The United Reformed Church

Welcome to the United Reformed Church's Social Media Guidelines and Digital Charter. These resources are freely available to all who produce and manage websites and social media channels for the life and work of the URC.

Coronavirus and lockdown has made lots of our churches take the plunge and start worshipping together online. This guide offers tips and ideas to help you engage with people and make your online worship more intergenerational.

A free guide from the United Reformed Church to help you take great photos in church.

Visual storytelling is incredibly important on social media, as people process images 60,000 times faster than words. Therefore it’s crucial that you take the best photos you can and make the most out of what you have.

This guide outlines a few things to think about when taking photos in a church or a building of worship. 

A list of United Reformed Churches that are live streaming acts of worship or offering Bible studies, sermons and services as podcasts, audio files or video recordings.

A free guide to help you write for the web and maximise the reach of your online content by improving your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). 

iChurch from the URC can you help get your church online and provide you with ongoing support with your digital presence. 

A free guide to help you livestream your church service. 

What is livestreaming?

Live streaming is the broadcasting of real-time video and audio to an audience over the internet, this can be done on a variety of platforms from a number of devices.

A free guide to help you navigate your church's digital journey.

The importance of digital

We’ve talked for years about the need to “do church differently”, and the coronavirus pandemic has forced us to do just that! Lockdown has shown us that our online life as churches is neither second-best nor an afterthought: it is a vital part of how we live, worship and engage in mission.

We need to think about an online presence in terms of community-building – interactive, mutually beneficial and adding value to visitors’ lives.

A digital space, in other words, for a shared journey of discipleship. The fellowship, inclusion and connection that are made possible by the technology are also demanded by the call to follow Jesus faithfully in today’s world.

A free guide for churches that are considering using contactless giving to avoid passing an offertory plate and handling cash due to increased risks from Coronavirus. 

As well as the now well established method of setting up a bank standing order for giving to the local church, some more technological solutions are being used by a number of churches.

None of methods outlined here are offered as recommendations – this is just a survey of some of the means already in use. Prices, fees, commission on transactions and other terms may be changed, and churches are strongly advised to check the details are current and correct before committing to any particular path.

A free guide to help you run Zoom meetings more effectively.

The information covers things to consider and check before setting up or joining a meeting, using Zoom's features to contribute to a meeting, as well as other useful hints and tips. 

Please note that this is a work in progress – if we have learning points to add, this content will be updated.

A free guide to help you set up Zoom Breakout Rooms for your church or church organisation.  

What are Zoom Breakout Rooms? 

The Breakout Rooms feature is unique to Zoom, and what makes Zoom the ideal platform for moving church online. It is what transforms an online meeting into genuine fellowship, and means you can have real, in-depth conversations as well as mingling with a host of other people. If you’re active with church online during the lockdown and haven’t discovered them the feature, you don’t know what you’re missing!

The Breakout Rooms feature allows you as the host to allocate a large group of participants into breakout rooms in whatever size groups they want, either by drawing up the room lists yourself, or allowing the software to allocate groups automatically.

A free guide to using Zoom securely for churches and church organisations. 

What is Zoom?

Zoom has become the go-to platform of choice for people to connect with one another during the Coronavirus lockdown. It is being used by individuals, families, businesses, universities, schools and the British Cabinet to host meetings and keep in touch.

Zoom reports that the number of accounts has jumped from 10 million in December 2019 to 200 million in March this year.

A free guide to help you set up a Zoom account for your church or church organisation.

What is Zoom?

Zoom is a popular cloud-based video conferencing service you can use to virtually meet with others – either by video or audio-only or both.

People can access it via an app on their smartphone or tablet, or via a browser on their laptop or desktop computer. Landlines can also be used, for those without access to the above.

A free guide to help you set up an Instagram account for your church or church organisation. 

What is Instagram?

Instagram is a photo and video-sharing social networking service owned by Facebook.

The app allows users to upload photos, graphics and videos, which can be edited with filters and organised with hashtags and location information and posted to your account. You can also choose to allow your posts to be shared publicly or with pre-approved followers. 

Instagram users can search for content using hashtags, locations or by seeing what’s trending on the platform. You can follow different accounts and like or comment on their content if you wish.

A free guide to help churches and church organisations understand virtual funerals.

How this guide can help 

This is not intended to be a definitive collection of resources, but will hopefully give you a starting place with words and ideas that could be useful for you, or to pass on to family members. Please tailor to the needs of your situation.

A free guide to using Facebook, Youtube and Zoom to record and broadcast acts of worship from your church or church organisation. 

Why record acts of worship? 

There are times such as now during the Coronavirus outbreak when people will be unable to attend church services and all church events are cancelled.

It's during these periods that recording and broadcasting acts of worship is one of the many things a church can do to stay in contact with its congregation and local community.  

A free guide to setting up public wi-fi for your church or church organisation. 

Why offer public wi-fi? 

Offering free wi-fi inside your church can be a really good way of opening up your building for more uses and could potentially bring more people inside. There are lots of considerations to make when deciding to offer wi-fi. Below are a couple of different options to think about.

The overall cost will vary hugely depending on how advanced the system is, how strong it is, how much space you’re looking to cover, how you plan on using it and what internet speeds you are looking to offer. It’s important to do your own research and speak to experts to find the best option for you.

A free guide to recording a podcast for your church or church organisation.

What's a podcast?

A podcast is a digital recording file that you can download to your computer or mobile phone and listen to. 

Recording audio for a podcast isn’t as hard as you might think. With the right equipment and know how, anybody can do it. In this guide, you’ll find everything you need to know about producing high quality audio.

A free guide to help you set up a WhatsApp account for your church or church organisation.

What is WhatsApp?

WhatsApp is a free tool, owned by Facebook, that allows people to message individuals, small or large groups of people with the app on their mobile phone or on a computer.

If you don’t have WhatsApp, visit the App Store on your iPhone or iPad, or Google Play on an Android phone, tablet or device, and download the app.

The icon is a white speech bubble with a white phone symbol in a green square or circle. WhatsApp is used by more than 1 billion people, is free, is encrypted, which means it is secure, and offers video and audio calls using the internet.

You can also use it to share images and forward messages from others. 

A free guide to help you set up a Twitter account for your church or church organisation.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a globally popular microblogging and social networking service on which users post and interact with messages known as tweets. Tweets can be made up of 280 characters (including spaces), you can also embed photos and images and include links to other online content or videos.