How to virtualize Church Service

[Archaea]

My pastors asked a small group of us parishioners to think about how we could have Church online in the Coronovirus wave.
Skype, Facebook Live, etc. probably less than 100 people.

Looking for suggestions to explore, as this is not my wheelhouse.

 

[primetime]

My pastors asked a small group of us parishioners to think about how we could have Church online in the Coronovirus wave.
Skype, Facebook Live, etc. probably less than 100 people.

Looking for suggestions to explore, as this is not my wheelhouse.

FB live would work just fine IMO....Or really any of them but i figure most are familiar with FB

 

[kennyluu87]

If you're looking for a free service. I would use Zoom (https://zoom.us/pricing). If you need more then 100 participants. Then you may need to purchase a service. There are also open source software you can use. It really depends on what your needs are. Facebook live is also another option as stated above.

 

[Ultra-m-a-n]

I would suggest Facebook live as well. Since most people have Facebook, its easy to do announcements and updates for people, also the service/sermon would be archived as well.

Currently at our church, one of the guys uses a smartphone with a clip on zoom lens that is on a tripod. For audio he has one of the audio outputs on the soundboard to go from a TS to 3 pole adaptor for phone input.

Works out pretty well for a system that was super cheap and easy to set up.

 

[Archaea]

What do you mean by church service? Everyone interacting with each other like bible study? Conference call type stuff? Or just watching?

If you're already doing youtube broadcast, you could just have preachers and singers come over and stream like regular service, but everyone will be watching on youtube instead of being physically present in church.

Probably broadcasting the sermon is most important. They want a static url we can provide for the services and something like facebook live is probably dynamic/point in time.
That zoom service might be a good start at $15 a month

 

[Ultra-m-a-n]

Probably broadcasting the sermon is most important. They want a static url we can provide for the services and something like facebook live is probably dynamic/point in time.
That zoom service might be a good start at $15 a month

I use Zoom in a church setting for conference calls for planning meeting. I live in Hawaii and some of my team are on other islands.

The main problem is that people have to download the Zoom client in order to join in as well.
A meeting number is generated, and it is also password protected. It is great for meetings and interaction, and was honestly built for that, things like the camera feed goes to the participant who is talking, a nice chat function, the ability to record the meeting ect.

If you are worried about Facebook being too dynamic, just give them your church's facebook URL, and everyone knows when the service starts....

Youtube's live streaming works well, but we found that Facebook is easiest...

 

[Ultra-m-a-n]

What about archiving? How easy is it to locate a service in facebook feed? Do you need to keep scrolling until you find it?

I haven't used fb for a while, so I have no clue how it works. Utube is probably easier to organize.

When you visit a facebook profile, there should be a little section where all of the videos are posted. So once the Live stream ends, it get stuck there.

If possible I would try to do both Facebook and Youtube.

I hate using Facebook as well, and I deleted mine years ago, but it does have its place. Just because you and I don't use it, does not mean that the vast majority of people are off of FB as well.
Facebook has the widest adoption and most of the over 50 year olds I know are also using Facebook.

 

[Monkey34]

FB live works. A quick and dirty setup can be done straight from a phone on a tripod, but a bit better setup would be a digital camcorder feeding the video to a computer, with the mic jack fed from the soundboard.

The camcorder/mic into a computer would also work for youtube .....a free software option would be OBS Studio.

 

[Monkey34]

Even better can be done with 3 cameras on motorized gimbals, fed into a switcher with elgato, broadcasting to utube. one man octopus genius operator bro.

I'm sure. I was guessing the need was fast/simple/cheap, but who knows? Some good options here.