How live-streaming has transformed houses of worship

House of worship streams might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's big business, and has enabled churches to reach congregations even in the middle of a pandemic. Buckle up your private jets.

Traditionally churches have expanded simply by word-of-mouth. Today, the vast diversity of different technology services and equipment have enabled services such as churches to preach their religious services outside the traditional church setting. Thanks to live streaming solutions, churches are now able to share their services such as masses, sermons and other religious services online. This has enabled them to reach a whole new group of audience no matter their location.

A place where believers go to practise their faith - Houses of worship have undergone a change when it comes to their ways of delivering services. Due to multimedia screens and streaming solutions, worshipping is now applicable for a more diverse group of people than ever before. This has opened up not only different ways to practise members’ religion but also multiple income streams. Let’s have a look how houses of worship utilise the live production streams as part of their services.

Live Streaming in Church Services

Faith is an important element to many people’s lives, so finding alternative services for them to worship during the past year has forced the churches to offer new ways for their members to practise their faith. Video, the main communications medium of the new generation, has enabled pastors and other church leaders to broadcast their services remotely to people regardless of their location. This not only allows more people to attend their services, but also allows churches to diversify their means of worshipping. This has suited the current lifestyles where technology-focused communities can still feel part of a religious community without physically attending their services. This means growing numbers of members, young and old, are now able to worship their religion in a way that is more familiar and suitable for other parts of their lives.

One of the most effective types of videos for churches is live streaming. According to Restream, 44% of people prefer to worship alone. These statistics encourage churches to stream their services to members who can do this privately with the ease of the internet connection. These members are as important as attendees since they are even more willing to share their content to the world. Live streaming promotes churches by offering an alternative experience for potential members to see if it's a good fit for them. Especially when churches are trying to reach the younger 18-49 demographic, 80% of them are on YouTube, which makes it a great free platform for churches to stream their services

Starting a video-on-demand channel means that churches can reach new community members online. They can reach potential members without making them feel pressured to commit. By providing alternative ways to worship online, the church can really increase their outreach when it comes to different members. With live streaming, churches can broaden their ways of worshipping by using live streaming tools to host webinars, daily praises, Q&As, other worship sessions or even bible studies. They can even invite other members or guests from around the world to take part of the service. 

One of the largest streaming markets

To make streaming a part of these religious services, reliance is key here. Just like the education market, houses of worship (HoW) are willing to turn to over-the-top live streaming technology to make services and events available over the internet. This is great news for live production manufacturers. Church infrastructures require investment in live production equipment for optimal video transmission to remote, satellite locations, and televised broadcasts. As these churches grow, they need to upgrade and expand their video streaming solutions to fit large scale productions.

How do the churches afford this? Religion receives more charitable donations than any other single category in the United States, and this has been consistently true for the past several years. The percentage of giving religious organisations donations was more than twice as large as the next category of education (Giving USA). The average amount of giving per person in church is $17 per week and the average giving per person in church each year is $884 (Health Research Funding). As these churches have a wide global audience, you make the count. 

As an example, one of the largest congregations in the United States, Lakewood Church is an evangelical non-denominational Christian “megachurch” located in Houston, Texas. To give you the impression of the scale of these megachurches, Lakewood live-stream their church services that occupy about 45,000 attendees on a weekly basis. According to their YouTube channel, more than 10 million viewers watch these weekly inspirational messages through television, and over 60 million people connect within the digital platforms worldwide. To equip the size of this live production, we are looking at major markets for AV-industries. No wonder their senior pastors are preaching their belief from their multi-million dollar mansions.