The goal of most religious organizations is to provide spiritual and family guidance to their members. In support of this goal, these organizations are supported through the contributions of their members. Religious organizations can now look to new technologies to help them achieve both goals. One of these technologies is audio conferencing. Here are five new apps that use audio conferencing that can bring spiritual and family guidance to your organization’s members, as well as increase new contributions to your coffers.

Administrative calls. Religious organizations are made up of a formal structure of hierarchical levels within the denomination, starting from the local church or parish, continuing to the state, regional, or diocesan level, and then to the national headquarters and finally to the world headquarters or the Vatican. as in the Roman Catholic religion. Each religious denomination has constant communication needs up and down their respective hierarchies. Audio conferencing can be used to provide instant meetings without having to travel, saving time and money.

Mark a sermon. One of the most popular apps for audio conferencing is the Dial A Sermon app. Local churches and parishes would like their sermons to be heard by as many members and guests as possible. At any one time, there are several members who are homebound, sick, or out of town and unable to attend church. Consequently, these members cannot hear the sermon. With voice conferencing, the pulpit microphone can be connected to a phone line and the conference bridge can be dialed in, allowing the pastor to deliver the sermon over the bridge, in addition to members who are present in the church . Now homebound and out-of-town members can call the bridge using their home or mobile phone and listen to the entire worship service. Each sermon or worship service can be recorded and stored for members, who were unable to hear the service live, to play back later.

prayer line Another popular conferencing app for faith-based organizations is Prayer Line. With this application, a scheduled date and time (usually in the evening) for the prayer service is published using the conference bridge. The Prayer Line schedule is then posted in all church print and online publications. A phone number with an access code is posted with instructions for members to dial in a specific date and time to pray along with a pastor or priest for each occasion. The parish priest or priest would lead the participating members in the prayer session, which usually lasts an hour.

Fundraising appeals. Conference calls can also be used to collect contributions from members. Whether a church is raising money for a member of a parishioner’s family, is in crisis, overseas mission work, or a capital campaign for a building expansion, conference calls can be used to get the word out. appeal to many members at the same time. An operator from the conference service provider can be used to conduct a question and answer session with members on the call to answer all of their questions and concerns. The appeal call can also be recorded and played back later by members who missed the original call.

affinity programs. Affinity programs can be developed to promote the use of telephone conferencing services throughout the religious organization in order to reduce the cost of conferencing by increasing the volume of minutes. With conferencing services, the more you use, the less expensive your costs will be. So when negotiating your price with a conference service provider, ask about affinity programs and what discounts are available through higher volume.

There you have it, the five conference apps that faith-based organizations can use to get the message out to members and raise additional funds for special projects.