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| Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay |
Over the last week I've been watching as churches are moving to worshiping online in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic.
We are fortunate that we live in a time when we have an option of something to do. However, there is a caution. The predominant form of online worship that I've seen come up is a move to live-streaming.
The idea behind this is good. It seeks to maintain as much of the regular worship experience as it can. That's a good move. With live streaming you can still worship at the same time, you can know that you are worshiping with others even if you aren't physically present. It also can convey as much of the feeling of being at home church as possible.
The trouble is that that is something that I would only recommend churches who have the technological infrastructure already in place to do. We think that we can just live stream and things will be okay, or at least as okay as they can be. Going live on Facebook feels like it is easy, but I've seen a lot of bad Facebook live events from a lot of churches.
Take Into Account
When doing anything video related online, there are some things to remember. The most important thing is size and distance. You have to take into consideration the size of the screen someone may be watching the video on, and the distance from the camera to what is being captured on video.When taking video of what is happening at worship you want the video to feel like you are in the room watching it live. So if you are recording from a pew, you have to factor in the distance from the pew to the chancel or stage area, plus the distance from the viewer to the screen, and then factor in the size of the screen. As screens get smaller, the distance gets bigger. What you don't want is for someone to feel like they are watching your service from the nosebleed section at Arrowhead Stadium.
How you respond to that is that you get the camera as close as you can. Most of us will probably only use one camera so you want to place it in one place. If you move while you preach or if you are capturing a larger gathering of folks to provide music, then set your distance so that you get everyone in the recording, or so that you don't accidentally walk out of the video.
Also, make sure that you are in a place with good light. Some of our sanctuaries have okay light for Sunday morning services, but it will show up darker on video. If you can add extra light, then that would be good. If you can change your camera settings to add extra backlight, that's good too. You want people to be able to see you!
Finally, when watching a video, you don't want your audience to be either looking up at you, or down at you. As much as possible, you'll want your recording device to be level with the area that it is recording. One of the few advantages that you'll have if worship is cancelled is that you can set up a tripod or stand to hold a camera anywhere you want because it won't be in the way.
Do I Go Live?
The information from before is good for any video recording. Beyond that, the next big question you have to ask is if you go live or you work with recordings.Recently, over at Hacking Christianity, they went over what it takes to do live streaming. One of the biggest areas of concern is copyright. The good news is that many places are making it easier. One License has a special offer during the Covid-19 situation that makes their service free. Others are following suit. For United Methodists, portions of the Book of Worship have been granted temporary permission to post, but read the fine print.
My biggest piece of advice is that if you have the capabilities to do live streaming, then that could be a good choice. However, I don't think that is the best choice for most churches. Having a screen that conveys our worship experience introduces a problem. We are not physically present in the worship space. The ability to engage with the service is diluted, even if you have a great worship team and great musicians. Its not the same. Live streaming can only go so far in recreating the worship experience.
My preference, and what my church will be doing if the need arises, is using a mixed media approach. We can't recreate the physical presence of the church, and we shouldn't try. We can engage with our people by helping them to lead their own worship.
My Plan
For a while now, I've been putting up an ebulletin on our church website. You can find it by clicking the link, and in the future you should be able to find examples of what I'll be describing below. You can set this up so that you can embed YouTube videos in a blog post on a website, or you can include links to click on in an email that you send out. It all depends on the options that you have. You can even include all of this information in a Facebook post if you want. They will handle multiple links. If you don't have one, now would be a time to set up an easy blog, website, or facebook page to handle what you're doing.I will be building on that structure. The order of service will look much like it does in our regular bulletin. On that ebulletin I'll be putting instructions for how you can have worship at home by yourself or as a family. The key is that you want folks to be able to participate in worship. You can't break the barrier of the screen, but you can get around it by including others. It could be as simple as having someone read scripture, and could include having someone offer a prayer. This includes offering prayer requests, and joys and concerns as well. This is for both the family that has gathered, and also you can set up a Google Form to easily send prayer requests to your church. If you want a copy of this, let me know and I'll send you one.
For music, you can include links for YouTube videos of hymns or songs. There's a lot out there that include the lyrics on the video. The key things I look for are that the videos are in high definition, and that the song actually sounds good. There's a lot of junk when you start looking for YouTube videos, but you can find good ones.
There are a few things that I plan to record and then upload. One is a sermon. This can be a full length sermon, whatever you want. You may also want to upload a benediction, or a pastoral prayer, and also some sort of welcome and opening prayer for your service. For me, I'll upload those separately, and then include them on a playlist with the songs. This way you can also embed them in a blog post, or have a link for them in an email or facebook post.
To do this most easily you need to have a YouTube account either for yourself or your church. I would recommend your church, but either will do.
I also know that many people, myself included, would prefer to watch the videos on something larger than a phone or laptop. Many also either have a smart TV or something like a Roku or Chromecast. When you have all of your videos uploaded to YouTube, then you can create a playlist with the videos in order. Through the YouTube app on your TV/Roku/etc you can search for your channel and pull up the correct playlist. That way as you go through the service you can participate, watch the videos (and sing with the music).
To make that work well, you'll want to have an easy name for your channel. Either your name, or the name of your church. If you have a common church name, be sure to add your town or community to the name. Like Wesley Church in Dogpatch MO, or wherever you are. Also, be sure to add a tag to your videos when you upload them that include your church name. This makes it easier to find you on YouTube.
Once I have my first service put together, I'll add the link here.
Another Option
What I've just described takes some work and more resources than some of us have. Another option is to put together a prayer, scripture reading, and message in one video and post that. When you send that link out, include a description of how to use that at home.If you are using this route, it also becomes very easy to add this to Facebook. You can add the instructions in the description and upload the video directly to Facebook.
What You Need
The good news is that if you have a smart phone, then you can do all of this with that. You can take video and trim it very easily from a phone. That's what I do with a lot of mine. For Android phones, I use the InShot app, and it does a good job.To add to that, you can get small microphones off of Amazon that pick up audio better and that plug into your phone. A tripod will also help set your camera where you want it.
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