We hope by now that you understand the importance of creating and innovating an online presence for your church and its services. Although difficult, it is a necessary transformation in what is swiftly becoming a normal procedure for churches. It may be out of your comfort zone, but nothing grows within a comfort zone either.
When it comes to setting up your online presence, however, there are many pitfalls to avoid and tools to help you get started. These tools break down into three categories: audio, visual, and live feed.
Audio
Audio, without a doubt, is the most important thing to work on when initially getting your church into a good place online. As nice as a crisp video is, solid, clear audio is a necessity when it comes to transcribing sermons to the online sphere. One should never skimp on audio for the sake of a slightly better camera, nor should one assume that a cheap lapel mic or podium mic will work well with the other online components.
Although there are not necessarily tools for helping you to crisp up audio, there are plenty of websites and blogs that can help you find the high quality mics that you feel are important to the type of service you are trying to place online.
Visual
Cameras, although not necessary for an online service, are certainly appreciated and often liked by those watching online. When it comes to cameras, it is much better to have one excellent camera over two or three mediocre ones. Two angles with stark quality contrast will be jarring and unpleasant for a viewer to watch. A single angle of high quality, although perhaps a little dull, is much more likely to keep someone from walking away from the screen. Plus, with someone who knows how to operate a camera, a single camera can still be swiveled to move along with a particularly enigmatic preacher or speaker.
When it comes to buying cameras, we highly recommend getting one that, at the very least, shoots in HD. Although 4k is all the rage right now, it is not a necessity for most churches, as most congregants probably do not have the capability to stream it in their home. If one has the budget and capability, it can serve as a future-proofing investment, but it is not necessary. If your audio is great, and your visual is good, then your product will be excellent.
Live
Although it is probably what one expects with a church service, a live feed for a Sunday morning is not a necessity. If your church has the time and capability to prerecord entire services on a different day, then that may not be a bad plan to discuss with other leaders in the church.
If your church would like to keep its services live, however, then look for tools which can help make that process efficient. Systems like Anchor and LifePoint’s Church Online can help immensely in keeping a livestream going without hiccups or with getting content out smoothly. In addition, make sure that you have the bandwidth necessary to keep a livestream up without hitches, as a poor bandwidth can lead to the stream getting cut or its quality going down dramatically.
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We hope that this brief series and corresponding podcast have been a help to you. As the world continues to change, we hope that churches will be willing to adapt and overcome the new and emerging obstacles which rise out of it. Updating online functionality to be sleek and efficient is one step in the long process to bring the church to people’s doors. Although it may not be quite as personal as door-knocking campaigns, it is certainly just as valuable in the end.
To learn more about this topic, check out this episode of ChurchMediaHQ: https://youtu.be/iPZIzf5Wqk
