“Alexa, Play My Church’s Message”


Alexa Flash Briefings are a convenient way to get content to church attendees. myChurchDaily.com saves time and makes the process easy.

Today, more than 41% of all US households have a Smart Speaker in their home, according to insiderIntelligence.com. You probably know smart devices can do a lot more than play music or podcasts and give us reminders.

What if churches could communicate with attendees using this kind of technology?

One of the biggest challenges church communicators face is to surface timely and relevant content and calls to action to the congregation.  How many times have church goers said, “I never heard about that,” even though you’ve posted it on the website, published on social media, included it in the Sunday morning announcements and tattooed it on your forehead? By taking advantage of a channel “in-home” that’s also pull-based, vs push-based interruption tactics, the quality of engagement ends up higher too.

But what if we could go beyond just announcements that traditionally are found in a newsletter? Using smart speaker devices can also provide daily encouragement and spiritual food for listeners if planned well.

With Alexa Flash Briefings created by your pastor or church leaders, you can give listeners a focused time to hear notifications, event reminders, podcast content, and daily devotionals from the church’s leaders. And since the recipients won’t be receiving this info on their phone or iPad, they’ll have fewer distractions from social media and other interrupters.

In a nutshell: You create your audio content and listeners ask Alexa to play it. Easy!

What is an Alexa Flash Briefing?

An Alexa Daily Flash Briefing is generally 2–4 minutes long. However, each briefing can be up to 10 minutes. A Flash Briefing is perfect for quick, easily digestible content.

Since they’re so compressed, users have time to listen to a few flash briefings, which means it is very easy for church members to be informed on a variety of topics with just a few minutes of listening per day. A flash briefing can provide a quick overview of content, such as church announcements, mini-devotionals, and uplifting quotes.

Setting Up Alexa for Churches

Churches can take advantage of services like myChurchDaily.com which allows churches to set-up and manage the process of creating Alexa Flash Briefings. The website allows users to easily record and upload announcements and other messages.

With myChurchDaily, users can quickly access the dashboard and upload content, and it’s there for the listeners. The clear benefit is that if a church member uses the Alexa Flash Briefing as part of their daily routine, then church leaders now have a way to consistently reach their people throughout the week, not just on Sunday mornings. It also bypasses all of the challenges of fighting through the noise on social media platforms to gain the attention of the church member each and every day. This certainly saves churches time and quickly widens reach.

Some Content Ideas

  • Imagine if you are able to provide a daily morning devotional that’s tied to the Sunday sermon.
  • Podcasts and discussion recordings.
  • What about your weekly event email in audio form?
  • Pastors can create a short teaser that promotes the Sunday sermon.
  • Announce Sunday’s worship playlist, so church attendees can find the music online and start listening right away.

The sky’s the limit, but a great place to start is to create audio for the content that you share daily or weekly in written form.

Alive Church Utilizes Usage Reports For Discipleship

The staff at Alive Church (alivechurch.com) in Tucson, AZ, is very pleased with how they are able to use Alexa Flash Briefings for their church members. One of the biggest benefits is through the reports. Platform users can go back and look at who’s listening and where they’re listening from. For example, myChurchDaily measures real, unique listeners, rather than metrics that risk double-counting and potentially inflating the results.

The first time you hear your own daily devotional podcast on an Alexa device you will begin to dream of more ways to use an Alexa Flash Briefing. Even church leaders who are not particularly tech-savvy have been able to set it all up and make it work.

If you have good content, an Alexa Flash Briefing can be a great help to getting that content heard and save your church staff time in getting the word out.

Since 2001 our staff has worked exclusively with churches and ministries around the world. We care about what we do because all of us are involved in our own churches serving. Let us serve you. We are available 7 days a week, even on Sundays. Email us at [email protected] or use live chat at the bottom right of your screen.

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