Live Stream Your Church

Sound

Your audio needs to come straight into your camera or the device managing the stream. If you have a soundboard and microphones, you should get your audio directly from there. If you are using a product like Mevo or a small camera at the front of your congregation, that may be enough to pick up the audio for your stream.

Your Crew

You’ll also need to think about who can operate the equipment. Your house of worship may have a tech or A/V team, but if not you’ll need a dedicated group of volunteers who all understand how to operate the equipment and share the streams. Depending on your setup, it should be easy to teach anyone to use. Later in this guide we’ll walk through some common workflows and volunteering arrangements that allow houses of worship to stream consistently with ease.

Streaming Options

Once you have your streaming setup, you can decide how you want to stream. There are many platforms and providers for houses of worship at a range of costs. Livestream has more house of worship customers than any other industry, and our house of worship experts work with worship teams, pastors, and faith-based production teams every day to find the right streaming solutions for their budgets and goals.

Many churches are streaming on Facebook Live for free, but this limits your options when it comes to bringing in revenue from streaming personal ceremonies like weddings. Additionally, Facebook Live limits the length of your stream, which may cut your service or study group broadcast short. When you host your stream on your own site, you drive traffic and pageviews to where people can explore other information and remain engaged. You also have more options in terms of capturing contact information, donations, and other information from prospective congregants.

Unlike other services, Livestream is a flat-rate provider, so you’ll never be charged extra for more viewers or the amount of time your audience watches. Whether you’re a small, tight-knit church community or a massive temple, mosque, mega-church, there is a livestreaming solution that will fit your needs and budget and help you reach more followers.

Spreading the Word

Once you’ve selected a streaming platform, you want to make sure you get the word out about your livestreaming services in your worship community. Livestream offers a feature that allows your audience to sign up for notifications directly on the site. That way every time you post a new stream, they will be automatically notified via email with no effort on your end. Many houses of worship also use email, newsletters, and social media to share their streams and grow their community. Livestreaming is a great way for new community members to “try out” your house of worship when looking for a new congregation.

Donations + Growth

Livestream also offers a feature called Audience Booster that allows you to turn your worship videos into native ads on websites like USAToday, MSN.com, and ESPN and guarantees a certain audience viewership “boost” based on your budget.

Many houses of worship also use their livestream portal to solicit donations. If your church offers weddings, baptisms, funerals or other facility rentals, you can sell packages with a live video option so friends and family around the world can share in the moment. Currently, Livestream Enterprise customers can solicit donations through their Livestream account page or in their video embed on their website. Anyone watching their live services will be able to easily donate right where they watch.