Kent Elliott
One trend we’ve seen this year is many churches using streaming as a response to the current events we’ve encountered in 2020. Unfortunately, most churches did not see the importance of investing funds pre-Covid-19 in the space of streaming. This resulted in a lot of scrambling for hardware and software without any budgets for streaming and churches putting something together so their church members could not miss church. Now that we are months into this pandemic that we thought would be over by now, we are still seeing cases spiking in certain regions. Now what do we do? How should we respond as a church when it comes to streaming?
First and foremost, we need a long-term plan. We must think BIG picture and not just, “we need to try to survive during this season”. Like it or not, the need for streaming is not going away, but it is the future of the church in how we reach, communicate and connect to our congregations and our communities. I am not just talking about posting sermons and worship. But also streaming relevant content that connects with people that do not attend your church. For example, stories of lives being changed and how your church is making a difference in your communities is key. This might be showing a recap video of a backpack give back program or showing how a family’s marriage was not only saved but flourished because of the church.
Finding the right platform is also critical for the destiny of your content. What do I mean by that? When you use a public platform (or free platform) you are subject to that platform’s environment. In other words, the quality of your streaming content could be easily limited because of network congestion or third-party advertisements.
Your first priority as a church for streaming is to find a platform that allows your church to have its own private channel that you have full control over. One option is FaithStream. FaithStream helps churches and ministries build and maintain Netflix-caliber connected TV apps on the most popular streaming devices like Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, Android TV, IOS and Google Play. You can find more information at www.faithstream.video.
Kent W. Elliott
President and Lead Consultant
FaithWorks Image Consulting