live streaming for churches

Churches face a major shift in how to worship in 2020 and beyond. Live streaming has become the go-to solution for churches and parishioners who want to stay connected, engaged, and spiritually fed. Pastors and tech team volunteers recently had to scramble to use streaming infrastructure to reach their congregation at home. Now they're faced with the challenges of improving their production workflow.

Facebook has provided a great way to stream live at no extra cost. Before smartphones and Facebook were born, churches had to use a TV or a radio station to stream their program live.

You might read blog posts that insist that live streaming is going to kill the local church. To paraphrase Mark Twain, the death of the local church has been greatly exaggerated. In addressing upcoming church trends, Carey Nieuwhof mentions that after his church started a live stream they ended up with more online attendees than in-person attendees.  Live streaming didn't kill the church, but it did make them pause to consider how best to reach those online attendees.

In many ways, churches face the same issues that organizers of any live event are up against. Limited capacity is one, fixed locations another. With an estimated six billion religious worshippers around the world, even the biggest churches have to close the doors at some point, and even the most fervent church members are not always able to attend services in person.