How is Online Worship Working?

Approaches to Strengthening Virtual Worship

by

Local Church

United Methodist Focus | Aug. 13, 2026

Online worship has now become commonplace for many of our congregations, but it was not always so.

Some churches were offering worship online before the pandemic, but most were not. In 2019, the year before the pandemic, only 14 percent of United Methodist churches reported attendance for online worship. Most churches embraced virtual worship when pandemic safeguards prevented them from gathering in person. For many of these churches, their early attempts at online worship were often awkward. Leaders were ill-equipped. There were technological challenges. And most clergy and musicians had little experience in communicating effectively in this new medium. But as time went by, the services improved for most churches. As the worst of the pandemic subsided, most churches were managing their virtual worship relatively well.

Not all online services continued after in-person worship resumed. Some assumed from the beginning that virtual services would be unnecessary after the pandemic. But most church leaders understood that basic changes were taking place in how people live their lives and post-pandemic worship may not return to “normal.” Online worship would be needed for those unable to attend in person for health reasons. But also, there would continue to be an audience for online worship alongside in-person, as well as church worship services broadcast on radio and television. The decision of whether to continue an online service was no longer just a matter of providing access to members unable to attend because of the pandemic.

This chart shows the limited portion of churches offering online worship prior to the pandemic in 2019 and the sharp increase in 2020 when in-person worship was not possible for most churches. The percentage of churches continuing online worship after the pandemic is close to the pandemic years and holding generally steady through 2024, the last year for which we have data. The percentage of those continuing to offer online worship is comparable to all congregations in the United States who began such services during 2020 and have continued them.

The next chart shows the median online worship attendance for the churches that provide online services. After the higher number during the pandemic year of 2020, the median numbers have been relatively consistent. Keep in mind that median means half the churches report higher attendance and half lower attendance. There are a few churches that report many thousands of online participants.

Radio and Television Preceded Online Worship

A pastor told me a story about his grandfather, the pastor of a large, prestigious congregation in a southern city when radio was in its early days. Radio stations were trying to attract listeners, so it was not uncommon for the stations to broadcast the Sunday services of high-profile churches without cost. When offered this opportunity, my friend’s grandfather immediately turned it down. He thought if people could stay home and listen to the service, no one would attend in person. But things didn’t work out that way. In fact, it was the churches that accepted the offer of free radio broadcasts that grew, as more people became acquainted through the radio broadcasts with the pastor and congregation.

Chances are that virtual worship services are here to stay much as radio and television worship services remain available. Churches today that use television or radio to share their services more broadly certainly do not see those services as taking away from their mission. If they did, they would not pay the high cost of providing worship through those media. An advantage of online worship is that it is possible financially for many more churches than can afford radio or television services. Can churches learn lessons for their online worship services from the radio and television experience of churches?

If You Use a Medium, Learn to Do It Well

I once was pastor of a church whose services were broadcast live each Sunday on radio and television. I learned that a successful radio or television broadcast involved far more than merely having the signal go through. When you operate with a medium, you must assume that people will come to your worship services with the same expectations they would bring to any other program for which they were using the medium.

For example, we found that we had to examine the service relentlessly for “dead time,” silence that is guaranteed to cause radio listeners to change stations and will distract television viewers. Interestingly, addressing those dead times made the in-person service far better as well! Also, it is important to remember that the video and audio quality needs to be comparable to what people would expect from other programs. For example, lighting must be right. Some of the best advice we received in preparing for television was to make sure the lighting worked well for the video quality. What is crucial is that the lighting, sound, and cameras must allow people to give their full attention to worship, rather than being distracted by production problems.

Consider the Online Congregation from Beginning to End

Best practices are emerging for online worship with many of them based on taking as seriously those worshiping online as you do those worshiping in person. A few examples include:

  • Start on time! No exceptions.
  • Have at least two volunteers welcoming people and engaging the online congregation.
  • Invite interaction.
  • Avoid insider language or references unfamiliar to those online.
  • Consider finding ways to acknowledge the online congregation more than once during the service.
  • Make sure any materials referenced or distributed are posted online.

Here we can learn from the best practices growing churches use in planning and evaluating all their worship services. Growing churches tend to spend considerable time planning for worship — both long-term and weekly. They plan well ahead, and they do detailed planning for each service. They devote far more time each week than other churches do in preparing for the Sunday services. And they regularly evaluate and revise. Growing churches are also attending to all of these careful practices in relation to their online services. You may find it useful to designate a member of the worship planning team whose only responsibility is to consider all plans from the perspective of someone worshiping online, especially for the first time.

Continuing to Learn and Improve

No matter how fine your online worship experience is, you and your colleagues do not have decades of experience with online worship as you probably do with in-person worship. We must acknowledge that we are still in the early stages of developing what the online worship experience can be. Everyone is still learning. It will be crucial to assure that your online worship is evolving based on your experience, the experience of other churches, and especially the experience of your online worship participants.

Congregations often miss the insights available to them free of charge that companies pay thousands of dollars to learn. For the foreseeable future, as you navigate this still emerging worship medium, improving your virtual worship will require more than normal review and planning. Finding ways to get fresh ideas and feedback from a variety of sources is essential. The good thing is that these clues you need to improve are readily available if you only ask. Some people you need to engage for ideas include:

  • People who regularly participate in your worship online
  • People who worship in person and never worship online

Learning from Online Worshipers

When you invite online worshipers for response, you are actually asking them to be consultants for your worship team. It is unlikely to be helpful to seek feedback all at once. Build these inquiries into an ongoing schedule so you continue to get ideas as your service changes and also how it is delivered develops.

For those worshiping online, you could ask them to rate numerous aspects of the service and its delivery. Perhaps give them a 1 to 5 scale to use. Items might include video, audio, beginning on time, welcoming, opportunities to participate, opportunities for next steps they can take, flow of the service and transitions, music, etc. Then there can be questions you ask, such as:

  • What did you most appreciate?
  • What would have made the experience better?
  • What features meant the most to you?
  • What suggestions for improvement do you have?

Learning from In-Person Worshipers

For those who do not worship online, ask them to view a recent online service and offer their suggestions. This would be no different from asking them to view a video of your in-person service and ask for suggestions. The experience of viewing the service with a task gives them enough of a new perspective that often good suggestions emerge. Questions might include:

  • What went particularly well?
  • What could be improved?
  • What is not clear?
  • What language assumes prior knowledge first-time guests would not have?
  • Where are there time gaps?
  • Are any things taking too much or too little time?
  • What other observations do you have?

Ask the individuals or groups to submit their reports. It may help to ask someone good at organizing information to take all the reports and compile the information for those who plan worship. Simply reporting the verbatim feedback is not helpful. The goal is to put the feedback in a form that identifies specific suggestions and questions as well as recurring broad themes. The key question becomes “What did we learn from this exercise to improve how people experience worship?” The response to this question will give your worship planners necessary information with which they can work.

Learning from Other Churches

Another useful approach to learning is to watch online services from other churches that do online worship well and ask others to watch them. The task is always the same for anyone you ask to view another service:

As you watch, ignore anything we do better than the service you are watching. Pay close attention and record any aspects of the service you think the other church does better than we do or from which we can learn.

Chances are you will first notice small technical changes you can make. However, as you continue to watch these services, pay most attention to methods other churches use to include and engage their online worshipers beyond being spectators. This learning is both the biggest challenge and greatest opportunity of this endeavor.

Ways Online Worship is Different from Radio and Television

Much religious programming on radio and television today is not based in local churches. However, there continue to be significant numbers of churches that broadcast their worship services on radio or television or both. We may tend to think that these broadcast services are appreciably different from what we are doing with our online worship offerings. But interestingly, there actually may be many similarities among online, radio, and television worship. The main reasons for use of these media for worship are similar: convenience, illness, caregiving responsibilities, work schedules, no local church, and preference for online. Clearly, all these media avenues meet important needs for people.

However, among the biggest differences is that you have the possibility of some direct connection with online worshipers. While it is true that people can remain anonymous and ignore invitations to engage, churches are finding increasing ways to learn who is worshiping online and communicating with them. Another advantage is that with online worship you have some measurements of engagement that you can track. That is also true for some churches with their radio and television participation, though online worship normally provides metrics in real time.

It will be helpful, in your learning from other churches, that you explore the ways in which others are engaging with online worshipers.

Where Justice and Online Worship Access Align

In many parts of the United States, especially rural areas, there is limited or no broadband access. There was a time when the same was true for access to electricity and telephones. If you are blessed by dependable internet connections in your area, consider advocating for expanded coverage to benefit those locales in need. Also be aware that in areas that do have internet access, there may be households that do not have the resources to afford the access and technology needed to share in your online worship and educational opportunities for their children.

What are ways you can advocate for and help support them as well? Perhaps this is one more opportunity to explore with other congregations what their concerns may be for those who cannot afford that access to technology. And it might also be a chance for churches to work together on what is still a challenge for many in our communities. During the pandemic, many churches provided places where children could gain internet access to complete their online school assignments.

While online worship is now commonplace for many churches, there is still a wide range of ways we can strengthen how we seek to reach those who want or need to worship with us through this medium. As we work to expand and improve online worship, it is likely we will also be strengthening worship for those worshiping in person.

United Methodist Focus is the Substack blog of the Rev. Dr. Lovett H. Weems, Jr., distinguished professor of church leadership emeritus at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. He came to Wesley in 2003 as the founding director of the Wesley’s Lewis Center for Church Leadership after eighteen years as president of Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City. Previously he was a pastor in Mississippi for many years. He is the author of many books on church leadership that have had a broad appeal to a large constituency of leaders in both the public and private sectors.