Many innovations and changes can come from a pandemic. For instance, many colleges and schools are adopting hybrid models where students can choose to either be physically present in a classroom, or be home and view the same class online in real-time. Typically Zoom or Webex are what schools use for these.
Your church can do similar, but with free services such as Facebook or YouTube. There are also some intermediate and advanced options that have costs, but for this article we’ll focus on these basic solutions. If you’re a small to mid-size church, something like Facebook makes a lot of sense as it’s easier to drive viewers to.
Let’s start with camera and sound. Options include the following:
1 ) Use your phone with an app.
2 ) Use a computer with a camera connected and use Facebook and/or YouTube.
3 ) Use a more advanced options such as encoders. (Out of Scope for this article.)
The 2nd option will likely get you better image quality and allow you to place the system in more places compared to option 1. You can also hook up an external microphone to the system for enhanced audio quality. If you don’t have a computer and camera, you can always try a phone/app on a camera tripod. Just be careful of placement so that you can get decent sound.
Facebook lets anyone go live from the app or website. Of the two services, I like Facebook better because of audience. IF you have a nice church Facebook page, your members are already connected to you and your livestream can launch right through that page.
Live streams are available to viewers with or without a Facebook account. Viewers without a Facebook account can access the stream directly using the livestream URL. You even have options to embed a Facebook livestream on a webpage or blog.
YouTube
YouTube requires you to have 1,000 or more users to use the app to go live which will rule out many first-time streamers. Before hosting your live event on YouTube, you’ll need to have a YouTube channel up and running. Also, plan ahead as it may take up to 24 hours to enable the livestream the first time.
Apps
A word of caution on apps: Generally apps are only supported on relatively newer phones. You’ll want to make sure that your phone operating system supports live streaming.
Testing
Do not let your event also double as your test for streaming. Run a test several days prior to going live. You’ll want to set the devices in the same spot they’ll be for your service. If you have people playing instruments and sitting near the recording devices, try to duplicate that for your test as best you can. Have test audience members talk and see if it picks that up, etc. (Note: You may not want it to pick up audience sound of talking before a service for instance.) Perform part of your sermon and see if the audio and video quality is satisfactory. Testing is extremely important!
Promoting your Livestream
To promote your Livestream, simply share links to it on social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, in email and on your website. You could also look into embedding the live stream into your church website.
More Info
For more info on livestreaming on Facebook, click here. For more info on livestreaming on YouTube, click here.
Next Level
The above guidance is equivalent to dipping your toe into the livestreaming water. You can try this and see if your audience responds for a relatively small cost. If the audience does and you want to take streaming to the next level, you could consider streaming services that are specifically geared to churches. Also, higher quality recording devices of video and sound are the way to go. There are many different options on these devices, which is a topic for a future discussion.
Finally, since not all users would be home, consider adding some type of online giving platform to allow users to give from home.
