Feb 23, 2018
by Jeremiah Owen
Ten years ago, thoughts about broadcasting your church service would have involved lots of dollar signs — and some animated discussions about mortgaging the church property! With the advent of Facebook Live, YouTube Live and many other livestream options, the question is more about who will be in charge of setting up a cell phone on a tripod.
Using Facebook
Using Facebook is VERY easy, and often times has the best chance at reaching a large audience (dependent of course on the amount of people you have that “Like” your page). Facebook has the advantage of making your audience “ready-made” and ready to watch. When you begin to stream, Facebook will notify your followers that you have a livestream happening. This is a great feature that helps people get notified when you are live! To stream on Facebook Live, here is a great guide on how to get up and running: Stream Your Church Services with Facebook Live (https://churchtechtoday.com/2017/06/21/stream-church-services-facebook-live/)
Using YouTube
Using YouTube is a great option for livestreaming as well. YouTube will also notify your subscribers that you are live. The main knock against YouTube Live would be that it does require you to develop an audience on that platform — something that you may already have in place on Facebook. Regardless, it’s a great platform to stream and the price, like Facebook, is very economical, depending on how you want to approach it. To stream on YouTube, here is a good starter guide: Church Edit | Church Websites | Live streaming using YouTube (http://www.churchedit.co.uk/website-tips/church-video/live-streaming-using-youtube/)
Other Options
Of course, there is more than one way to stream your church service, and depending on your church’s goals or audience, some of the options include Livestream.com or Sermon.net (among others). I would encourage you to research each option and find the best fit for your church’s needs. It’s incredible that we can now reach people with the Gospel using high quality video for fractions of a fraction of what it used to cost — and those people can be thousands of miles away! What a time to be alive!
