Hosts: Scheduling and Onboarding

If you think about your online ministry like your physical building, Hosts are like your welcome, next steps, and prayer teams—all in one. They play the important role of greeting attenders in the chat, answering questions, sharing helpful links and resources, and praying for people through one-on-prayer.

Hosts can be members of your church staff or volunteers, and the number you need each service depends on if you use features like Chat, Moments, and Live Prayer, as well as how many attenders are in your service.

This article will focus more on the ministry role of a host; to learn more about the functionality hosts have access to in the Platform, view this support article. 

Scheduling Hosts to Serve

There are a variety of ways you can schedule hosts to serve, but this functionality is not built into the Church Online Platform. Through the Platform, you’ll give your hosts access to the tool, but you’ll want to use another method to schedule them to serve. Many churches incorporate online ministry roles into tools like Planning Center.

Leading Hosts

Just like any volunteer role at your church, you’ll want to provide clear expectations and resource your team well. Below are a few best practices for leading your online hosts.

Before your Experience

• Check in with your hosts to see how they’re doing—this can be via email, social media, or a mini-huddle using video software
• Inspire your hosts by reminding them about the ministry they are part of
• Share important information with them via the Host Chat—a private chat exclusively for Hosts
• Pray over your team and the experience

During your Experience

• Lead by example: be active in chat and/or Live Prayer 
• Encourage your hosts as they do a great job serving 
• Have a plan in place for hosts to report major technical issues they encounter, and equip your hosts to respond to attenders well

After your Experience

• Debrief with your hosts: how did the experience go? 
• Thank each host for serving
• Build and nurture relationships with hosts throughout the week

Equipping Hosts to Serve

Train them on the tool

• If it’s a host's first time serving, make sure they understand how to use the Church Online Platform. You could invite them to attend your service first or record a video of you engaging with attenders during an experience. 

Share with them how to respond

• There are lots of situations that can come up via church online—be sure to train your hosts in how you want things to be handled and who they can turn to if they need help.

Resource them with prayers

• Help your hosts engage with attenders through prayer. This link provides some helpful prayer starters and scriptures to reference for specific needs.