And We're Live!

As we announced in yesterday's service, beginning on Palm Sunday, we will live stream our morning worship service on Facebook. What does this mean? It means a video feed of the stage area will be broadcast on Facebook in real time, and the video will also be recorded and saved on the church's page so you can watch it again later. Sermon audio will continue to be stored on the church website, but video will appear on Facebook.

Why are we doing this? After all, I personally have a face for radio. Why stream live video? Several reasons. First, it lets those at home who can't make it to the church worship with us. That goes for shut-ins, those in the hospital, college students, you name it. Second, and more importantly, it's a proven tool for church growth that requires very little extra effort on our part. All someone has to do is poke a couple of buttons, and suddenly we can reach hundreds of homes in our community. Younger people like checking out a church online before visiting in person, so this helps them know who we are. Even older folks enjoy watching services from other churches, and this enables those other people to watch us. The more they see of us, the bigger the chance they'll show up one week -- and decide to stay.

Even though other churches, even those in our area, do this, it's new to us, and I know new can be scary. But nothing will change during the service; you'll never notice anything else is going on. It's outreach for the twenty-first century: instead of knocking on doors, we're sending the church service straight into their homes. It's a great way to invite them to join us face to face!