Using Art to Organize YouTube Videos for Online Church

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If you participated in a flurry of video recording activity last week in an effort to put church online, you may now have a small collection of random videos on your new YouTube account. Or perhaps you have half a dozen new videos mixed in with the videos from six years ago when a church member explored digital options for church, efforts somehow abandoned in the interim. Now’s a good time to organize your collection, while it’s still small and manageable. This can also make it easier to share resources with your members.

You can use your worship series art to help organize your worship videos, helping to distinguish one from another. Otherwise, as one member told me, “The videos are all just white robes without those images.”

If you were already an internet star before now, the following might seem basic. In that case you can move on to planning your next series. If you are new to digital church, keep reading.

1 - Add Worship Art for Thumbnails

Below is our church YouTube page, after we added in new thumbnail images for each worship service.

To add thumbnail images to your video, click on your video, then find the “Edit Video” button.

In this video detail area, you can add additional details about your worship service, such as theme of the day, text, name of the preacher, etc. This is the window where you can add your thumbnail image by simply uploading the same worship art that you downloaded for your worship series. The worship slide files double as video thumbnails, so no problem.

2 - Add Your Videos to Playlists by Series

You can further organize your worship videos according to series. We have grouped ours by the Sunday Contrast series and midweek series. Another idea is to have separate playlists for full length worship services and another for sermon clips. You may also at this time have an assortment of videos for confirmation class, bible study, youth chapel, and devotions. These can also be organized using playlists.

This is helpful for communication. You can direct confirmation students or bible study groups to a playlist that you will continue to populate, rather than having to send new links every time. They will have an easier time finding the content they are looking for.

To make basic thumbnail images with text, you can use the free online tool Canva.

3 - Embed the YouTube Videos on Your Website

Although Facebook is a common platform for sharing sermons and worship service videos, not everyone uses it. This makes it even more challenging for members that are not tech-savvy to access the videos, and limits the number of people who can watch online church. It’s also good to be aware that when your video has finished playing on Facebook, it will often automatically start playing a random video out there on Facebook, frequently inappropriate. After one worship service watch party on Facebook, we were caught by surprise by one of those random videos and had to tell our kids to close their eyes until we could get to the stop button.

So, sharing on social media platforms is great for getting the word out, but if you can use that as a supplement rather than the primary information source, that’s even better. It is nice to have a central location that is accessible for everyone where all of the church details can be found. Both on Squarespace and Finalweb, in addition to other web hosts, the video tool is already set up to work with YouTube videos. Simply, paste the link in the video tool.

Squarespace Video Tool

Finalweb 2.0 Video Tool

You can add links to a single video or a whole playlist on your website using that video tool. Click on the video or playlist you would like to embed on your website. Click on the “share” link, and a box will pop up with a url you can copy and paste into your website video tool.

Our website for St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in North Mankato, MN has the video along with worship folder, news, online connection card (using Google forms), online giving, and other worship details.

4 - Continue to Share the Link to Your Website

If you make online worship easy to access on your website, you can simply continue to share your primary web address. No need to worry about promoting a whole library of videos or repeatedly emailing new links. Simply alert your members when new content has been made available.

God’s blessings on your online church adventure!

Pastor Marques and Corissa Nelson