How Do You Livestream a Church Service?
Most small congregations run their livestream on one volunteer, one laptop and one internet line, and that single line is where the trouble starts: when its upload speed dips, viewers at home lose the picture and then the audio.
Speedify is an app that joins several internet connections into one steadier connection, so the church Wi-Fi and a phone’s 4G/5G cellular connection carry the service together instead of taking turns failing. Speedify needs two or more internet connections for this. On a single connection, Speedify works as an encrypted VPN and cannot stop that connection from dropping. Ahead: a plain checklist of what you need to stream a service, and the best practices that keep it smooth once Speedify is handling your internet connections.
Speedify keeps the stream up when the venue internet does not
How Churches Changed During the Pandemic
Historically, churches and places of worship in general have had a double role: one is to provide the learnings of each religion’s top figure, as well as to bring people together and consolidate the community.
With restrictions in place following the 2020 pandemic, churches had to find a way to fulfill their role. The simplest way to do that was to accelerate the use of live streaming to reach their community over the internet.
According to this Wall Street Journal article, in-person church attendance is roughly 30% to 50% lower than it was before the pandemic. Micro-gatherings of members of the same church or at-home events are some ways people still meet face-to-face.
Live streaming church services is not something new; according to this house of worship stats compilation from 2017, there were some 167k church events online in 2016 alone with over 70% of total donations being made online.
Offering services online, live and recorded, keeps the church within reach of members who cannot come to the building: older congregants, people who are ill, and those who live far away.
What You Need to Live Stream Church Services
Here are the essential things you have to consider when live streaming a church service:
- Reliable internet: that’s what makes live streaming possible. Don’t rely on a single internet connection when live streaming a church service. Have a second connection available from a different ISP. Switching between connections takes a while, so it’s best to use both connections at once with an app like Speedify, which moves the stream to the working connection when one has issues.
- Audio-video equipment: a recent smartphone works fine. For more professional quality, you will need a camera recording in full HD with an HDMI output, a dedicated microphone and lighting. Learn more about the equipment involved here.
- Social platform: will you stream to Facebook, YouTube, Zoom or others? Most guides recommend an existing social profile, most commonly Facebook and/or YouTube. Church services can also be streamed to multiple platforms using a live streaming service that supports multistreaming.
- Streaming solution: you can use the native app of the social platform and stream directly to Facebook, YouTube, etc. For a professional production (with text overlays, clips, images and so on), use a dedicated church streaming solution. This TGC article recommends Boxcast, Restream or OBS.
Another article offers extensive information about 10 church streaming services. - Live streaming crew: if you don’t have the budget to hire a professional videographer, have someone from the congregation learn the hardware and software tools. You will need a crew especially if you live stream with multiple cameras, since someone has to switch between them in the streaming software.
Alternatively, before you invest in equipment, ask the community if they’re familiar with a specific camera or streaming software and use those.
Livestreaming Church Service at Its Best
Once you have the church live streaming gear all up and running, you should think about things like:
- whether to live stream the entire service or just the preaching / teaching;
- whether to have a preaching monologue or engage with the viewers through comments and take questions;
- how to grow the online presence, for example with targeted advertising based on location and/or age;
- live streaming other church events as well, not just regular services (fundraisers, for example).
With a fast and reliable internet connection, a church can bring its services to the existing community and to new members with nothing more than a smartphone. Live streaming church and house of worship services fits any budget.
Speedify
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📶 Stability
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