How Can Churches Benefit From Live Streaming?

With the widespread proliferation of the internet and an increasing trend towards live streaming, many non-conventional organizations have jumped on the bandwagon to reach their target audience effectively. Churches top the list, benefitting immensely from live-streaming their religious workshops and ceremonies. It’s the new front porch in the churches’ settings.

Interestingly, churches are not new to media coverage. They have always been at the forefront of broadcasting on television. However, church services are only rarely available on mainstream television channels, which is why it is not so easy to tune in to live church transmissions. Today, with live streaming, churches can broadcast their services in real-time and reap several benefits.

Magnified Outreach: Breaking Through Physical Barriers

Significantly magnified outreach across geographic barriers remains the most prominent benefit of live streaming. At the same time, churches can reach out to the chronically sick and homebound community members through live streaming. That said, they can also conveniently connect with members who have to travel frequently, or are away for vacation, or are enrolled at distant colleges and universities. And most importantly, given the social distancing directives during the current pandemic situation, live streaming facilitates a smooth and seamless flow of church services.

Interestingly, it has become practically possible with the OTT technology to live stream directly from the church’s website. This is a significant achievement as it significantly magnifies the churches’ outreach when they multi-stream on social media channels and their websites. While it becomes effortless to tune into a virtual service, it becomes equally easy to maintain a sense of community and belonging, even when the worshippers cannot be physically together.

Hence, praying and worshipping become virtually possible from anywhere and everywhere. Capitalizing upon the internet’s power to expand their reach exponentially, live streaming allows the churches to deploy ultra-compatible, all-device video players to maximize the outreach. Moreover, since most people prefer to be alone while worshipping, tuning into live streaming church services becomes even more valuable.

Increased Engagement and Community Building

Not to forget, live streaming videos are perhaps the most effective mechanism to get your message across. Reports suggest that people tend to retain 89% of what they watch compared to only 10% of what they read. Hence, live streaming of church services plays a lead role in maximizing religious messages’ engagement, acting as an effective worship and teaching tool. Moreover, these video messages can easily be shared. Statistics suggest that 92% of the people share the videos that they watch on their mobiles.

That said, live streaming also allows the attendees to ask questions in real-time and get responded in real-time. They can type their queries in the comments and seek answers from the mentors within a moment or two. Moreover, there is an added sense of sharing and belongingness when the churches regularly engage with people through live events. Sharing experiences and concerns creates a strong bond between people.

Easy Monetization

You might be wondering how do churches prompt the attendees to offer donations during the live sessions! Collecting donations is way easier and reliable in an online setting than in the conventional physical environment. According to recent reports, over $2.2 billion worth of donations were made in a single year through online transfers. The underlying reason remains that people feel more secure and comfortable in making online payments.

Easy and Affordable: Pre-Recorded Videos

Just in case your church does not want to invest in acquiring the required gear and equipment for live-streaming, or you are too busy to handle the relevant workload, OneStream Live offers a commendably handy feature: Pre-Recorded Live Videos. Using this feature, churches can pre-record their session and broadcast it anytime as an ongoing live session. This way, the churches can even create a replay of their previous services to make sure people who missed it can rejoin in spirit. Interestingly, OneStream Live also allows you to queue your pre-recorded videos into a playlist and schedule it for live streaming at the desired date and time. It’s relatively easy and straightforward. All you need to do is:

• Connect your social media accounts to the OneStream Live dashboard
• Upload pre-recorded videos
• Queue them in your desired order
• Schedule your stream (can be scheduled days in advance)

That’s it! Simple, Cheap, and Effective!

Without a doubt, live streaming has evolved as a highly effective tool to engage with religious communities. A robust and powerful tool like OneStream Live can take the lead in facilitating churches for both real-time broadcasting and scheduling pre-recorded streams across over 45 social media platforms and the church website.

Just sit back and let OneStream Live do the magic!

Written by: Staff Writer | Saba Mohsin