online campus

It's more than just a phone on a tripod.

To effectively do church online, you need to recreate the entire experience of being in a church service for people at home, watching on their TVs, phones, or computers. It takes a coordinated strategy. You need the right equipment, but you also need the right people in the right places.

Building Community

Pastors and ministry leaders have a lot invested in their church community, and we know it. We’ve built and led teams as key volunteers and as church staff for over eight years. When our circumstances change, as they are right now due to COVID-19, it takes an extra effort on our part to maintain the connectedness we’ve grown accustomed to. As leaders, the brunt of that push must come from us. Here are some things you can do to help maintain – and even grow – the love and fellowship you’ve worked so hard to foster.

1. Lead Your Leaders

Maintain contact with your staff and key leaders under your direct authority, whether that’s by phone, text, email, FaceTime, Skype, carrier pigeon, etc. You should be in touch every few days at least.

2. Let Your Leaders Lead

Encourage your leaders to do what you are doing – reaching out to their volunteers and church members in their departments. If you’re part of a large church, reproduce this concept all the way down the line. The people you’re staying in touch with need to be staying in touch with people they’re in contact with on a weekly basis. If you have small groups, you should already be used to doing this.

3. Stay on Message

Even if you’re not all meeting together in a single building, you can still all be together. The fundamentals of Christian life don’t change just because our circumstances do. It’s important to remind your congregation that the mission of the Church has not changed and that fellowship, prayer, and teaching still work! We should approach an online service with the same enthusiasm and a live service. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever!

4. Implement Systems That Work

If you need help developing, organizing, or coordinating teams or small groups, click the button below to contact us. Helping churches is what we do!

USING TECHNOLOGY

No matter what your budget, there is an option to take your church services online. Even if you are, actually, just putting a phone on a tripod, we can help you do it right. With years of experience running church media departments, we’re versed in producing everything from a single smartphone shoot, to a pro-level multi-camera setup with broadcast-quality gear that takes a dozen people to run. Along the way we’ve picked up tremendous experience and knowledge of everything available to produce a live service. Whether you need a $200 setup, or a $200,000 setup, we can spec it out, put it together, and teach you and your people how to not just use it, but be awesome at it.

We can custom-design a broadcast packed to meet your needs, your teams, and your budget. These tools are vital now, and will continue to be valuable for the future. We’ll install – or teach your team to install – everything to get you up and running, and train your team (or even help you build one).

We can help you with graphic design, motion graphics, and video and audio editing, too, to make the most of your new outreach avenue.

Just add you. We’ll help you get the Message out, and keep your community engaged, no matter how you’re meeting together. Contact us by clicking the button below to get started!

Our Heritage

Service Plan

Based on our experience, here's what we suggest

There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all service plan, but this is – in a nutshell – what we’ve found works best. We’ve successfully engaged hundreds of people a week online using this pattern.

Pre-game

Have your online community crew pray ready to go ten minutes before service starts.
Start your broadcast with a countdown pre-roll to give people time to join, if your setup supports it.
Switch to live (or start your stream if you can’t switch) at your official service start time. If you start at 10:00 AM, then at 10:00 AM your viewers should be seeing your service start!

Worship

Clearly communicate what’s happening. If you don’t have multiple camera angles, your audience will need to be told what’s happening since they may not be able to see it. A little “Let’s worship the Lord together!” goes a long way.
Ask your congregation to invite their friends to join the broadcast.
Mix for your broadcast. If your church is in an area where groups are being asked not to gather, the sound quality of your stream is more important than what it sounds like in the sanctuary. Get your audio engineer a pair of quality headphones if they don’t have them already. If you don’t have a full mixing console, and are live streaming just from a phone or single camera, invest in a quality microphone that will give you the best results.

Message

Stay in frame. If you don’t have a live camera operator or tracking system, you may need to teach or preach sitting down if you tend to move around.
Use inclusive language. Treat your congregation like they’re in front of you, even if they’re on the other side of the internet.
Control dynamics. The human ear adapts more quickly to live sound than it does to reproduced sound. We automatically adjust to whispers and shouting when we’re in the room, but large and frequent swings in volume over streaming lead to lots of frustrating adjustments on the device we’re watching. No one wants to be constantly turning the volume up and down. If you can run dynamics processing on your audio signal, or at least use a compressor on your speaking mic, do it.
Address the camera. If you’re used to look left, look right, look middle, you may need to make some adjustments. Your entire audience is on the other side of that lens.

Pray together

There’s no distance in prayer, right? Lead your congregation in prayer, even if they’re all at home.
Respond to prayer requests if you can. If you’re able to monitor the comments on your live stream, or have someone monitor it for you, pray for those requests. If you have small groups, consider letting your group leaders respond to comments on your behalf.

Remind and Encourage

Remind your audience when and where to catch you next, and what you’ll be preaching if you plan your messages in advance. Generate excitement for the next service.
Ask your congregation to share your live stream and invite their friends to watch the next one.
Encourage your congregation to keep the faith, pray for each other, and love Jesus!

Dismiss

Formerly dismiss, so your viewers know the broadcast is ending.
Stop your stream immediately after dismissal.

If you follow this outline, you’ll be successful at building and maintaining an online campus experience. If you need help with anything, contact us using the form below. We can help you choose and setup equipment, build and inspire teams, troubleshoot technical (and interpersonal!) issues, create and manage Facebook pages, events, and groups, create still and motion graphics for your services and broadcasts, produce videos, handle post-production, oversee your podcast, and much more!