Welcome to the Life.Church Online Host Team! We’re so excited that you’re stepping up to help us lead people to become fully devoted followers of Christ. This training guide will give you all the info you need to begin serving on the team and impacting lives all over the world. 🙌🏼🌍

Who is Life.Church? ⛪️

Whether you’ve attended with us for years or are just now learning about us, we’re so grateful that you’re part of our Life.Church family! We believe that a church isn’t a building—it’s the people. We meet in multiple locations around the United States and globally online with a desire to make a lasting difference in your life, in our community, and in the world.

Life.Church’s Senior Pastor is Craig Groeschel, who started the church in 1996 with a handful of people after God gave him a vision for a different kind of church. He and his wife, Amy, live in the Edmond, Oklahoma area and have six children and grandchildren. 👶🏼

What is Church Online? 🤔

In addition to meeting in physical church locations, Life.Church also meets globally online. Life.Church Online was launched in 2006 out of our core value to do anything short of sin to reach people who don’t know Christ.

Today, we host 80+ weekly online church services at www.live.life.church, on Facebook Live, Instagram Live, and YouTube Live, reaching people representing every country in the world. Each service features vibrant worship, an engaging message, live community, and a team of volunteers ready to welcome, interact, and pray with you.

Here are just a few amazing stats about Life.Church Online:

• Last year, over 26,000 people gave their lives to Christ through one of our services!
• Across all our teams, we have over 1,000 volunteers serving from more than 50 countries—and you’re now one of them!

 Why Life.Church Online? 🤷‍♀️

Life.Church Online is a place where we become Digital Missionaries, stepping into the lives of our guests, meeting them right where they are!

👩🏼‍💻Who are we trying to reach?🧑🏻‍💻

• 😥 Lost - Those who are looking for something to fill the void in their lives but not knowing what it is or where to find it. Guests who come to challenge our mission are not to be considered a distraction but rather an opportunity. (Including Google ad guests)
• 😬 Fearful - Those who have a fear of going to a physical church but want to know God without fear of rejection.
• 😔 Lonely - Those who are reaching out for something or someone that is good. People looking to connect and be part of a group that they can share life.
• 🙂 Everybody Else - Those who are unable to attend a physical campus and want to worship and connect online.

Our Teams 🖥📱

You’re joining the Host Team, a global team of volunteers who create an environment where guests feel loved and are encouraged to take their next step. As a member of this team, you'll serve with the same team at the same 60-minute service each week. Be sure to show up 15 minutes early to your service so you can connect and pray with your team! 🙏🏼

We also have other volunteer teams:

• LifeGroups - Help people find community by leading a group online or in person. 
• Social Media - Interact with people on our Facebook and Instagram accounts.
• Operations - Behind the scenes admin and tech ninjas who make everything run smoothly.

PRO TIP💡: as with any team, you may find some terms or acronyms being used that are new to you. Don't be afraid to ask questions for anything you don't understand. We were all new to the team once too! Some of the terms that may be helpful to know:

• Host Team Leader - HTL - the direct leader of your team and your go-to person for questions, discipleship, and development
• Life.Church - LC - common acronym for chats
• Life.Church Online - LCO - common acronym for our Life.Church Online campus
• Request Prayer - after you've been on the team a while and completed prayer training, you will be able to accept those who have clicked the Request Prayer button. It's best practice with your team to let them know when you've entered Requested Prayer (RP) and how many you are engaged with at one time. For instance, if you have one person you're praying with RPx1 and if two persons at the same time then RPx2, etc. When you have finished and left the RP chat, then you would let your team know in the Team Chat space, OORP - Out Of Request Prayer.

The Chat Host "Big 3" 💪🏼

Ready to learn what you'll be doing as a Chat Host? It all boils down to 3 easy things—what we call the "Big 3." These 3 things you'll do are welcome, discuss, and pray. Let's unpack each of those.

1. 👋🏼 Greeting/Recruiting:

First, welcome each new guest into the chat area. A friendly welcome can be made even friendlier by using exclamation marks, emojis, and a follow-up question to get to know them. 

You can ask icebreaker questions, recap key points from the message. You can also ask open-ended questions, questions beginning with who, when, where, why or how.

Example: Hi @johnfromuganda, welcome to Life.Church Online! 🎉 We’re so happy you’re here today. How’s your day going so far?

Keep an eye out for other friendly people in chat and invite them to join your team by sharing the link: www.go2.lc/host (link in Host Info)

2. 🗣 Prompting Conversation:

We create a Chat Prompts document each week with important notes, songs, and links to share. You can open this doc (your leader can share the link to it) in a separate tab and then copy and paste the key information along with the service to help guests focus on the service and answer questions they may have.

3. 🙏🏼 Praying:

Finally, offer prayer to guests in the chat area. You can pray with people right in the chat area, or encourage them to click the Request Prayer button if they’d rather talk and pray with a volunteer privately. It’s amazing to see how loved people feel when someone reaches out to pray with them!

Example: Hi @martha75, I’m so sorry to hear that you lost your grandfather this week. Could we pray together here for you and your family? Let’s pray: God, we lift up Martha and pray that you would be with her and her entire family today. We ask that you would bring them your perfect peace and comfort, and that you would surround them with people who can encourage them in this season. Thank you for loving us and being with us in every difficult moment. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

BONUS: ♥️ Share something in your life. This opens the door, leading the way for guests to do the same.

• Relationships are built based on our weaknesses, not our strengths. If we are willing to share our experiences with others, our willingness to share can lead others to share as well.
• Remember that the guests who attend your service are God’s assignment for you! Jesus is with you and you can rest in the knowledge that he will help you as you serve.
• Respect each guest both in main chat as well as in host chat. Remember that each guest is a child of God, even if they don’t yet know him.

Always remember that God is working through you as you serve. He will bless you with very uplifting discussions as well as those that are difficult. Don’t get down if you feel the service did not go well. Trust that God is at work. He is taking the time you have invested and will use you to reach someone no one else can reach. 

An Important Note on Difficult Guests ❤️

At Life.Church, we’re passionate about doing anything short of sin to reach people who don’t know Christ. We believe that to reach people no one is reaching, we’ll have to do things no one is doing. We’re able to reach hundreds of thousands of new people each week, many of whom live in Hindu or Muslim countries. 🌎

When these guests arrive in your service, we encourage you to show them extra grace and love. Just by being there, they’re taking a small step toward giving God another chance in their lives. We can show them the love of Jesus by welcoming them, letting them know that we’re glad they found Life.Church Online, and encouraging them to stick around and share their thoughts on the message. 🔥

Your Host Team Leader (HTL) will have the ability to delete overly vulgar posts or mute chatters who consistently disrupt the service, but overall, we want to do whatever we can to help these guests experience God’s love like never before. Seeing some of them begin to attend regularly and even surrender their lives to Jesus are some of the greatest joys of serving at Life.Church Online! 🙌