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I’m sure the question has crossed your mind. Why would a church need to live stream? In this post, I am going to give you 5 reasons why you should be live streaming your church services.
We are in the digital age. With more and more people having access to things digitally from magazines to music, to movies, the same thing is true for church. As someone who is heavily involved in their community as an assistant pastor, media director, and children’s pastor, the need to be online is great. Since sometimes for my job, pre-pandemic era, I needed to travel to trade shows or the home office. When that happens, how can you stay connected with what is going on at your home church while you’re sitting in an airport? If your church is streaming, you can still feel connected, even though your miles apart! This is my reason number 1.
An audience outside the four walls of the church
One of the greatest things you as a house of worship are supposed to do is take the message outside the four walls of the church. What better way to do that, then to stream online? It’s part of the great commission after all! With technology where it is today, YOU can control the message. You can reach an audience on a cell phone, tablet, computer, or any other technical device for a fraction of the cost of cable networks. You also now gain a “worldwide” audience. How cool is that? Truly getting your message out to “all the world.” This is my reason number 2
Finances
From tithes to offerings to fundraisers, now you can link PayPal on your website or Facebook and help grow your church financially. If you have an audience and they consider you their home church, even though they are in another country, they want to help support you financially. This enables you to upgrade equipment and make the experience that much better. Maybe even offer a fundraiser to enhance the online experience. Don’t underestimate the power of online communities. We see new Kick Starters every day. There is nothing wrong with the church having the ability to raise funds through live streams to better the live stream. This is my reason number 3.
Community
Everyone today has a smartphone or tablet, even if they don’t have a computer. Sometimes folks in your community can’t get to your service due to illness, or frequent hospital visits or weather depending on the time of year. So, this is a great way to continue building community and keep those who can’t physically be in the building, connected. It’s all about establishing, building, and keeping connections with people. So, if you can reach them where they are at, it adds to the benefits of streaming. In our church, we don’t give out physical media anymore. We stopped giving out CD’s about 5 years ago after we switched to thumb drives. We recently stopped with thumb drives 2 years ago. Now all services are archived for the community on our website, YouTube, Facebook, iTunes, and a host of other great platforms. This is my reason number 4.
Growth
My final reason is Growth. The reason I say growth is because most people will visit your church online before they visit your church physically. They will check out how your church is online through your website, previous messages, kids’ church, youth group, facilities, by the videos you provide online. I can’t tell you how many people started coming to our church because of the videos we posted online from the live streams. When asked how they heard about our church, the answers were, “I looked for churches locally online, when yours came up, I searched it on Facebook and saw your videos. We showed our kids the kids’ ministry and they said they wanted to go there. We loved the archive messages.” This is your digital resume. People today know if you’re being fake. If you can show them what your church is like, they will know your church is not putting on an act for them because they are new.
Conclusion
Taking the plunge online can be both costly and scary. Scary to the point of not knowing how to do it. That’s why we have a great host of posts on this blog to assist you with this very thing. I encourage you to check out more and learn how you can get your church… online!
To learn more about Telestream desktop products, click here.