Every weekend, thousands of potential believers scroll past your digital content—disconnected, unengaged, and spiritually untouched. Despite investing in cameras, platforms, and social media, you are treating your online presence like a one-way broadcast instead of a dynamic discipleship relationship.

The harsh reality? Your digital strategy is likely creating more digital noise than spiritual transformation.

But what if your online campus could be just as powerful—if not more—than your physical campus? After a deep conversation with Jay Kranda, Online Campus Pastor at Saddleback Church, I uncovered three game-changing strategies that transform digital platforms from passive communication channels into active evangelism engines.

How Your Mindset Towards Digital Discipleship Must Change

The biggest shift you should make when you think of a digital church campus is to think of it like a physical campus. You may not have a building "online," but the goals are still the same, right? To make Disciples and share the Gospel (I hope)?

What does it look like when you think of your digital church as an "online campus?" It's not all digital marketing. Jay explained the differences between being an online pastor and being in digital marketing/communication (Mar-com) during our conversation.

"Mar-com is always hustling for the weekend, and they're creating a lot of assets and doing stuff around promotion. It's less pastoral," said Kranda. "I'm doing a lot more pastoring people and interacting with people. I would say 85% of my job is pastoring my community and leading my team, but 15% of it, I do work directly with Mar-com on things."

Having an online presence is more than having a live stream or posting on social media. It's an opportunity to shepherd people around the world who are in your community but unable to attend in person.

"The strength of online is you can connect with people anywhere, everywhere, all the time," he said. 

Online church is not the same as digital marketing.

In my world of Digital Discipleship, it's about creating content that helps people. For example, creating a blog post from a sermon is helpful. Another example is producing some of those assets and content that a pastor or small group leader could use.

Just like you would create a bulletin (maybe) for the in-person experience, you have to adapt to the online experience.

Just like creating a membership process in person, you must create one online.

The medium should not affect the message. It should change how it's delivered.

Having a dedicated person to your church's online campus is a must, just like you should have a dedicated marketing/communications person. Jay phrased it like this:

"You need to have [an Online Pastor as] an independent role," he said. "It's like having a diversity role at a company where the whole job is just to champion diversity. You need that because [online church campus] hasn't been championed."

How to Use the Internet to Evangelize and Make Disciples

When your mindset changes, you can implement a place to leverage digital platforms. In his book, Kranda discusses "The 4 S's" of digital. Those S's are:

• Streaming (think large gatherings, Weekend services, holidays, etc.)
• Strengthening (small gatherings, niche events, one-on-one discipleship, blogs/content)
• Social (community spaces)
• Systems ("internal and external systems that empower personalized experiences")
  

To do digital well in any of those areas, you have to have these three things in place:

• Meaningful, measurable objectives
• A plan or path for people
• Be invested in the long-term

Meaningful, Measurable Engagement

You (I hope) count how many people attend your weekend services, Sunday school, and mid-week activities. You track guest cards, prayer requests, and first-time visitor gifts. So, when you start taking digital seriously, you must have measurable objectives.

But think of something other than views, likes, comments, or monthly organic traffic. Those are vanity metrics. Instead, think of meaningful, measurable metrics for engagement.

"We don't report views or anything like that regularly," Kranda said. "What we do measure is how many people watch 30 minutes from a Saturday to Friday."

This is an excellent metric for streaming. For websites, particularly blog posts, the number of impressions or views means nothing. But the time spent on the page vs. how long it takes to read is crucial.

If the average page view time is 1-5 seconds, that's not good. But 30+ seconds? Great! If it's a long piece of content and people are skimming it (or hopefully actually reading it) and spending more than 30 seconds on it, that shows Google that your page is quality and makes you more likely to rank higher.

So, when you treat your online presence as a digital campus, you can take similar metrics as you would for in-person.

"There are other numbers like how many people take our membership classes every month, how many groups we have, completing discipleship pathway, getting plugged-in, baptized… those are more discipleship-related."

Whether for engagement, awareness, or membership, as long as you have meaningful, measurable metrics, you are on the right track to success.

Have a Plan for People

Having measurable data is helpful, but behind every number is someone who needs Jesus or wants to improve their relationship with him. Do not do digital without a plan to shepherd those people from accepting Jesus to becoming a member to serving.

"We've recently moved to more of an engagement pathway," said Kranda. "We want people to show up to a service, or services, and are super focused on taking the next steps."

He explained how the process works for online guests to become members and get plugged in. They have newcomer connections where they ask recent guests basic questions like "How did you know about us? What questions do you have?" That takes place about 2 weeks before membership classes start.

Then, the online membership classes are interesting.

Have you ever been in a Zoom room and zoned out because the host kept going on and on? Have you ever felt that way in a service?

That's the opposite of how the class is.

"We do a lot more groups," said Kranda. "Teach for 20 minutes, go into groups, teach for 20 minutes, go into groups. We're trying to add more dialogue and discussion time."

This is how I became a member of a megachurch I attended after graduating college—except it was in person. Through it, I ended up finding my future small group and accountability guys.

Too often, especially with digital, churches don't have thorough plans for people.

• They just post on social
• They send reminder emails
• They just share a link for a live stream

Everything you do should be part of a bigger plan to guide that person closer to Jesus. Whether you have to make an introduction or challenge and grow them, have a digital strategy.

Invest in the Long-term

In October 2024, I attended Tithely's first-ever Modern Church Leader conference. I also attended a workshop by another online pastor (Steve Fogg of Crossway), and he shared something interesting.

Part of treating your online presence as an online campus is having the funds to sustain it. He also said that their online campus is nearly self-sustaining.

Just because people are online doesn't mean they won't commit to giving. You have to invest long-term in digital. Just cause the Internet loads fast doesn't mean community and fellowship also grows fast.

"Financial independence comes from years of allowing it to grow and mature," said Kranda. "I've been the pastor of this campus for over 13 years. It should be healthy. There's been consistency."

Another way to invest in the long term is to get people involved in serving online. If people are watching in another time zone, they could also serve.

"We try to create a lot of similar roles to those in person," Kranda said about the Online Campus volunteer teams. He shared that the two most significant places they have people serving are on the follow-up and prayer teams.

"Our follow-up team responds to all of our response cards every week. We have a team of, you know, seven to eight that do that every week. Our prayer team is very big, and they pray over every prayer request that comes in."

It didn't happen overnight. It's 13+ years in the making. If you don't invest in the growth, if you don't give the metrics time to matter or the planned time to show fruits, then you'll see a poor investment.

"We are an online community," said Kranda. "If you have community happening, people stick."

What Are You Doing to Evangelize Digitally?

Digital ministry isn't about technology—it's about people. Every click, every stream, every online interaction represents a person seeking connection, understanding, and transformation.

Jay Kranda wisely shared that the key is "deep engagement" over shallow metrics. Your digital campus isn't competing with your physical campus—it's extending your church's reach beyond walls, time zones, and traditional boundaries.

The digital age doesn't diminish spiritual connection—it amplifies it. Are you ready to shepherd your community, not just broadcast to them?