How to introduce Chat to your church

Switching chat on is quick. Getting your church to actually use it takes a little more thought, and the churches that do it well nearly all do the same thing: they start small, tell people why, and answer the privacy question before anyone has to ask it.

This guide is about introducing it to people. For the mechanics, see Getting started with Chat, start to finish.

Before you tell anyone

1. Decide what problem you are solving. “We have a new feature” is not a reason anyone will act on. “The welcome team rota is being sorted in three different places and we keep missing people” is. Pick the thing that is actually annoying somebody.
2. Choose one group to start with. A team who will genuinely use it, with a leader who will champion it. Not the whole congregation, and not a group that only meets twice a year.
3. Work out your answer on privacy. Somebody will ask who can read their messages. The answer is good, so have it ready: conversations between adults are private to the people in them, and nobody at the church can read them from the web office. See Who can see chat messages?
4. Check the app is installed. Chat lives in your church app, so the real barrier is usually not chat at all, it is that half the group have never installed the app. Sort that first.

Introducing it to your first group

1. Tell the leader first, in person if you can. They need to want it, because they will be the one answering questions.
2. Switch chat on for that group and set sensible quiet hours if it is a lively one. See How to turn on chat for a group.
3. Send the group a short message explaining what has changed, why, and what to do. Something like: we have added chat to the church app so we can sort the rota in one place instead of three. Install the app at yourchurch.org.uk/app, allow notifications, and tap Chat.
4. Have the leader post first, with something real. An empty group nobody has spoken in dies quietly. A question that needs an answer gets people in.
5. Leave it a fortnight, then ask the group what worked and what did not.

Then expanding

Once one group is using it happily, the second is much easier, because you have people who can say it works. Add groups one at a time rather than switching everything on at once. A church that enables chat everywhere in a single week usually ends up with a dozen silent groups and one that nobody can keep up with.

As you go, the extras become worth mentioning: polls for settling a date, announcement-only for groups where a conversation would be noisy, and muting for anyone who finds a group too busy.

If your group includes children

Children are never part of group chats, so if the group you pick has children in it, the adults get their conversation and the children simply do not see it. Nothing goes wrong, and there is nothing to switch off.

Reaching children is a separate thing with its own setup and its own conversation to have with your leadership. See Setting up Safe Messaging, start to finish.

Questions people ask

• “Can the church read my messages?” No. Conversations between adults are private to the people in them.
• “Do I have to give my phone number?” No. It works through your church account, and nobody sees anybody’s number.
• “Is this another app?” No. It is inside the church app you already have.
• “What if it pings all evening?” Mute it for eight hours or permanently, and your church can set quiet hours for the whole group.
• “Why not just use WhatsApp?” Because WhatsApp groups belong to whoever set them up, need personal numbers, and do not know who is actually in your church. This does.

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Good to know

• The most common reason a rollout stalls is not the software. It is that people never installed the app, or declined notifications when they did. Fix that and most of the rest follows.
• Do not announce it from the front on a Sunday before one group has used it. An announcement with nothing behind it just creates questions you cannot answer yet.
• Nobody has to use it. Some people will prefer email, and that is fine. Chat is an addition to how your church communicates, not a replacement for it.
• If you want people to be told something rather than to discuss it, a Broadcast is the better tool. See Broadcasts, email or SMS: which to use when.