading a ministry. Many times you will be drawn into making decisions. So for example, I myself, look, I am, you know, my goal is pastoring, which is to basically preach and teach the Word of God and to take care of people spiritually. That's my goal. But then, somehow, you know, we have a media team, we have an IT team, so we are making use of media and technology in order to help us in the ministry. But what happens is, I ultimately, even though I'm a pastor, I am part of all the decisions that are being made in the area of media and technology, because ultimately people will come back to you. You know, you have to make the decision. You are the leader, you know, even though you're not the expert, you have to sign off on things. You have to say yes to certain things. You have to say no to certain things and all of that. So what I realized was that I personally, you know, I'm not being an expert in these things, but, you know, ultimately, because you're part, you're the leader, you have to make a lot of these decisions. Of course, there are people, they are the experts, there are the IT people or the media people who will be doing the work and, you know, giving their inputs, they will look up to you to give them guidance or make decisions. And one of the reasons is because you, as a leader, as a pastor or as a leader, you understand, you know, the people. And ultimately, we are using media, we are using technology to serve the people. Whereas, you know, those who are actually doing the work, the media work or the IT work, they are focused on the technology, they are focused on the tools they are going to use. They may or may not fully understand the audience and, you know, the objectives, the spiritual objectives that you are trying to pursue. And so that's why you get involved or you are forced to be involved in the area of media and technology. Even though there are experts or there are people who are going to be doing the work, you have to give them direction. You have to make decisions. You have to tell them what they can do, what they cannot do, because you need to make sure that everything stays aligned to serve the people correctly. So in my own experience, I found out that, you know, I can't avoid this. I have to be there and I have to make those decisions and I have to tell the media team, you can do this or you don't do this or this is what we're going to do. And, you know, and so part of that, so I just wanted to share that kind of learning and information with you. The goal is you're not going to, you know, you're not going to be the one who's doing the media work or the IT work, but you're going to be there making decisions as a spiritual leader in these matters as well. And so it's good to have some knowledge. It's good to have some information so that, you know, when people come to you for these decisions, you will know what to do. So some of the things you're going to cover in the introduction today. We'll just look at, you know, what are the trends, what's going on in the area of media and the use of technology. And then we will get started by talking about, you know, how do we use this for engaging people, just some guidelines. And then we will get into, you know, some of the tools that are available in engaging digital engagement with people. I will do a little bit on talking about standards and best practices. Then we'll get into social media. Okay, how do you use social media? Now, when we're talking about this, there may be some overlap with our second year course on contemporary methods, maybe about 20% overlap, 25% overlap. But then there's going to be a lot of new things you're going to be also covering. So it's not entirely a repeat of what we've heard. But in the area of social media, I realize that we have already spoken about certain things in our second year. Then we will talk about digital equipment. So here we're going to talk about, you know, okay, these are some things. So for example, you need to buy cameras, you know, you need to buy audio systems, PA systems. What are some things to keep in mind when you're making all these decisions? So here we're going to talk about the equipment and just some guidance here. I'm not saying, you know, you know, I'm not going to tell you, you know, tell you what to buy. But I'm just saying, like, these are the things you need to keep in mind as you buy, you know, think about equipment for various, various things you will be doing in the area of media. For video, for video recording, for, you know, sometimes some of you may be doing some short films, documentaries. So some of the things to keep in mind, definitely you will have experts, you'll have the people telling you, you know, we wouldn't be going to use this camera, we're going to do this, we're going to do that, etc. But if you have an understanding, you can correct them. You can tell them, you know, okay, we will do this, we will not do that, you know, for these reasons, so on. You know, and so that's kind of the information I want to share with you and live streaming. We'll talk about the configuration and how, you know, what are the equipment you're actually using. So I will take you through the full setup that we have, for example, in a Sunday morning service, we've got our PA system or all the mics. What are some of the things you need to be careful, you know, thinking about in the auditorium, then you've got your audio system, the mixer, everything, then you've got your broadcast system. So you've got all the equipment there that is actually, you know, sending stuff out to the on live stream. So there are people watching online. So we'll cover all the equipment that we're actually using. So you get an idea that, okay, so this is what actually goes into live streaming and having a church service or having a service and going live, right? So I will cover all these things, share with you some of the things that we are using. This is more for to inform you and, you know, maybe to give you the information so that at the right time, you will, you know, when you need to use it, you can use it, right? And then similarly, we'll talk about technology platforms, what are the different software platforms, how do you host them, what are the plans and, you know, how you could basically leverage technology to reach out to people. And here again, there may be a little overlap with what we did in our second year course, but I will get into some aspects that we haven't spoken of in our second year. As you're talking about technology platforms to for the ministry. Okay. So for this course, there will be just one assessment at the end. I'm going to just keep it very simple. It's going to be a non-technical. So I'm not going to ask you about the equipment or the models and all that. It's just more of making sure you have an idea of how to make choices, how to make decisions in the area of media technology for the work of the ministry. Okay. So it's going to be a non-technical assessment. But while we are going through it, I will definitely, you know, I've been mentioning to you, you know, this is the hardware you use. This is the software you use. Or these are the options you have for live streaming. You can live stream using this hardware or you can use live streaming. You can do use this software. I'll give you the names, all of that. So, so you're aware of it. And then if you need to put something together, you know, you know, you can think about these things. But I'm not going to be, we're not going to be testing you on, you know, the hardware and the software in the exam. No, I just want you to get an idea of things. Is that okay? Let me just pause here and see if there are any questions. So do we all understand where we are going with this course and what we're trying to do? Any questions? All right. So I hope it will be useful. My intent is to share with you, you know, some of the things that are available so you can think about using these things in your own ministries as and when the opportunity rises. Right. So let's get started today. I just want to kind of point us to some of the trends that we see happening in the area of just the digital world around us. Right. So this is on your introduction chapter in the PDF. I'll just go to these links that are given to you. And you can, right. So you can take some time as well if you want to look into these things, but I just want us to, let's skip some of these slides here. Okay. So this is data as of October 2021. So it's not too far behind. You know, when we look at what's happening globally, that is just to give us a sense of what's happening. Right. So you think about, okay, the global population. Right. So we have approximately or 7.8 billion people. And globally, and we're looking at the global scenario, we're not talking about any country, not about any specific country. About 50 plus 56.6% of the people live in urban areas, cities, urban settings. And then we have about 5.2 billion people who are mobile phone users. Right. So we are talking about a huge number of unique mobile phone users. That's almost about 67% of the population that are mobile phone users. So there are people, obviously in the rural areas, who are also connected. Right. So a large, you know, so there are people who are living in urban cities, but there are more people who are connected who are using mobile phones, obviously. Think about internet users. Right. 4.8 billion people. And that means about 61.8% of the world's population are on the internet. Right. So there are more people connected to the internet than who are living in cities. So that's the idea here. And then social media. And you talk about social media. Again, more than half the world's population. About 57%. 4.5 billion people are active social media users. That's interesting to know. I'm not going to go through all 198 slides. I'm just going to go through the first few for us to understand what's happening. So the year on your change in digital adoption. Right. How are things changing on a year to year basis? Now, total population, a global population, okay, increased by 1%, 1% between, you know, the October 2022, October 2021. But mobile phone users, almost 2%, 97 million people. Internet usage over the last one year went up by almost 5%, 4.8%. And social media usage went up by 9.9%, almost 10%. So that means, you know, the digital adoption, whether it's on mobile phone or internet or social media is obviously increasing at a much higher rate than obviously the population increase. So we're seeing that people are getting on, you know, more and more people are being connected to the mobile phones, internet and social media. Then we can also look at time spent with media. Now, I think just we'll look at a few more slides here. You know, just for us to get an idea of how much time people are spending, of course, this is an average of people between ages 16 to 64, spending on different kinds of media devices. And so this just general, and I'm not saying this is a country specific or gives us exact information, but it gives us some sense of what's happening with people. So people in general are spending six hours, 58 minutes, almost seven hours, right? Total time spent per day on the internet, almost seven hours, right? Then how much time do people watch broadcast and streaming online for three hours, 21 minutes? Social media, two hours, two and a half hours almost. Reading online, you know, when you read online about two hours, right? Listening to music online, one and a half approximately. Listening to online radio about an hour. Listening to podcasts almost an hour. Playing video games or game consoles on hour, the lower an hour, right? So this is just average time. And then you also see that all of these things are increasing. You know, all of these things are the year on year is increasing. People are tending to spend more time on the internet with media doing these things, you know, with their devices. Another use of the internet, I just maybe want to couple of more slides. We saw this. Global internet users times six hours through mobile devices for 90.9%. I think I just wanted to go to, yeah. Okay. Just information on global internet users are looking at from different sources of data. Generally, you see, you know, it's pretty high over 50% regardless who's giving us the data on the internet. Okay. So, and this is on use of internet from various countries. I will pause here. You know, you could, if you're interested, you can go back and look at this data. But there's a lot of information that's available that shows us, you know, these are the current trends. This is what's happening globally. Now, yeah, maybe we could look at all of this data. So what I wanted to get across here is this that people are spending a lot of time online. Engaging with media content that's being put out in different forms. And this number is constantly increasing. So as a church, as Christian ministries, we cannot avoid media and technology. Instead, we should see these as tremendous opportunities to reach the masses, to reach people around the world. Right. So this is actually a tremendous opportunity that, you know, we could be in one city. And if we put out content and do things in a very intelligent way, in a very, in a good way, we can actually impact lives of people far away in different parts of the world. We can actually make a difference in their lives. Right. And this is only going to increase. And like we've seen the numbers. Okay. I'm not going through all these links. I encourage you to just go look at it. It's really interesting to see what's happening. Okay. Now, so when we talk about media, we, when we use the word media, just a little definition, we're talking about all the means of mass communication. And today, we still have print media, of course, there are books and magazines and newspapers. But today, the online platforms become very important in the lives of people. People are consuming, as we saw a lot of content online in various forms, whether it's music or whether it's through reading, or whether it's through podcasts, or whether it's through watching videos or video games and so on. People are consuming things online, but all of this comes under media. And in this course, we are focusing more on online media content and how do we use that for the work of the ministry. So when you talk about technology, which we will also come to, we're talking about all kinds of equipment. So software and hardware. So we will cover some of these things. I'll share that with you on here's all the equipment or here's the software and hardware that you need to be aware of. Now, when you want to do certain things for the ministry, whether you want to do a shoot a documentary, or you want to just take nice photographs to put it on social media, or whether you want to do, you know, live streaming, so on. These are all the software and the hardware that you need to be aware of and how all these things come together. So I want to just inform us about these things so that you could, you know, use them in your ministry. So let's get started by talking today. I'll just introduce this. We want to talk about digital communications and engagement. That means, how do we engage people using digital communication tools? So what are the different tools? How do you get into some of those things? And so I'll be talking, you know, about all the communication tools that are there, and then the technologies that are involved, the platforms that are available for us to do that. So we will go through it. Some of this you may have seen before, but we'll go through this and then we will move into other things, as I mentioned. Now, before we, you know, we will start with talking about websites in our next class. Before we get to that, I want to help us keep in mind or to give us some way to think about digital engagement strategy. That means we need to think strategically on how we want to engage people who are inside the church and outside the church. Certainly, you have to have a strategy, right? You know, sometimes, and I don't blame people for this, but, you know, the typical approach of a church or ministries, oh, let's set up a Facebook page, let's set up an Instagram account, you know, let's set up a website, and that's it. Yeah, we've got that. We've got a YouTube channel and so on. So we are using digital engagement. I mean, yeah, it's good to have all these things. I'm not saying it's wrong, but you've got to think strategically because how you reach people inside the church. will be different from how you serve people who are outside the church. And we have to think differently for both these groups of people. Right. So in the church outside the church, and the content that we built is going to be different. How we deliver it to them and how we interact with them, how do we, how we engage with them digitally is also going to be different. So I want us to, I just want to, you know, put a little box here, put this box here for us to think through this is just to give us a little, you know, help us with our thinking on digital engagement for people inside the church of a congregation. And those outside the church, which is the crowd, the people outside. Right. So what, what are some of the things you need to think about first is understand who they are, who are these people. Right. So if you are an urban church is a church in the city, you might say, well, most of our people are young people, or most of our people are, you know, highly educated people, or most of our people are, you know, coming from a certain kind of a background. That's your congregation. What about the people outside the church whom you want to reach? Who are they? Then what are their needs? You have to think about it. It's good to, you know, even just put it down and say, hey, the needs of the people who are coming to our church. These are the, you know, top three or top five things that that matter to them. Because if we create content that doesn't appeal to them or doesn't address their needs, they are not going to be so eager to listen to them or receive that content. Similarly, the needs of people who are reaching outside the church, what are their needs? Right. Then how are they to, how are they going to likely interact digitally with the church? Will these people use a website? Or will they not use a website? Would they prefer, you know, maybe just just listening to you for just, you know, following or subscribing to a YouTube channel? How will they prefer these people that you that are coming to church? How are they going to interact with the church digitally? And what are their expectations? What are their comfort levels? What are they? What do they find easy to do? Similarly, those outside the church. Right. So once you think through this, then you will say, okay, what are the digital channels I should use to serve them? What are the best ways to serve them? Then then you kind of get down into the details, right? What are the objectives that we want to achieve? Maybe we want to, for example, strengthen marriages. Maybe we want to help families with parenting. Maybe we want to help young people do well professionally. You know, so, you know, you can think through these are things we want to achieve. And sometimes there may be five, six, maybe just depending on the church, there may be many more. Similarly, what do you want to achieve with people outside the church? Right. So in order to achieve that, what kind of content must you provide? Right. What are the things that they will be able to consume? Right. If the people are coming to the congregation, if all of them have good internet connections, high speed internet connections from home and they all have computers at home, they obviously, they feel comfortable, you know, when you put out nice rich content, maybe nice rich videos or things like that, they feel comfortable because they're not being limited by their devices or their connectivity to consume that content. But if that's not the case, and you're putting out very, you know, a lot of videos, nice rich content, but they don't have the means to consume it, then you're missing out. You know, there's a gap there or the kind of content, you know, what we produce must be something they would like to consume. Otherwise, you know, you're putting in a lot of effort to produce things. They may not be consuming it. And then you evaluate progress. Right. So this is something for us to think about in our digital engagement of people, you know, just think through on these things and constantly think because things change, people change as well. Now, in order to evaluate progress, something should keep in mind is to avoid vanity metrics. Now, when we say vanity metrics, a lot of these digital platforms give us numbers. For example, how many people viewed a video on YouTube, or how many people, you know, how many likes were there, how many, you know, things like that. But some of these metrics actually don't mean anything. So what do you mean? For example, on YouTube, if somebody watches a video for 30 seconds, it's counted as a view. Or if you're running an ad, if somebody watches your ad for five seconds, it's counted as a view. But let's talk about a normal video. So let's say if you have a sermon, which is about 45 minutes long, even if somebody watches 30 seconds of that, your view count goes up. But it doesn't mean they watch the whole sermon. Right. So, you know, we could have, say, a thousand views. It doesn't mean a thousand people listen to the whole sermon. Now, the same person can come about three times if they just watch 30, 30, 30 seconds each time the count goes up by three. Same person. So if you have a thousand views, we actually don't know. It doesn't mean there were thousand individuals who watched the full sermon. You know, because even if the same person came back and, you know, at different points in time, just looked at 30 seconds of the video, the count is going up. So by looking at the number of views, in general, yeah, you know, if you have the higher number of views or higher number of views, it means that, yeah, probably most more people looked at it. I'm not denying that. But it doesn't give us a correct count or doesn't give us an exact, doesn't tell us an exact story. We don't know whether a thousand people actually watched the whole sermon or it was just 200 people who watched the sermon, but they took breaks and the connections came back and forth or, you know, they paused and then back and came or we don't know what actually happened. So we shouldn't, you know, just be taken up by these metrics that some of these platforms put out for us. Okay. Even the likes, you know, somebody just people just randomly click on the thumbs up thing and just move on. You have your light number of likes goes up, but doesn't mean they engaged with the content. You know, so that's why we call those things as vanity metrics. Right. And nowadays, to make things worse. There are a lot of people who do a lot of, you know, fake things online. Right. You can, you know, there are people who will create a big counts for subscribers. So, you know, somebody has one million subscribers on their YouTube channel. It doesn't mean there are actually one million people who are actually watching those videos because, you know, if they had engaged some company to do it for them, the company can easily and it's sad to say, but these things happen. They just set up these fake accounts and bump up the number of subscribers. So there are no real people. It's just dummy accounts that are connected to boost that overall subscriber number. So all these things are there that happen. And so we shouldn't get distracted by it. Right. But instead, what I want to challenge us is to determine by asking the real questions, you know, to when you want to evaluate your digital engagement strategy. That means I am engaging, I'm using, you know, media, I'm using technology to engage with people. You know, that we are really being effective because we can't just go by these views and likes and subscribers and those numbers. Those numbers are okay. There's some indicators of something, but they may not all, they don't, they don't tell us the real story. So we have to ask other questions, meaning are we reaching new people online? Are people connecting back to us in response to the content we are putting? So when somebody sends you an email, that's a real thing. Hey, I listened to this message. It impacted me or they may send you a message on a WhatsApp or they may call you, whatever. That's a real response. You know, I'm not saying that, you know, if 1000 people heard your 7000 you get 1000 emails. That doesn't happen. But when you see new people sending you an email, that's a good indication that you are reaching beyond your previous borders. You're reaching more people. And are people taking their first step? And usually if you have some way of adding to your email list or database, that's a real thing. That means somebody has engaged with your content. They liked your content and they want to be added to your list. That's a real thing. You can also see how about people connecting with your online and there are some tools I will show you that we can use to know, you know, what's happening. And how about people, you know, taking their steps. So maybe they heard a sermon, but now they are using our books. Okay, they've gone from a first step to a next step. So that's a very good thing, right? Or they heard a sermon. Now they are attending the online services. That's a good thing. They heard a sermon. Now they're coming to church physically. That's a good thing. They've taken gone from their first step to the next step. So these kinds of questions on this kind of information will tell you that the digital engagements to energy is actually working. It's actually bringing about real results, right? It's impacting people's lives. So while these numbers are okay, the vanity metrics, they are fun. It's okay, you know, but look out for these real things that our lives are really being changed. Okay, so I'm going to pause here. We will continue this tomorrow. And we will get into, you know, setting up websites and doing that kind of work. Any questions here so far? I hope, oh, let me go here. I hope you're all, get rid of this. I hope you're all following me. Are things clear so far? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Okay. So today we just talked a little bit about digital engagement. Some questions to ask when you want to engage in people. And then look at the real thing. I don't look at vanity numbers. Those don't mean much. Look at real things. So tomorrow we'll go forward from here. We'll talk about, you know, setting up a website and how do you do certain things without engaging with people digitally through our website. We'll get into those details. Okay. So I hope this course will be useful for you as you look into the future and just sharing some practical information. All right. Let's close in prayer. I would like to just request somebody to pray with us and then we will dismiss. Karan, is your phone okay? Can you pray? Thomas, Siddharth, anyone? Yes, please. All right, Karan. We just come before you through in one second. We want to just say thank you for the quarter subject in the last semester. Thank you for all things for the quarter. We are just praying for your wisdom and your knowledge and your understanding for the quarter subject. We are learning for the quarter and applied to your kingdom for the four users for the quarter almighty way. Thank you for that. Thank you for everything. Thank you for my teacher's name. Amen. Amen. All right. Thank you, everyone. I'll see you tomorrow. I think, yeah, tomorrow will be all triage together. We do revelation Daniel. And then we also do our next lecture on media and technology. See you tomorrow. God bless. Have a good day. Thank you.