The Ultimate Guide to Church Live-Streaming: Take Your Church Virtual

Church live streaming is mission critical. Check out this guide to to the technologies and tools that will take your church virtual fast.

CHURCH TECH PODCAST

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Modern Church leader

You may be asking questions like:

What is the best way to live stream a church service?
How do I setup a live church stream?
How can I stream my church service for free?
How do I watch live streaming?
What are the best live streaming services?
Should I take my church services online?

We will touch on some of these and additional topics in this guide.

In this guide to church live-streaming we'll cover:

Virtual Community Tools
For Smaller Gatherings
For Larger Gatherings
Virtual Ministry Practices
Bonus: The Coronavirus (COVID-19) tool kit for pastors

Let's jump in...

1. Virtual/Digital Community Tools

Several live streaming services and virtual church community tools exist which enable your church to produce a full and engaging virtual church service through an online platform.

Here, we’re going to unpack what those tools are, what kinds of churches would be best suited for each tool, and how your church can leverage their capabilities not only to survive during the coronavirus outbreak but to thrive as well.

But first, it’s important to note one tool that every church should be using for their virtual service: the church app.

That may sound insane, but church apps are widely misunderstood and misused. More than that, not all church apps are equal. When I say that your church should use a church app for your virtual service (eg. online church services), I mean that you need a church app equipped with the necessary features to live stream video and accommodate inter-personal messaging and tithing during the service.

For this, look no further than the Tithe.ly Church App. It can handle embedded church live-streaming. It has the most straightforward, easy to use, advanced and customizable giving solution among church apps. If you’re looking for an all-in-one, best in class church app for a very low price, your first action should be to get a Tithe.ly Church App for your church here: get.tithe.ly/church-app.

2. Virtual/Digital Community Tools For Smaller Gatherings

If you have smaller gatherings, certain virtual church tools are better suited for your needs. The tools below serve smaller churches best, but they also have helpful applications in larger churches for their smaller events and gatherings.

Zoom for church live streaming

Zoom is the best tool for organizing virtual video conference meetings among church staff. It can't also be used for live streaming services to Facebook Live or YouTube Live. Simply download the software for free, create an account (you can even log in through Google), and Zoom enables you to host meetings of up to 100 people, with a 40-minute limit on group meetings. If you pay a small fee ($15–20/mo), you can gain access to other features such as custom URLs, 24-hour meeting limits, etc.

Simply press “Schedule Meeting” on the home screen of your app, select the guests you’d like to invite, and press “Send to recipients.” It will then send all guests a Google Calendar invitation and, when they accept the invitation, an event will automatically populate the guests’ Google Calendars with a link that will take them right to the meeting.

You can also choose to have Google Calendar send reminders to your guests before a meeting starts.

This technology would best serve the small group ministry and, on a very low budget for a small church to run their online church services, could be the video platform that a church uses to host its Sunday service. However, I recommend using a more involved live-streaming service for the service itself, as Zoom is not a live-streaming platform but a video chat platform. I’ll survey those products more below.

YouTube for church live streaming

YouTube is a fantastic tool to live-stream your virtual church Sunday service. We'll get to more advanced tools below, but if all your church is looking for is a video live-streaming tool, look no further than YouTube Live.

If you have a young YouTube channel, your best option is to live stream your church services with a webcam such as a Mevo Plus.

Once you have your camera setup plugged into your computer, all you need to do to live stream is follow these steps:

• Open up YouTube on your computer.

• Confirm that your channel is verified and that you have no live stream restrictions in the last 90 days.

• Click this icon in the top right corner of your screen:

• Click Go Live.

• At the top, select Webcam.

• Enter a title and description, and select a privacy setting. You can also schedule your live stream for a later date.

• Click More options > Advanced Settings for more settings.

• Click Save. Your camera will then take a thumbnail.

• Click Go Live.

• When you’re done virtual church streaming, click End Stream at the bottom. All streams under 12 hours will be automatically archived. You can access previous, current, and upcoming streams in the Live Tab.

In order to stream your service on Mobile, watch this video for straightforward instructions:

Facebook Live for church live streaming

Church live stream through Facebook Live is extremely simple to use for streaming ministry.

In order to set up your church service to stream through Facebook Live, watch this excellent and brief tutorial:

Christian World Media for church live streaming

Christian World Media is a fantastic virtual church live stream service for churches. Their team is highly dedicated to ministry. Our team has seen them work with churches to find a price point that works for them. Their commitment to serving churches permeates their business practices, and smaller churches would do well to use them to host their video live-streams.

3. Virtual/Digital Community Tools For Larger Gatherings

Google Chat for interactive church live streaming

Google recently announced that users who subscribe to their Education services now have free access to their advanced Google Hangout tools, which enables video hangouts of up to 250 people and live-streaming to up to 100,000 people.

Google Hangouts is a far inferior service to Zoom, but if you are trying to set up a live meeting with more than 250 people, it can handle your volume-related needs in a pinch.

ChurchStreaming.tv for church live streaming

ChurchStreaming.tv is a premium church live-streaming service that would be a high price-point for smaller churches. However, they are currently offering 30 days free.

Their features include no contract, embeddable anywhere (including your church app), live support, viewer analytics, video replay, video trimming, audio extraction (so you can publish the audio to a live radio channel), and many more.

4. Virtual/Digital Ministry Practices

Communicate

Excellence, specificity, and brevity are critical elements of a successful communication plan when it comes to mobilizing your church or small group on a virtual platform.

Make sure that everyone is tuned into the right channels—whether that is a private email list, church app messaging group, a private Facebook group (you can still use Facebook Live in private group), or text messaging thread. Once you have communicated that information to everyone on the list, make sure to send all necessary communications through that channel. A critical part of effective virtual church.

Instruct everyone to mute

During a virtual meeting, it’s tempting to have everyone “unmuted” to foster participation. However, this can easily devolve into a cacophony. Instead of leaving it open, instruct participants to press “mute” at the beginning of the meeting so that only the person speaking can be heard. This prevents distracting background noise from interrupting a participant who is sharing in the meeting.

Set a strict outline for the meeting

It’s easy for virtual video chats to devolve into chaos with everyone speaking over each other. One way to mitigate against this is to set up rules for interacting. In a small group context, this would look like opening your meeting with a brief explanation of how people should conduct themselves on video calls, the structure of the meeting, and when it is appropriate to speak.

You may choose to include a time of personal sharing, during which it would be best to have prepared an ordered list of participants. Share that list with the participants, and during time blocks in which people “go around the circle” to share, the participants will simply follow the order of that list.

Over to you

While the tone of the coronavirus conversation is panic, your church’s conversion to a virtual model using Facebook Live, Zoom or another platform, actually communicates significant confidence and competence. If a church is in panic, it may shut down all services and staff production immediately.

When you shift to a virtual church option, you communicate your team’s continued commitment to the work of your church and your belief that this crisis is merely a season that will be resolved.
Set an example for your church of what it looks like to walk through this coronavirus scare in faith. They will be inspired by your continued church production work in the virtual space, and may perhaps even be prompted to switch to a safer virtual model in their own professional and social contexts.

Coronavirus tool kit for pastors and church leaders:

AUTHOR

Tithely

https://tithely.com

Tithely provides the tools you need to engage with your church online, stay connected, increase generosity, and simplify the lives of your staff.

With tools like text and email messaging, custom church apps and websites, church management software, digital giving, and so much more… it’s no wonder why over 37,000 churches in 50 countries trust Tithely to help run their church.

During the coronavirus outbreak, your church leadership team is left to figure out how to lead your congregation, how to continue the fellowship of believers, and how to continue ministering to your community as a virtual church in a safe and effective way.

There are certain ministry contexts in which physical gathering and physical touch are more common. Small group meetings are one of those kinds of gatherings. People hug, shake hands, share food, and pass germs.

Should you cancel small group?
Should you cancel church?
Should you let people do whatever they want?

Here, we’re going to unpack the basic tools for, church live stream, virtual church (like online giving for church) and principles that will help you make the best decision for your church—one which maximizes your ministry impact and keeps your congregation as physically safe as possible. Plus, you'll likely take away a few key tips for live streaming church service.