For many Christians around the world, Sunday morning is a time dedicated to worship. But for most, the rigmarole of reaching church with a tiny brood in tow can be rather draining. You’re likely familiar with the drill; tired eyes and temper tantrums, mini meltdowns and dreary moods. Of late, an increasing number of churches have innovated to be as inclusive as possible. No more coaxing the kids out of bed, herding them into the car and containing their restlessness through sermons. Now, with the advent of live streaming services for churches, a whole new wave of worship has emerged. Church live streaming has opened doors for the elderly, new moms with little babies, and many other worshippers who would normally favor staying in their homes during Sunday worship. What’s more, affordable and effective technologies like StreamNow now make it possible for churches of all sizes to live stream their sermons. By streaming your church service, you can deliver your address to a wider range of people while lending a whole new meaning to worship.

Reasons Why You Should Live Stream Church Service:

Church live streaming is a brilliant way to spread your sermon across households not only in your vicinity but across the world. Worship was never meant to be restricted to a geographical vicinity, and by streaming live church services, you can capture thousands of international worshippers. The relevance of live streaming services for churches is vast. Here are some reasons you should consider broadcasting your sermons.

Increase Access:

By streaming live church services, you can penetrate households that may want to seek a path of worship but may not have the time, energy or wherewithal to make it to church religiously. By breaking geographical barriers, you can spread your message far and wide. You can also look at linking your live broadcasts with social media pages on relevant platforms. Facebook and Twitter, for example, are ideal forums to inform your followers about the dates and timings of events and special sermons, as well as specific updates at church.  

Keep Your Community Connected:

When people spread across the globe, they seldom forget their roots and where they came from. By adopting the cutting-edge live streaming technology, you can help pull your community closer and keep your cultural and religious fabric intact.  

Generate Income:

Generating funds to power the functioning of a church can be an exhausting affair. With so many overheads to foot, it would appear that the only source of income for a place of worship is donations. Not true. Church live streaming can prove fruitful in income generation. By selling portions of your stream, you can achieve significant earnings. Plus, you can add an additional avenue of income by onboarding sponsors whose logos you can display during a live sermon.

Focus Less About Physical Capacity:

Church live streaming makes your audience limitless and eliminates the problem of a limited seating capacity. Even if your seats fill out, you’ve got a virtual audience that can connect anytime, anywhere. Time, place and distance become immaterial when you live stream church service.

Interactivity:

It’s likely that you’re sceptical about church live streaming because you feel that the personal touch is lost. On the contrary, live streaming is an ideal way for you to connect with your virtual audience, ask for thoughts and messages and connect with individual users who may be situated thousands of kilometers away.

Infrastructure Required For Church Live Streaming:

Before you live stream church service, you should have your elementary infrastructure in place. Here’s what you’ll need:

A Camera:

Make sure you invest in a superior quality professional camera to capture your church services. The kind of camera you choose can go a long way in retaining the attention of your audience. Scan Amazon for its most popular variants and zero in on one that suits you best. Alternatively, if you would rather go for a more professionally covered stream, reach out to a production company. Such companies expertly cover events by capturing footage from various angles through multiple cameras. Unless your service is extremely small, it’s worth considering outsourcing the videography. By filming various elements of the service concurrently, your stream can be stitched better.

A Personal Computer or Hardware Encoder:

A computer or encoder can help convert your sermon into an appropriate format for live streaming. Link your camera to the computer or encoder and you’re good to go. Remember, at this stage, you could integrate your sponsors into your feed, by seamlessly integrating their logos onto your stream. You could also add subtitles, captions and an array of other elements to your broadcast.

A Sturdy Internet Bandwidth:

Pick an Internet connection that is robust. This will prove to be an essential link between you and the world, streaming your service effectively to your online video platform.

An Online Video Platform:

Your internet connection carries your stream to an online video platform, which will then transmit this data to a worldwide web of networks. It’s important to pick an online video platform that is powerful and effective. StreamNow has found acceptance among many institutes of worship and is an ideal solution for churches big or small. The platform allows you to integrate a live stream onto your website, plug it into your social media pages and even embed it into emails. Remember that with a live stream, there are aspects that can go wrong before or during a sermon. Consider going for a video platform that offers around-the-clock technical service. StreamNow is crafted especially for church live streaming and offers all of these elements and more.

Manpower Required for Church Live Streaming:

A typical live stream of a church service needs three kinds of manning. First, each camera needs to be controlled by an operator. Second, an engineer needs to be available to control the live stream and sew the various cuts together. Third, you may need labor to help you erect and disassemble equipment. Of course, if you decide to hire a media company, these elements will be absorbed in your bill, in which case you needn’t worry about investing time and energy in building a streaming team.

Costs of Live Streaming Services for Churches:

At this point, you may be disillusioned that live streaming involves astronomical costs. It doesn’t. Even if you consider infrastructure, manpower and an assortment of other costs, live streaming can still prove economical. Broadcast costs have fallen tremendously over the past ten years, owing to more reasonably priced equipment. Amazingly, even the coveted equipment for 4K streaming is attainable. A moderate church service, for example, can be streamed at about $4,000. A larger scale event could stretch to about $20,000. These are ballpark figures and the pricing depends greatly on the nature of the service, the number of cameras employed, the size of the church and the elected broadcast resolution.

Expected Revenue from Live Streaming for Churches:

Live streaming can generate enough funds for you to cover the costs of a production team. If you plan your monetization well, you may even have funds left over to devote to other aspects of your church. By employing a platform like StreamNow, you can generate revenue in three ways: advertising, pay-per-view (PPV) and subscriptions. A live streaming model pivots on selling access to the stream through tickets, much like a physical venue. With StreamNow, you can avail a paywall to leverage PPV and subscriptions.

How to Stream Church Service:

With the dawn of live streaming, church services are lending hope and faith to more and more people. Now, your messages of resilience and resolution can reach the people that need it most. Spread the love through technology, sermon after sermon, time after time.