Speedify LIVE: How Churches use Livestreaming Technology

Rev. Jason Ferris is the 18th Pastor of Old Pine Street Presbyterian Church since 2011. With a rich background in filmmaking, he managed to find the best way to continue his important work with his congregation in the virtual space during the pandemic.

Rev. Ferris, the guest of the 32nd episode of Speedify Live, shares his experiences with live streaming, his relationship with technology and gives fellow streamers some valuable advice on how to approach their virtual congregations.

Here are our 5 takeaways from our interview with Rev. Jason Ferris:

1. In terms of equipment, he uses a Canon C100 mark II, 1080p camera, with external lenses, streaming into his iMac, along with a RODE NTG Shotgun Microphone and a desktop sound mixer. These all work flawlessly with Ecamm Live, providing both great image and audio. Ecamm Live is a live streaming software service we at Speedify also recommend if you’re planning to stream from a Mac.
2. If you want to add your choir’s lyrics or some scriptures from the Bible to your Church livestream, you can easily create those in something like Photoshop and import the JPEG you made into Ecamm to make your stream more lively and interactive.
3. Speaking of interaction, Rev. Ferris says using Skype in split screen for interviews, much like popular news shows, helped make their streams more personal and connected. Streaming their services to YouTube also helped with this, allowing the virtual service-goers to interact through chat.
4. One of the best pieces of advice from Rev. Ferris is to consider your space and resources. Both the space you’re recording in, and the space your service will be experienced on, i.e. tablets, desktops, etc. You want to tailor your production to these spaces so you don’t give a detached experience. Instead of just putting a camera in the back and filming from a distance, try using close-ups, maybe even multiple cameras. Consider what space and resources you have, and build your live streams around that.
5. Much like most live streams, church ones can run into technical difficulties as well. The most common Streamergency Rev. Ferris has run into is when live streaming their Skype interviews, where the guest’s weak internet connection caused some issues with the stream.

This is exactly where Speedify can help you and your congregation out! Combine two or more internet connections in Speedify, and get much better speeds and stability, so your service could go on without any glitches.