Stewardship is one of the most important concepts in the Christian life. We believe that everything we have — our time, our money, our gifts, our relationships — belongs to God and has been entrusted to us to manage faithfully on his behalf.

Australian church leaders understand this deeply when it comes to finances. They prepare budgets carefully. They report to their congregations transparently. They think seriously about how every dollar given in the offering is used for the mission of the church.

But the same careful stewardship that churches apply to their finances is rarely applied to their digital resources. And those digital resources are significant.

In this post I want to make the case that faithful stewardship in 2026 includes your church's online presence — and that the resources available to Australian churches digitally are too significant to leave unmanaged.

What Are Your Church's Digital Resources?

Most church leaders don't think of their digital assets as resources in the same way they think of their financial assets. But they are — and in some cases they are more valuable than many churches realise.

Here are the four most significant digital resources your church has right now:

1. The Google Ad Grant — $180,000 AUD Per Year

If your church is registered with the ACNC, Google has set aside up to $10,000 USD every single month in free advertising specifically for your organisation. That's approximately $180,000 AUD per year in free Google Search advertising that most Australian churches are not claiming. This is not a hypothetical resource — it is a real, available, unclaimed asset that sits unused in the vast majority of Australian churches every single month. You can learn more about the Google Ads Grant here.

2. The Sunday Sermon — 20 Hours of Work Per Week

Your pastor invests 15 to 20 hours every week in preparing and delivering a sermon. That sermon is heard once by the people in the room and then, in most churches, it is never heard again. That's 20 hours of your most gifted leader's time producing a resource that reaches a fraction of its potential audience. A content multiplication system turns that existing investment into a podcast, a YouTube video, a blog post, three social media clips and a congregation email — extending the reach of what's already being produced without any additional work from your pastor. You can learn more about multiplying your sermon here.

3. The Church Website — Your 24/7 Digital Front Door

Your church website is available to anyone in your community at any time of day or night. It is your most accessible point of contact with people who are searching for what your church offers. But for most Australian churches the website is underinvested — outdated, slow, hard to find on Google, and missing the basic elements that convert a curious visitor into a genuine connection. A poorly maintained website is a poorly managed resource. You can learn about optimising your website here.

4. Free Nonprofit Tools — Thousands of Dollars in Annual Savings

Google Workspace for nonprofits gives your church up to 2,000 professional email addresses and 100TB of storage for free. Canva Pro for nonprofits gives your team access to premium design tools at no cost. Spotify for Creators allows your church to host and distribute a podcast for free. These resources exist — and most Australian churches are paying for inferior commercial alternatives simply because nobody showed them what was available.

The Parable of the Talents — Applied to Digital Resources

In Matthew 25 Jesus tells a story about a master who entrusts his servants with different amounts of money before he goes on a journey. Two of the servants invest what they are given and produce a return. The third buries his talent in the ground — not out of malice, but out of fear and a failure to act.

When the master returns he doesn't congratulate the third servant for being cautious. He is displeased. The resource was not used. The opportunity was not taken. The potential return was never realised.

I think about this parable every time I speak with an Australian church that has never claimed its Google Ad Grant. The resource exists. It has been placed in their hands. And it is sitting in the ground — not because of bad intentions, but simply because nobody told them it was there or showed them how to use it.

Faithful stewardship requires more than avoiding waste. It requires actively investing what we've been given to produce a return for the one who entrusted it to us. In the parable the master expected his servants to put the money to work. I believe God expects the same of the resources — including the digital ones — that he has placed in the hands of the church.

What Unfaithful Digital Stewardship Looks Like

I want to be specific here because I think it's easy to nod along with a theological argument without applying it concretely. Here is what unfaithful digital stewardship looks like in practice for an Australian church:

• A church website that hasn't been updated in six months, with broken links and past events still listed — communicating to every visitor that nobody is paying attention
• A Google Ad Grant application that was started eighteen months ago and never completed — $180,000 AUD per year sitting unclaimed
• A pastor who preaches a powerful sermon on grief that could reach hundreds of people in their community who are searching for comfort — but the sermon is never recorded or published anywhere
• A team using personal Gmail addresses for church business because nobody set up Google Workspace for Nonprofits — a free professional email system that would take one afternoon to configure
• A visitor who fills in a contact form on a Sunday and doesn't hear from anyone until the following Thursday — by which time they've already decided the church isn't interested in them

None of these reflect bad intentions. They reflect a failure to recognise digital resources as resources — and to manage them with the same intentionality applied to finances, facilities and staffing.

What Faithful Digital Stewardship Looks Like

Faithful digital stewardship doesn't mean doing everything. It means doing the right things well — identifying the digital resources available to your church and ensuring they are being used intentionally for the mission.

Here is what that looks like in practice:

A Word About Capacity

I understand that for many Australian church leaders the response to all of this is: "We know we should be doing more digitally. We just don't have the capacity."

And I want to acknowledge that this is a genuine and reasonable response. Most Australian churches run on small teams that are already stretched thin. The pastor is preparing sermons, providing pastoral care, leading staff, managing volunteers and holding everything together. The idea of adding digital strategy to that list feels not just impractical but genuinely unkind.

This is exactly why I believe churches need external help with their digital presence — not because it isn't important, but because it is important and the internal team doesn't have the capacity to do it justice.

Faithful stewardship of digital resources doesn't mean the pastor learns Google Ads. It means the church takes the resource seriously enough to ensure it's being managed well — whether by a staff member, a volunteer with the right skills, or an external partner like DEO Ministry.

The Question Every Church Leader Should Ask Themselves

If your church elders, or board discovered that a significant financial asset had been sitting unused and unmanaged for the past three years, what would they do? They would act. They would appoint someone to manage it. They would make sure it was being put to work for the mission.

The Google Ad Grant is a financial asset. The Sunday sermon is a content asset. The church website is a communication asset. The free nonprofit tools are operational assets.

Are they being managed with the same faithfulness you bring to the rest of your church's resources?

If not — I'd love to help you change that.

Where to Start

If this post has prompted you to think differently about your church's digital resources, here are the most practical next steps:

• Find out whether your church qualifies for the Google Ad Grant and what it could mean for your outreach: What Is the Google Ad Grant and How Does It Help Churches? →
• Understand how to extend the reach of your Sunday sermon without adding to your pastor's workload: How to Turn One Sunday Sermon Into a Week of Digital Content →
• Book a free 30-minute strategy call and let's assess together what digital resources your church has available and how well they're currently being stewarded.

Book Your Free Strategy Call →

Written by Daniel Jackson — The founder of DEO Ministry and a commissioned elder at Soma Blue Mountains. He holds a Master of Divinity from Christ College Sydney and a Master of Arts in Theology from SMBC. He has helped scale businesses to over $1,000,000 in annual turnover and is passionate about helping Australian churches use digital tools to reach more people with the gospel.