CSL 011 – Learn to Live Stream your Church Services on Zero Budget and No Technical Skills

Isabelle Faletti (00:00:50):

Hello? Hello and welcome. We are so excited to be the live stream today. I’m looking forward to talking about all kinds of fun things on this live stream. So again, thanks for joining us on the live stream. If you are new to ChurchSpring Live events that we’re doing, my name is Isabelle. I’m part of the customer happiness team. And my goal is to make our customers happy and that truly is my goal. And then with me, we have Rohn Gibson, our one of our co-founders at ChurchSpring.

Rohn Gibson (00:01:24):

Good morning, everyone excited to jump in. We have got a ton to cover today.

Isabelle Faletti (00:01:29):

Yeah, we do. We sure do. Yes. it looks like we already have a lot of live attendees. That is awesome. If you have not already introduce yourself make sure to comment below with your church name and where you’re from. You will need to give Stream Yard access so that we can display it. Like we’re able to display Douglas welcome Douglas from my little sister’s from Omaha. So always, always love to see people coming, coming from Omaha, Feel a kinship with you guys there. So while you were introducing yourself in the comments below, I did want to welcome a few new members that we have to the ChurchSpring family. So welcome Hickory Valley community church from Chattanooga, Tennessee. We have penny Baptist church from Cordell, Georgia. If you’re listening Penia Baptist church, I’m not sure if I’m saying that, that city, right? So I’m sorry if I’m not. And then we also have Unified Fellowship, Community Baptist Church from Midfield, Alabama. So those are just a couple of new churches that we have that have joined the family. And we just, we, we love seeing when we get new churches to the family, because that means we’re able to help out yet another church, another segment of the body reach their community and grow their church. And that’s why we exist at ChurchSpring.

Rohn Gibson (00:02:57):

So let’s go ahead and just go down through. We’ve got MK joining us from Pleasant Grove, Tabernacle, Brooklyn, New York, again, man, everything in me wants to break out the New York accent, but I’m just not going to hear that.

Isabelle Faletti (00:03:12):

Especially from Brooklyn,

Rohn Gibson (00:03:15):

We got a Reverend Christina M. Dennis. So the fact that your image is showing up here says you’ve done what you need to do to get Stream Yard access. So you are all squared away. Larry Evans, welcome. Glad to have you here. Larry from FBC Cloud Croft, New Mexico, New Mexico is beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful. Got a couple others here. New Unity Baptist church from Baltimore, Maryland. I’ve got 28 people on right now. We’re just getting started. Johnny,

Isabelle Faletti (00:03:49):

Reverend John, and I we’ve been going, we’ve been communicating this week on support tickets. So, and he, he told me that he was going to attend. Today’s live stream. So great to see you here today, Johnny.

Rohn Gibson (00:04:01):

Yes, we’ve got Carol. There’s a familiar name. Welcome back. Glad you’re here. Let me keep scrolling through, we shared this one earlier, but I don’t think we gave her a shout out. So welcome Sheila. Hopefully that’s pronouncing that right? Glad you’re here. Let’s see. Benjamin, Benjamin. That’s awesome. Welcome. We’re glad you’re here from not too far from me

Isabelle Faletti (00:04:27):

I went to school in St. Paul. I’m just feeling all kinds of connections with people today. Is anybody from Colorado that’s listening? That’s where I’m based. So we just have all my favorite States here.

Rohn Gibson (00:04:39):

Awesome man, such a good, such a good turnout this morning. Super, super happy. Just a couple more. Again, welcome Reverend Christina. I think maybe we mentioned from Ann Arbor Michigan, man. I so badly want to start talking about Ohio state football and Michigan football, but I’m not going to I’ll digress. And last one here, actually speaking of Ohio, welcome Matthew from Salem, CAS UMC in Finley that’s that’s Northern Ohio up there. So Findlay, Ohio. We used to play soccer tournaments there when I was in high school. So that’s good. I’m glad we got a laugh that, okay. Good. Good. So you understand, you understand the football thing, Ohio State and I shouldn’t actually call them Michigan it’s they call them the team up North that’s how much of a rivalry anyway, I said I digress, then I go right back to it because I am so excited about college football. Literally almost put a couple of Ohio state football jerseys up behind me. Just because they released the football schedule yesterday. If you are a college football fan, you gotta like represent your team in the comments here. Some people are like, I don’t even like college football.

Isabelle Faletti (00:05:51):

So basically, we, we could be just loosing live stream watchers here if they are one of your rivals- is what I’m hearing That Rohn with ChurchSpring.

Rohn Gibson (00:06:01):

Potentially! Awesome. All right. Well, we have gotten a ton and literally we jumped on 30 minutes before we go live and we added stuff. So we’ve got a lot to cover. So are you all ready to jump in? Give us a yes. In the comments, if you are ready to get this party started on all things live streaming today, we’re going to have a lot of fun.

Isabelle Faletti (00:06:22):

Yeah. For those of you who are new to ChurchSpring. So maybe this is the first time that you’ve heard of ChurchSpring. You just kind of stumbled across us. Uwelcome for one thing we’re really excited to have you here. Uso ChurchSpring, we help churches build intuitive and affordable frustration, free websites. Unice and simple. That is our goal. Uso again, thanks for joining us today for ChurchSpring Live. We know that,uyou have a very busy schedule being in church ministry in, in ministry in general. So thanks for taking this time here. UI am very excited to talk about today’s topic. Mmm. It’s very relevant to our current,uw w what the pandemic going on right now. Uand so, I mean, with COVID-19 impacting in-person gatherings and church gatherings live streaming your sermons. It really has never been more important than it is right now.

Isabelle Faletti (00:07:16):

So it can be overwhelming to some, so no matter what your technical abilities may be, or your a budget, even if it’s zero, you have a zero budget for live streaming that’s okay. You actually can live stream your services. So Ryan and I, we are going to just give you some gold and share some tips and resources of how resources of how you can actually live stream. Being on the customer happiness team, we talk a lot with our, our customers about how to launch their live streaming. And it, it can be overwhelming to some who are new. So I’m going to have to hold myself back today, Rohn, and, and just made me stay focused and equip.

Rohn Gibson (00:07:59):

Yeah. So this is going to be great. So I’m just, I’m busting up. So our co-founder Mike, just put, Go Raiders. You’re from Southern California. You don’t want to come to college football teams. So he put go Raiders, and then we’ve got some, a little bit of smack talk, and I know it’s in love from Matt Miller here. So anyway how you doing Matt? Pastor Matt? It’s good to see you here, brother. All right. Anyway, little fun in the comments. So I was going to say get ready because we’re going to interact and engage with you today, but you’re already on it. A bunch of overachievers watching on the live stream today. So we are just pumped to have you all here. If you do have questions as we go through, please post those in the comments like you’re doing already. So this is the beginning of a multi-part again, series.

Rohn Gibson (00:08:53):

All right. So our goal today going to be really the basics of live streaming. So if there are questions that come in that are more advanced, we’ll do our best to answer as many of those, but we’re going to hold those until the end. So we can really stay on point related to the basics of live streaming and how to do that with a very, very well zero to limited budget. So again, help us spread the word. We want to get this content into as many people’s hands as possible. Again, this is free. So whether you use ChurchSpring or not, it doesn’t matter. We just want to add value to the church. So if you can help us spread the word, if there’s a friend that maybe goes to your church, that you would really love them to either listen to the live stream or even follow up afterwards and watch the replay, please go ahead and tag them. You can share this. All the things do, all the things, all the social media sharing. There you go.

Isabelle Faletti (00:09:44):

You sound so young and hip with that. Rohn, do all the things,

Rohn Gibson (00:09:51):

Do all the things. Shout from the mountain tops. Do all the things. So, and then lastly don’t feel like you have to take tons of notes during this. We are going to post the show notes as well as the video recording of this. So you can always go back, check it out again, and then check out the show notes. We’re going to, we’re going to talk about resources. We’re going to share the links. All of that will be in the show notes. So don’t feel like if you don’t get it live, that you’re never going to be able to get it. You are absolutely going to be able to get it. And we’re going to actually take the notes for you. So for those that want to go back and check it out, you can check it out churchspring.com/CSL for ChurchSpring Live. So CSL zero one, one. 11 episodes, 11 weeks, 11.

Isabelle Faletti (00:10:38):

We haven’t scared people away, too bad. They have no idea what’s in store for them. Right? Wow. Well, I mean, we are already getting some questions Rohn. So this is going to be a great, great, great episode. I mean, like I’d mentioned before, live streaming your services, it really is one of the most important ways that you can pandemic proof your ministry. But I mean, live streaming can be really, really overwhelming. And if you’re honest with yourself, maybe, maybe feeling, yep. I’ve got just kind of a tight chest and just some anxiety when I think about live streaming, because I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to start this. So I have a question for you. Have you ever felt confused or overwhelmed trying to figure out how to live stream your church services, if you have felt confused about how to live stream type yes. In the comments below, so type yes. If you’ve ever felt confused about how to live stream and you’ll probably find, I mean, you will find that you’re not the only one who has felt overwhelmed or just confused about

Rohn Gibson (00:11:47):

I’m going to type yes. In the comments. Cause I’ve been there. I felt overwhelmed. Yes.

Isabelle Faletti (00:11:54):

I mean, even this week we were talking with a member at ChurchSpring who sent us an, a ticket asking about Facebook live and some copyright issues. And I brought in the whole team, I brought you, Rohn. I brought Mike in and we kind of bounced around a couple of a couple ideas. So yeah, I felt even overwhelmed with live streaming. So I’ve learned a lot, even as Rohn, as we’ve went through this, the, the prepping for this. So yeah. And it looks like we’re not the only ones Rohn. We have Wallace he’s felt overwhelmed. Netta she’s felt overwhelmed, Sheila. Yes. Yep. Well, you’re in the perfect place because it, Rohn and I, we are going to walk through the top 10 ingredients that you need to live stream your services. You can live stream again with zero budget and no tech skills.

Isabelle Faletti (00:12:42):

So we want you to leave this light event so that you can go live, stream your own services with the confidence and the knowledge to start live streaming. So as Rohn mentioned, this is part one of a four part series that we’ll be doing over the next couple of weeks. So today we are going to start with the very basic, so more of the foundational principles that you need to start live streaming. So I know that we’ve already had a couple of questions come in that maybe not so beginning some more intermediate we will come back to those questions at the end of this, of our segment here. So we’ll answer them at the end. So keep your questions coming. Again, if they are more of maybe next weeks, then we’ll try to answer them at the end or we’ll add them into next week’s schedule. So keep the questions coming. Okay. Are you ready to learn about live streaming? Everybody who’s listening. We have so many live listeners. This is awesome. If you’re ready to learn about live streaming I want to hear from you so type live stream in the comments below so I can know that you guys are excited because we are amped up about this today. So type live stream, if you’re ready.

Isabelle Faletti (00:14:01):

No, one’s excited. Rohn. No, they’re just overwhelmed. They’re just overwhelmed.

Rohn Gibson (00:14:06):

There you go. There you go. Christina. You’re ready? Yes. Ready? All right there. I think I’m clicking on one and the next one pops up already. So yeah,

Isabelle Faletti (00:14:18):

I think so. All right. So Rohn, I really like to start each of our live streams here, our live streams, iRohnic to define our terms, what are we talking about to get everybody on the same page? So can you define for everybody listening? What is live streaming?

Rohn Gibson (00:14:39):

Yeah, so we get a lot of different questions at ChurchSpring and it’s awesome. We love people who ask questions and their desire to learn those. We talk about live streaming just to define it. If you’re asking the question, where do I upload my live stream? You’re not live streaming. Okay. So uploading a video to your site for people to go back and rewatch. That is good. And we highly recommend you do that. But a live stream is exactly what we’re doing right now. It is a live event that is happening, that is streaming over the internet to whatever various sources you want to stream to. So very simple definition, it’s a live event like your church service that is streaming to an outlet. And we’ll talk more about what that means here in a moment, but that’s the simple version. So if you’re trying to upload your live stream, that’s not what we’re talking about. That’s uploading a video, so somebody can come back and watch the recording. A live stream is where people can click on it. And it’ll say, live, there can be interaction in different components to a live event.

Isabelle Faletti (00:15:44):

Yeah, that’s good. That’s really the answer to that is in the title live streaming, you know, so around, I know that we’ll talk a little later about some actual tools that we can use to live stream and answer a lot of those types of questions. But church websites are a huge part of the world that we live in. So why should a church and a great live streaming onto their church website?

Rohn Gibson (00:16:16):

Yeah. So a lot of this comes back to what is the outcome you’re hoping to achieve from your church website? And we’ve asked this question, if you go back to many, many previous episodes and two of the primary things that we heard was number one, I want to reach new potential visitors. And number two, I want to communicate to existing church members. So live streaming as a powerful tool to help you do both of those things. A lot of people will check out a sermon, especially in today’s world. We’ll check out a service virtually before they even come to your local gathering. So it’s a great way to reach new potential visitors as well as your existing members can share that content. They can do a watch party. We’ll talk more about that in the future. So don’t get too hung up on some of these terms, but you can share it and really use it as a tool for your local gathering the members of your local church to really be able to spread the word about your church, about the services about the message.

Rohn Gibson (00:17:14):

So great way to reach new potential visitors as well as to communicate to existing church members. Let’s be honest. There’s a lot of things going on in the world today. Some people just don’t feel comfortable coming well, this is a little way that you can communicate to them. You can minister to them and you can make them feel like they’re, they’re you know, they’re, they’re going to feel a level of disconnect. Let’s just be real. You’re not we’re we’re made for that human connection. However, this is a great step to still be able to bring them in to that. So anyway, I want to start just diving into tips on how to best will people in and engage people. However, why should your church integrate live streaming number one, reach new potential visitors. Number two, to communicate effectively to existing church members.

Isabelle Faletti (00:17:59):

Yeah, that’s great. We have a question from MK Anderson. What if you don’t have a website for your church yet? Well,

Rohn Gibson (00:18:08):

I’d love to help you with that. So if you don’t have a website for your church, so you could, you should look back at some of our previous episodes, but ChurchSpring, you can literally sign up for a seven day free trial. And there’s actually a link. Let me take the comment off there. Now that’s up there anyway, you can go to ChurchSpring.com. We had too many buttons flying around at us. Yeah.

Isabelle Faletti (00:18:28):

Oh, I’ll help out here.

Rohn Gibson (00:18:30):

I love to show, the behind the scenes of the comments and the banners and all this stuff. Anyway, it’s a lot of fun. However, you can go to churchspring.com/trial, sign up for your free seven day trial and we can get you up and started very, very quickly. We recommend that all churches do have a church website Facebook while it’s an amazing tool, social media, amazing tools. You are literally playing in someone else’s playground. We’ve seen it recently, and I’m not going to go into this too deeply because we have done that in previous episodes. So go check that out. We’ll link that up to that previous episode in the show notes for copyright ultimately. Yeah. So ultimately you’re playing in somebody else’s playground so they can take content off. They can really do whatever they want and again, that’s their right. They own it. So you want to make sure that you have your church website that you control the content on, and that’s so important. So we would encourage you if you don’t have a church website, go do that. And your church website is one of those things. When people think of live streaming, I’m not going to get ahead of myself here. However

Isabelle Faletti (00:19:34):

Huh.

Rohn Gibson (00:19:35):

They think that live streaming is just, it’s just the output. There’s so much more to effectively live stream your services. So we’ll talk more about that.

Isabelle Faletti (00:19:46):

Well, to that point Rohn Matthew, he just asked Are live streams recorded and saved on the website after it has happened?

Rohn Gibson (00:19:57):

Yeah. So what we recommend that you do is that after your live stream is over you go and you actually add a sermon to your sermons functionality. If you’re using ChurchSpring super easy to do. And you can just embed. I know we had a question earlier about how do you embed we actually have articles on that, that we, we can share with you. But we recommend that you go, you add the sermon, you could even put in a little description and then you can upload or actually embed that the video of your sermon right there on the page. So people can go check it out. And there’s different ways to do it. If you are interested in, ah, anyway, I’m just gonna stop there. I just want to keep going and jump into this topic. Cause it’s an important topic in the world that we live in today and God has blessed us.

Rohn Gibson (00:20:47):

I don’t know. It’s so easy to be frustrated and overwhelmed. Trust me, I’ve been at my church until midnight trying to figure things out so we didn’t have issues. I’ll I’ll maybe tell the story of the first Sunday. We, we did it at our church and literally I was using a music stand to hold my phone up, which fall over during the event. And you want to talk about overwhelmed. That was me sitting in the pew, hoping that the or the chair hoping that the, the music stand didn’t tip forward. And Mike, my co-founder, he can tell you that’s exactly what happened. So when we talking about

Isabelle Faletti (00:21:23):

I bet Mike was sitting in the back, cracking up,

Rohn Gibson (00:21:26):

Mike went on the stage, sweating it out just like me. So anyway but man, God has blessed us with technology to to spread the gospel, to minister, to people. And while it can be overwhelming, it can also, it’s also a massive blessing. Could you imagine living in a world and I’ll just stop with this. I could, I could totally rabbit trail here, you know anyway, but I won’t, but can you imagine living 40 years ago, trying to do ministry during a time like this it’s hard enough as it is. Wow. They’re trying to do a ministry and continue to shepherd your church and minister to them through scenarios you know, with the communication tools, they didn’t have 40 years ago just how challenging that could be. So, wow. Anyway, what a blessing they are. And we, our goal today is that we can simplify it and make it a blessing for you. Change that overwhelm into a blessing where you can really reach your community, grow your church but also communicate effectively to those existing church members. Yeah,

Isabelle Faletti (00:22:36):

That’s good. So, Matthew, I hope that did answer your question, but like Rohn had mentioned, no, your live stream is not automatically uploaded to your website is really the short answer. It will be saved to your, what your live streaming through, which we’ll talk more about. So if you’re live streaming on Facebook, you can just go to your Facebook page, grab the embed code, which again, we have documentation on that. If ChurchSpring is not your website service, then reach out to your website provider and they can help you get that information so that you can add that live stream to your website. So I’m glad that you asked that though Matthew, because it is a question that we do get from our members of how, how do you make that, that bridge there? So, great question. Thanks for that. Okay, Rohn, I kind of feel like we gave everybody just, you know, some nice soft information and now I’m just opening up the fire hydrant for everyone has this, like this, this is a jam packed question. So yeah. Get some water cause you’re going to be sharing a lot of helpful information. So what are some tools that people can use to live stream on a limited budget? And if they have no tech ability or limited tech or build ability, or if they’re like me, I mean, I’m pretty tech savvy, but I don’t really know live streaming. I didn’t really know much about live streaming before working with ChurchSpring, actually. So what are some practical tools that you would recommend that churches can use to live stream?

Rohn Gibson (00:24:10):

Yeah. So before we jump into these tools, we are going to make a few assumptions. Okay. So I just want to be clear on that right out of the gate, probably 99% of the people, maybe a hundred percent of the people who watch this will have all of these tools, but just in case you don’t it’s okay. So let’s just walk a few of those assumptions. So the assumption is that you do have a website, so you can still live stream your services without a church website. However, that’s not our recommendation. And we’re actually gonna talk about that in our next question, where we really go through those top ingredients for an effective live streams. But number one, you have a church website, number two, you have some sort of a smart phone device that you use most people. Yeah, exactly. Most people you have more technology in your pocket or your purse as it may be.

Rohn Gibson (00:25:01):

So it’s, we want you to be able to utilize existing tools and the majority of the people again are going to have a smartphone. You’re going to have a Facebook page. If you don’t have one, I know MK, it’s awesome that you do have a Facebook page. So I want to encourage you there. It’s great. You’re making some good steps in the right direction. And then lastly that you have a good internet connection at your church. Now I say at your church, and I know there are some pastors who they’re literally live streaming from their house. So wherever you are broadcasting from that, you have a pretty solid internet connection there. So I know the next question on that. And I, again, don’t want to rabbit trail is, well, what is a solid internet connection? What does that mean? I’m not going to get into those specific details because if you have three kids live streaming, well, the amount of upload speed and download speed, you know, needs to be more. If you make your internet connection available for people at your church to connect to, well, that’s a whole nother, that’s a whole nother conversation for another day,

Isabelle Faletti (00:26:04):

Real quick, just a jumping on that Rohn. If you are at home and you’ll be live streaming your your sermon,ujust do a little test live stream and have if your kids will be live streaming, or if your, your, whatever, the normal internet usage would be when you would go live on Sunday morning or whenever your sermon would be, do a test, and then you can actually see what it would look like. So testing is, is key to this entire conversation. I know that that’s not, we haven’t talked about that, Rohn, but testing is so important.

Rohn Gibson (00:26:35):

It is very important until your kids get off live streaming while your live streaming. That’s what I do. When I jump on here, I’m like, all right off of Disney Plus or whatever you’re on, dad’s getting to work here. So anyway,uso a couple of assumptions there. All right. So what are some tools, number one, you want a live stream, optimized church website. What does that mean? We’re going to define that a little bit. Yeah. With the next question. Ubut there’s more live streaming. This is really what I just want to impress upon you. There is more to effective live streaming than just being able to broadcast your church, website,uyour, your church service. Okay. So you want to make sure you have an optimized live stream, optimized church website. We’re going to define what that means. Unumber two, you want to have live streaming broadcast output source.

Rohn Gibson (00:27:21):

So just like right now, we are live streaming and we are broadcasting to Facebook and YouTube. Okay. So you want to define which source or sources again, this is the simple version. So we’re going to talk about source that you want to broadcast to. We highly, highly recommend Facebook. And again, we’re going to do a whole nother episode on that in the future of why and how it great. It, there’s so many great features that churches don’t know how to utilize. Like for example, did you know that for your live stream, you can actually get a telephone number where people who don’t have access the internet, like maybe some of them we’ll call them seeds. Maybe some of the more seasoned population of your church don’t have access the computer or the internet. Well, they probably have access to a telephone where they could literally dial in and listen to your live stream.

Rohn Gibson (00:28:12):

And that’s part of live streaming through Facebook. So anyway, that’s for another day, but just know that those things exist. So define, you know, what does that mean? Broadcast output source that you’re going to use again, we recommend Facebook. Yep. Another tool is your smartphone. We, we talked about that earlier. This is an amazing tool, literally. Our first basically brought up cast only live stream, only service that we did as things started to really unravel with the pandemic. We actually had live streaming setup, but Facebook was so uneven with so many live streams that the, the platform that we use crashed. And, and there was me and my friend, Jason, at our church to set this up at our church. Okay. They were just sweating bullets. All right, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? And literally it was, all right, we have a smart phone,

Rohn Gibson (00:29:05):

There’s a music stand up there, let’s grab it, the music stand, put it down here, hit, go live on our Facebook page. And that’s literally how we live stream our first service as we kicked off the pandemic. So it’s a great tool utilize it. So the best way you can utilize it is again through Facebook, if you’re utilizing Facebook. So actually let me back up half a second, your smartphone, or you can also use a laptop. Yeah. Okay. So if, if, if you’re doing it, we have seen all kinds of ways that church leadership is serving their church. And it is amazing. It is so neat to see from a prayer meetings, you know, that people are having in their home to more, you know, multi-camera church services. It’s, it’s amazing. So don’t forget that you can also just use your laptop.

Rohn Gibson (00:30:02):

If it’s got a webcam on it, you can use your laptop and you can go live right on your Facebook page. If you are using a smartphone, you’ll want to download the Facebook page app, and then which makes things so much easier. Let me just tell you so much easier as far as managing comments, managing message. I mean, just so many things. It makes it so much easier. So download the Facebook page app, and then you can click live right there from that app and your live broadcasting, just like we are right now. So those are the main, I just want to, again, just reiterate those. So an optimized church website for live streaming, you want a live stream broadcast, soar, or output source, which again, we recommend Facebook, your smartphone, or a laptop and your Facebook page, like literally you can get started and you can be live streaming your service services with just those few resources. Now I’m going to throw in a couple of others because I like over here.

Isabelle Faletti (00:31:11):

Well, I just wanted to hop on that and just have, have an add-on so to be clear, you are going live through whatever your live stream broadcast output source, say that five times fast – that is a mouthful! Whatever your output, output sources. So in this case, we’re talking about Facebook because we, I mean, we highly recommend using Facebook. Uso you will go live on your Facebook page. So not through your church website, we’ll talk later about why and how you need to be integrating your live stream on your website, but you won’t be going live on your website. So you’ll be going to your Facebook. Like Rohn had mentioned through the app or on your desktop, on the page. Uwe’re not going to talk about the step one, step two, how to is of how to like click go live on your Facebook page. Uif you have questions about that, contact us, I’ll also link,usome documentation from Facebook on how you can go live on your Facebook page in our show notes. Ubut I just wanted to clarify that because I know that can be kind of a confusion for some people who are super new to live stream of, wait, where am I actually going live from? Like, where does this all start? So we do have a ton of questions so we can kind of wrap around,uto those questions after.

Rohn Gibson (00:32:34):

Yeah. Perfect. So let’s just kind of talk about some bonus, some bonus tools. So you don’t want to be like the situation I was in, where he literally, you’re using a music stand, propping it up and propping the phone on it’s a live stream, your services. So I would recommend you get a tripod. I’ve got one that I recommend. So again, we’ll put that on the show notes on the website and link that up so you can go check it out, but you probably already have one. You can go to your local Walmart and get one very inexpensive. So you can start there. Also we’d recommend a smartphone holder that literally your screw right into the top of the tripod. And then it allows you to put your phone on there and kind of connect it. So again, it’s stable. You don’t want to have what happened to me within like 30 seconds of propping that thing up the phone go, boop,

Isabelle Faletti (00:33:25):

You would be,

Rohn Gibson (00:33:26):

That was, that was not, that’s not what you want to see happen, but again, we were adapting and overcoming. So music stand don’t be in that situation, get a smartphone holder. And then for audio sake, depending on your setup, depending on how far you are away from the phone, you may want to think about getting a live mic. So again, this is like a beginner live streaming. If you’re not live streaming, these are some tools that you can do to get started. We’re going to talk about way more advanced stuff, as far as plugging it into your soundboard and all those sorts of things in future episodes, but a live mic can be a great thing to kind of take this very basic setup up a notch because audio is so important. How long are you going to listen to a video that has bad audio?

Rohn Gibson (00:34:07):

You’re just not cause it’s annoying. Cause you can’t really hear it. It takes more effort to just try to listen and hear. And that’s why we have these mics that we’re using are under a hundred dollars. I mean, they’re really cheap mix, but it drastically improves the sound quality and therefore you’re willing to stay and listen because it’s not really, really annoying. So anyway, we cover a lot of tools there, but again, the very basics live stream optimized church website, live stream broadcast output source, man. Yeah. Say that. Your Smart phone or a laptop and then your Facebook page. So now we’re going to talk about key ingredients, unless there’s, unless there’s questions specifically related to tools,

Isabelle Faletti (00:34:48):

We do have Larry, he asks recommendations on a wireless mic. Larry, we will link what Rohn actually, I don’t know. I think this what you’re using at your church but we will link some recommendations for a wireless mic and what would the opposite be – a wired mic?

Rohn Gibson (00:35:08):

So Road Road is one of the big kind of mic manufacturers out there. So they have a wireless version that you can literally use with your phone. And they also have a wired version that you can use with your phone. Both of those are a little expensive. So I’ll also throw it, we’ll throw in a third option in the show notes. I think this one was even under $30. It is wired, but it’s a very long wire. So if you had to go that route just for budgetary reasons, you can live stream, if you’ve actually our ad, which is how many of you probably even found out about church being the first place that under $30 mic, a Lavalier lapel mic is literally the mic that I use to record that that ad. So yeah, anyway, some really great tools, very inexpensive we’ll link all of that up in the show notes. Yep.

Isabelle Faletti (00:35:58):

Yeah, yeah. God’s House Church. They asked what mics are we using right now?

Rohn Gibson (00:36:04):

Oh, I love this man. I love this like geek tool talk. It’s the Samson Q2U, and the fact that I know that right, tells you how big of a nerd I am. I wish I had a mic one other than this one sitting here. So we’ll link it up again in the show notes, it’s called the Samson Q2U, and then if you have a setup like this and you desire to go that route you can actually do, what’s called a shock mount. So like I just literally hit this and you couldn’t hear that on the other end. That’s the wonderful grace that a shock mount provides. Anyway,

Isabelle Faletti (00:36:42):

Must be talk with their hands a lot, which I do.

Rohn Gibson (00:36:45):

Yes. I am literally beat the snot out of this thing so bad. It’s so bent. Anyway that’s, that’s a story for another day.

Isabelle Faletti (00:36:53):

That’s awesome. Melvin asks, if you do use your smartphone Oh yeah. You can use your wireless earbuds. Yes, that’s exactly it. Yep. So if you’re kind of on the no limited budget and if you have wireless earbuds, I mean, I have my AirPods here. Yes. You can definitely do that. That is a great option, Melvin. That’s good

Rohn Gibson (00:37:12):

And quick shout out for Melvin. Melvin made good on his promise last week, Melvin made a commitment and that commitment was that he was going to post to his blog and he did that. So Melvin, I’m going to make good on my promise. And we’re actually going to pull your site up near the end of the episode today and actually walk through some recommendations that we have because you did the work. So great work, Melvin. We were just, we were so encouraged. Literally we use Slack as an inner office communication tool and we were all bragging about Melvin taking massive action this week. So we’re super excited to dig into that here at the end. So Melvin, stay with us. We’re going to give you some tips.

Isabelle Faletti (00:37:51):

Yes we are. We have a couple more questions here around about this specific question about the tools. Linda asked we are using Nevo.

Rohn Gibson (00:38:02):

Nevo Yep.

Isabelle Faletti (00:38:03):

And then uploading it to Vimeo. Can this be used for live streaming?

Rohn Gibson (00:38:09):

I don’t know. I think you can, depending on which one you have you can live stream to that. So I, I’m not the expert on, on Nevo by any means. However, I, I actually do have a friend in business and they use this to broadcast a lot of their big gatherings. I think one of the, if I’m not mistaken, that’s actually one of the tools where you can actually like focus it in on somebody and then it’ll just continue to follow them automatically, you know, kind of as they move around so, or iPad. So I’m pretty sure you should be set. If there’s specific questions that you’re having issues with it, let us know if, if I don’t have experience with it specifically, we can look into it. Maybe even connect you to somebody who who does there. So,

Isabelle Faletti (00:39:00):

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That’s good. A really good question for Matthew that I’m glad he asked, does the link URL have to be the same for all events or the live stream URL change from event to event?

Rohn Gibson (00:39:15):

Yes, it can. So in, and I’m assuming we’re talking about the settings area of your ChurchSpring powered website, where you log into the settings, you put in what your your live streaming URL is. So you can actually do it both. You can do it one or the other. All right. So what I recommend doing and inside of inside of Facebook specifically, you can actually create what’s called a live tab, which therefore you’re creating a URL, which whenever you go live, that content is going to be available on that live tab. So what you can do is just go take that link, put that as your your streaming URL inside of ChurchSpring. So then whenever somebody clicks on that live stream, it’s automatically going to take them to that tab with the latest with the latest, a live stream that’s happening right now, or the one that will be starting shortly.

Rohn Gibson (00:40:12):

A lot of people don’t realize that anyway, I think we’re actually going to talk about that. So I’m going to hold, Facebook’s amazing. They have really done some amazing things to help us really communicate better. So anyway, we’ll come back to that or the flip side of that, you can go create an event for every single one and then go in and update that every single time, if you want to, I personally don’t want to have to go in and do that every single time, but it is an option if you, if you decide for whatever, the reason to go that route, it is an option. Yeah.

Isabelle Faletti (00:40:44):

Okay. That’s great. That’s really helpful. These questions are awesome. And I love to see that we have some viewers asking a question and then other viewers are answering. So keep that up. This is a community that we are building here. So if you know the answer to someone’s question, shoot them a reply and we can learn from each other. I love. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So Rohn, it looks like a lot of the questions actually is about adding the live stream to their website. What does that actually look like? So let’s kind of dive into the next question because we will answer a lot of those questions in this. So we’ve talked about the top 10 key ingredients. It’s kinda, it makes me hunger for like a super something when we’re talking about these ingredients here. So what are the top 10 key ingredients

Rohn Gibson (00:41:34):

To a successful livestream? Yeah. So number one, you want to set up the livestream as part of your church website. So with ChurchSpring, it’s super easy. All you have to do as you log into the settings area you go to a website and then you click on live stream and you put in your URL. So that’s the first step. The first ingredient is to connect the dots between where you’re going to send people for the broadcast and your church website. So again, with ChurchSpring login, go to settings, website, live stream, and put in that URL with Facebook. Again, we recommend just creating that live tab. If you, if you’re not sure how to do that, all you have to do is a Google search, a Facebook live tab, and it will literally walk you step by step, how to set that up on your church, Facebook page.

Rohn Gibson (00:42:23):

Number two is you want to create an event on your church website and turn on the live streaming event option. Okay. So the reason you want to do that is there are many components, like I’ve said to an effective live stream, and it all starts with your church website. Like we’ve talked about your hub of digital communication at your church. Church needs to be your church website, not something you don’t own like Facebook or whatever other platform you want to put in there now or into the future. Your church website is that hub. And that’s where people should come to start the live stream to make sure that they’re in the correct place. Okay? So you’re going to create an event. You can even create an a recurring event, obviously for Sunday services, make sure it’s a live stream event, and you’re going to be set from there.

Rohn Gibson (00:43:16):

Next. You want to use the social scheduler when you go to create any event inside of ChurchSpring, there’s this little thing down at the bottom where you can click if you’re a flourish user. So again, this is a flourish user option. We have sprout grow and flourish plans. This is the flourish plan, but it has powerful. So part of an event and a live stream is the promotion or the announcement about that live stream before it occurs. Okay? So we practice what we preach. How many of you got an email from us, letting us know, Hey, church, spring, we’re going to be going live. Here’s what the topic is going to be. If this is valuable to you, please show up. We’ve got 52 people watching right now and hundreds more that will watch it afterwards. So promote your live stream. Okay. So use the social scheduler, put reminders in there, say, Hey, this Sunday, we’re going to be talking about this, read this passage of scripture to prepare your heart for the sermon.

Rohn Gibson (00:44:12):

Then an hour before your live stream starts, schedule that post literally right there. When you’re creating the event. Now you don’t have to worry about it. Literally you can set it and forget it with our social media schedule. So promote that’s the ingredient. The third ingredient is promote your live stream via the social media scheduler inside of ChurchSpring for you. Don’t use ChurchSpring. You’ll just have to go to another platform like Hootsuite or even schedule it inside of Facebook and Twitter, whatever the be the beautiful, the beautiful benefit. There you go. Of our social media. Scheduler is you can literally schedule multiple social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter. Yes. We want Instagram to there’s a there’s Facebook’s not making it super easy for us to do that at this point. So you can schedule that both of those networks right there inside to promote your live stream event next, have a countdown. And I’m not just talking one, I’m talking to there’s two different types of countdowns you want on your church website. So number one, you want a 48 hour countdown. That’s going to appear above and it will appear on every single page. Okay? Every single page. So if somebody comes into your blog, like we had pastor Melvin who updated his blog. If somebody comes to that, they’re going to say, Oh, pastor, Melvin’s going live within 48 hours. Here’s the countdown clock. That’s telling them this next live streams coming. So that’s number one.

Isabelle Faletti (00:45:40):

Yeah. And that is automatic. So you don’t want to be adding this countdown clock, this notification to your website, every single Sunday on every page, because I would take a lot of time. So you, you want an option then that this is automatic. Like Rohn mentioned from you for a ChurchSpring, you create the event on your website. You turn on live stream event and that’s all that you have to do. And, and ChurchSpring, we Mike and Rohn and Harrison and our team they’ve built it so that the software picks up and will automatically give that 48 hour countdown notification.

Rohn Gibson (00:46:17):

Yes. Yeah. So we’ve got the 48 hour. And again, that’s on every single page. So let’s say somebody is Googling something and they come to a different page other than the homepage. And it’s within 48 hours. They’re going to see that you’re going live within the next 48 hours. The next countdown clock that you want to have is a 24 hour countdown, right on the homepage. Really big. It’s the first thing it’s right there in that, what we call the hero image, kind of that main graphical area. That’s kind of a really cool graphical countdown clock that tells people, okay, they’re going live within 24 hours. Again, that’s all automatic inside a ChurchSpring. You don’t have to bolt on some third party. Anything. It just works out of the box. You say, live stream event. Boom. We automatically put it 48 hour countdown. We automatically do the 24 hour slider countdown.

Rohn Gibson (00:47:05):

And then next on the list, and this seems so obvious, you would be shocked just like putting your address on your church website or a phone number to connect with you on your church website. Again, we’re just, there’s so many details, right? It’s so easy to get lost in these things. So the next ingredient is to make sure that at the time you go live a watch now button, actually up on your church website. I know you would say Rohn, I know that that’s like so obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people don’t do that. And the clocks just disappeared. I was like, now what, what do I, where are they at? Where did they go? So put a watch now button that then they click on to go to your live stream when it’s live. So awesome. Awesome ingredients. But let’s talk about really the next thing you got to go live.

Rohn Gibson (00:47:57):

Right? All right, let’s go. You gotta go live. So make sure you go live. And I recommend going live between five to 15 minutes prior to your service actually starting. So depending on your technical abilities and your live stream set up, you can literally just go live and just have it. So, you know, people can see there’s people like milling around whatever. So they know you’re live. That also gives you time. There’s a little secret after the lesson I learned of things crashing like less than it was less than 10 minutes before we were supposed to go live and trying to figure it out part of this as a little grace and mercy period for you. So if something does happen, that does not, you have enough time to adapt and overcome like your smartphone and a music stand. If those incidents happened to you. So go live, obviously all this other stuff, doesn’t matter if you don’t go live and recommend you go live five to 15 minutes prior to the service. Okay,

Isabelle Faletti (00:49:01):

That’s good. And I’m gonna jump in here. We’ve had a couple of ChurchSpring members actually ask how do I put the watch now? And on the website that is automatically part of the live stream integration that we do for you. So once again, once you create your event, click the, or turn on the live stream event, slider option. On that event, we take care of the 40 hour countdown, the 24 hour slider countdown. And when you are going live the watch now button, so you won’t need to do anything on your website after you create that event and tell our website really that you’ll be going live. And also to add onto that, I know we have it

Rohn Gibson (00:49:44):

Benjamin he’s in there answering questions for us. I love it. I love it. I’ve been talking about doing like ChurchSpring awards, like, like an annual award ceremony where we want this to be community. This is not about us. It’s about a community of believers serving each other. So I love that Benjamin. I love that you just jumped in there and share that. So yeah, we do it all for you

Isabelle Faletti (00:50:06):

Watch-Out, Benjamin. You might get a fridge magnet with Rohn’s face on it. I know that’s what you’ll love.

Rohn Gibson (00:50:14):

It will keep the mice away – I promise.

Isabelle Faletti (00:50:17):

And then also we had a couple of questions about which plan live streaming is available on for ChurchSpring, specifically. I think Netta, you had asked so the live stream integration, and again, that’s the countdown. What we, what we just talked about that is available on our grow and our flourish plans. So our kind of entry level sprout, it does not include those automatic live stream integrations. That being said, you can still go live on your, on your Facebook page, on YouTube, et cetera. So that doesn’t stop you from going live.

Rohn Gibson (00:50:53):

Yes, absolutely. And then, and then just, just to be clear, the, the social scheduling piece, so the live streaming integration, again, as Isabelle said, that’s grow and flourish, if you want the social scheduling piece to really make the set it and forget it, promotion of your live stream, that’s available on the flourish plan. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. I’m going to keep going. You keep cruising the comments coming in here. If we miss it, it’s not intentional. We’re just trying to keep up. We’re trying to keep up right now. So this is great. So we talked about go live. You go live five to 15 minutes prior to the service number seven ingredient is you want a call to action to start engaging? What does one of the things we do when we first start introduce yourself, tell us where you’re from the name of your church.

Rohn Gibson (00:51:38):

So we’re right out of the gate. Our desire is we want this to be an interactive experience, not just us talking to a webcam because trust me, that’s not any fun. We love engaging with you. So through the comment. So one of the things my pastor did was he would just, you know, tell us good morning, tell us, hello. Ask a question. What are you thankful for today? That’s a great question to ask. What’s something you’re thankful for on the Sunday or whatever day the services. So some sort of a call to action to start engaging with them with that said, if you have a volunteer, we recommend that you have a volunteer help you when it comes to managing both comments on a live stream, as well as maybe messenger. So one of the things that you can do to drive engagement is through welcomes also through prayer requests.

Rohn Gibson (00:52:30):

So, Hey, if you have a prayer request, we’d love to pray for you. If it’s not personal and sensitive, go ahead and share it in the comments. If it is, go ahead and just shoot us a message right through Facebook or whatever network you’re using. And we’d love to make sure that our team here at the church is praying for you. So engage them, call to action for engagement next post, to replay to your sermons page. Okay. So if you go live to Facebook, it will automatically as well as to YouTube, it will automatically post that into your channel, okay. Or onto your page. All right. So it’s automatic. It’s going to save it there. Then what you can do is go take that and actually embed that. So you go add your sermon on Facebook or on your ChurchSpring website. You can then if you want to do a podcast, you can actually upload the audio separately through your soundboard.

Rohn Gibson (00:53:24):

So you would have to record that separately. You can upload that. So that would be the audio file for your podcast. You can write a little description and then embed the video. So if somebody wants to watch it, they can literally watch that. And you could pull in your Facebook video or your YouTube video right there in to your church website. Okay. So post the replay to your sermons page, and then lastly, there’s pre event promotion, right? We’ve talked about that through the social scheduler, if you have an email list or anything like that, make sure that you’re promoting it, communicating that message. Then you have during the event, or maybe even like an hour before sending something off saying, Hey, we’re about to go live. Don’t miss this week’s sermon. What we’re going to talk about, whatever the topic is. And then after you post the message to the sermon section, that’s one of the really cool parts of the sermon section.

Rohn Gibson (00:54:15):

You can do the exact same thing to promote it through social media and schedule all of that. Right? When you are creating that sermon to show up on your website, then you can do your post-service promotion right there as part of church. Frank. So we’ve talked about 10 ingredients, so I’m just going to highlight them real quick. And that’ll give you a minute to collect any questions. So number one, make sure you’ve got your live stream a URL set up in the settings area of your ChurchSpring website. If you use ChurchSpring we’ve tried to make ChurchSpring super easy. You can do this through other platforms. However, you’re going to have to bolt on a lot of things to try to make it work this easy and simply, okay. So set up live streaming URL on your church website, go to settings website, live stream, put in the URL there create the event, turn on the live streaming feature, promote via social media pre the event.

Rohn Gibson (00:55:15):

You will then automatically have the 48 hour countdown. So check that off. You didn’t have to do anything. Next thing, the 24 hour countdown slider check. If you’ve got that event as a live stream, we’ve got your back there. We’ll take care of that for you. Next thing, the watch now button check. If it’s a livestream event, we’ve already taken care of that for you next go live. Okay. So whatever platform you’re using, click go live, have a call to action, to engage people for the sermon, post the replay on the sermons page, and then promote that for those people who, who missed it, maybe they’re on vacation, maybe who knows, who knows why post that the promotion through social media to automate that for you, then they can come back and actually watch the replay. So those are the 10 key ingredients to a successful live stream. And by the way, we take care of many of them for you, without you even having to do anything other than click one button. And we do the rest. So

Isabelle Faletti (00:56:14):

Amazing to me, what, what a ChurchSpring powered website can do. It’s just, I don’t get coding. So the fact that all of that just happens when you toggle that button is, is, is amazing. A blessing. That’s great. We have some great questions right now, Rohn and actually see again, other members answering some questions. Matthew, I did just want to address your question real quick. I think David actually did respond to you, but Matthew, you said I cannot change the Facebook live URL, the switch on the event. I’m assuming it just toggles without allowing me to change it. How do you change it as David? You had mentioned to change your Facebook live settings. Yes. You go to your website settings, click the website tab, and then you’ll see live streaming. And then you’ll see a URL just put in your Facebook page URL. So if you don’t yet have your Facebook page live tab that Rohn had mentioned that’s okay. Just put in your Facebook page URL. So that easiest way to do that is just go to facebook.com and then go to your your sources Facebook page, and then just copy the URL. That’s in your what is that called your search?

Rohn Gibson (00:57:37):

What is the address?

Isabelle Faletti (00:57:43):

That thing. Copy that, and then paste that in your website live stream settings. And then when you do go live and you people will be redirected to your Facebook page and they’ll see that your life,

Rohn Gibson (00:57:55):

By the way, if that’s still a little fuzzy, reach out to us, submit a support ticket, and we’ll literally send you the documentation. That explains exactly how to do what we just explained. We don’t do a ton of screen sharing. Trust me, we would love to however, cause it would make this a lot easier. However, it is a little difficult when you’re trying to live stream two videos,, plus screenshare plus down, it just, it becomes a little bit nightmare. So if that didn’t answer your question, please reach out. Isabelle, Jen, we’d love to follow up with you to give you the documentation on how to do that.

Isabelle Faletti (00:58:28):

It would be live streaming, a live stream that could kind of be fun. What could go wrong? We have Joe asking, can I use Restream to go live on my ChurchSpring website? That actually may be a question that we’ll answer next week, Joe, as we’ll talk about how you can stream to different social platforms. So I see that, I’ll make sure to record that

Rohn Gibson (00:58:52):

Great tool ultimately. So here here’s, here’s what a lot of churches do. A lot of churches want to embed the live stream on their church website. I don’t recommend it. And here’s why, okay, so it’s great. Yes. To have it on there. However, you lose a lot of functionality that a lot of these networks provide you to get a lot of the sharing and the vitality that you can get by live streaming through their platform. So we encourage you to embed the video after the service is over. So after the live stream has ended, go back and embed it. But Restream is a great service. It’s actually one that we, we recommend depending on your use case, there’s other tools out there that you can, you can, so Restream for those that don’t know is you can broadcast to multiple locations at one time, just like we’re doing right now. We’re broadcasting to YouTube, we’re also broadcasting to Facebook. So it’s a great tool for that. So we will follow up more on that in detail next week, but just so you know, we encourage you send them to your primary network and then utilize all the different features that exist there for commenting for prayer request to really enable ministry and encourage ministry and connection outside of just that live stream video.

Isabelle Faletti (01:00:13):

Yeah, that’s awesome. I also really wanted to real quickly highlight Jeff’s recommendation that he said, so he said he uses a Facebook portal to live stream and it follows the movement and it adjusts from the pulpit to the musicians pretty seamlessly. That is an awesome tip. Jeff. That is really, really cool. So thanks for sharing that. We do have a couple questions about which cameras we would recommend for live streaming. So again, if you’re kind of beyond the, using the phone, which no shame using this, this guy for your live streaming, but if you want to take it to the next level, we’ll be talking specific cameras and all kinds of fun things that Rohn knows all about next week. So for those of you, cause I saw a couple of viewers ask those questions again, I see your questions and I’m making actual notes on that. So we’ll make sure to answer those next week. So make sure to tune back next week. Shameless plug.

Rohn Gibson (01:01:13):

Yeah, there you go. Lots of lamp Benjamin Love it. Absolutely lighting. Super important.

Isabelle Faletti (01:01:20):

Yeah. Do you have, do we have any recommendations for lighting? It looks like Reverend Christina, she did ask if we have any suggestions for lighting. That’s awesome because Rohn is like the lighting genie over there. He has all these little lights. Yeah.

Rohn Gibson (01:01:36):

So it all depends on your setup. I mean, literally I have this little it’s called, so one of the brands that I’d recommend you check out and it all depends on your use case. Okay. So if you’re gonna, if you’re in a church you know, a sanctuary while your lighting is going to be a lot different, if you’re more in a setting like this, where, you know, it’s kind of closer to you or even just from your computer, there’s a brand that I’ve came across and I’ve actually been using myself and it’s called Lume. So L U M E we’ll link up to them. And again, we’re just sharing what we’re used. We, we don’t make any money off of these recommendations, but they have these lights, literally, this is a light right here and it’s, it’s about the size. So this is my iPhone.

Rohn Gibson (01:02:17):

This is the size of the, and let me tell you, this little guy is bright. I’m not going to turn it on because it will probably mess my camera up. It’ll, it’ll kind of freak out on me, but this is really cool. They actually have a smaller version of this which I’m actually using. I have two of them right now. It’s the size of a credit card and it’s led lights. And I have these things right now turned down to their lowest setting. Cause if I turn them up, I’d look like my face was glowing. Like I just met with, met with God on a mountain. My face would be shining. So anyway, Lume is a great resource. You can check them out if you’re looking for a bigger type setting we can also share what we use in our, in our studio. It’s called cowboy lighting or something like that. You can get on Amazon for super cheap. So we’ll share some of those options, but definitely lighting is a good thing. So hopefully a couple of those can at least get you down that path

Isabelle Faletti (01:03:14):

And typically you, so you do want your lighting to be in fRohnt of you. So if, when you’re testing, when you’re in your testing phase, you’re just turning on your phone to see, okay, what are people actually going to see? And this live stream that is a component to look at is the lighting. So I’m glad that we do have those questions. So make sure that your lighting source is in front of you. If it’s behind you, then you’ll be, you’ll be, you’ll, you’ll have a halo. So if you notice I have a lamp in my back here and when I have that on there’s this big glare, you don’t want that in a livestream. But then as Rohn mentioned, when your, your light source isn’t in front of you, you do need to make sure that it’s not too powerful or else it can wash you out. So those are, if you’re a nerd like me, I love lighting. I love photography. Youtube is actually really great resource, go on YouTube and search lighting for live stream tips. And you’ll have just quite a little viewing party by looking at tips

Rohn Gibson (01:04:14):

And let me share a source a video source. And honestly, this was the one that I check out all the time. It’s called think media, think media, it’s a YouTube channel. They give all kinds of gear, reviews, tech tips, all kinds of different things. Really good guys over there. I don’t know them personally, but just kind of seeing how they work. They just, they just give, good gifts. So one of the questions, I think it was pastor Benjamin about doing it from a home setting Lume actually has a home. It’s kind of like a video conference kit where literally it’s a light, it’s a little suction cup thing that can plug on the back of your monitor or even your laptop. And it just gives you the right amount of lighting. You can adjust it. It’s, it’s a really cool thing there. So anyway, we’ll link all that up and any others that we think of that would be good resources. So be sure to check out our blog posts. Once we post this video churchspring.Com/CSL zero one, one, I almost said zero zero, but we’re, we’re in the ones now. Zero one one.

Isabelle Faletti (01:05:12):

Yup. And just to go along with that, cause we have quite a bit of chatter on the and Benjamin you mentioned yet. Yeah. You have to be careful because your budget can grow if you’re just adding on all these pieces. You’re absolutely right. I, I have done a lot of hacking for lighting. I mean, right now I just have my window, so I don’t have any extra lighting and, and overhead light. In the past, when I’ve recorded kind of some ads actually for ChurchSpring, I have had two different nightstand lamps in front of me. And then I would just play around with different using different lamps. So if you’re at home and you’re recording your live stream, you can get super creative like that. And you may not, you don’t need to buy these light resources. If your tech budget doesn’t allow for it, you can just, you can, you can get creative and that can be a fun thing that you can bring your whole family and like, okay, little Johnny, go grab a light so we can live stream. You’ll be my, my, my lighting guy here

Rohn Gibson (01:06:13):

Actually make, that’s a really good thing. Don’t feel like you have to go use what you have and when it comes to the camera, what cameras, I mean, we can talk tech gear all day long. The best camera you have is probably the one that’s in your pocket or your purse. And don’t think, Oh, this is my phone. This isn’t as good. The camera’s on these things. They’ve actually shot broadcast television type things from these phones. So don’t think you’re, you’re kind of getting a substandard camera cause you’re using your phone. But that point of using your window, they actually sell a a whole, an iPhone holder that has a suction cup on the back of it. So you can plug your iPhone into it or your, your smart phone into it and suction cup it to the glass of your window. So then you’re using the sunlight coming in, which is the best light.

Rohn Gibson (01:07:02):

That’s really what you’re trying to mimic anyway, natural light. I’m literally sitting in a room right now with no windows. I won’t go into that. Maybe we’ll have to do like a behind the scenes. That’d be scary. But anyway, like you’re trying to really kinda mimic natural lighting anyway, and the best way to do that. Suction cup, that little thing, you can do an Amazon search for that, a little suction cup with a little iPhone holder on it, put that on there. That’s the best lighting out there. So. Awesome. And you can do that for under $10 bucks.

Isabelle Faletti (01:07:34):

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So we could be answering questions all day long. I know that we’re over an hour here, so I want to respect everybody’s time. So if we have not answered your question yet, still reach out to us. If you’re a church, spring members send in a ticket or again, we will have this replay with show notes, with tons of helpful tools. I will be linking to our own ChurchSpring live stream documentation in those show notes later this afternoon. So be sure to check that out if you’re not a ChurchSpring member, but you still have questions about live streaming. We still want to help you. So make sure to reach out, you can send us a question on our contact form. I don’t have the up here, but it’s ChurchSpring.com/contact. So send us a form with your questions and we would love to help you out. So Rohn, wow. We just gave a lot of information so that we can help prevent overwhelm because that’s our big thing. We want people to leave every single ChurchSpring Live event, feeling equipped and confident and empowered. So what now? What is it? Action, action step that people can take.

Rohn Gibson (01:08:46):

Yeah. So number one, if you’re not live streaming live stream, so just, just take action. Literally I used a music stand and the smartphone, we didn’t have any external audio sources plugging into it. Literally it was just as it was. And we were able to minister to a lot of people with that. So if you’re not live streaming start live streaming. Number two is if you are live streaming, take action on one of these other success ingredients that you’re not currently doing. So if you’re not currently doing kind of pre-communication, “pre” promotion for your live stream event, start using the social scheduler. If you have access to it, if you don’t, you want to upgrade, upgrade, if not just use whatever and start doing some sort of promotion to remind people. I would say a day before, maybe a few days before, and then within like an hour of when you’re going live on social media to say, Hey, join us starts in an hour.

Rohn Gibson (01:09:43):

Here’s where you can watch our live stream. So take action on one of those success ingredients that you’re not currently doing. Again, it’s not about perfection, it’s about progress. So what can you do based on what you’re currently doing to start taking action and to, and, and make progress and taking your live stream to that next level. So if you’re not currently, and I know we had, we had at least one, which is awesome. This is so cool. I hope it adds value regardless of what you decide to do with ChurchSpring. But if you would like to see more, I know we had a question about, Hey, I’d like to learn more about church brand. Can I jump on zoom or whatever we’ve got the hookup for you. All you’ve got to do is go to churchspring.com/demo. And we literally myself, as well as my co-founder, Mike, we walk you through church, bring from beginning to end, literally launching a church website, walking you through many of the major components of that as well as there’s a chat with support during business hours where literally you can ask any question and we will answer as many questions as you have there.

Rohn Gibson (01:10:45):

And then obviously follow up with you afterwards if we need to. So if you’re not currently a user and you’re interested check out the demo, if you are interested and you’re like, Hey, I’ve seen enough. What you guys just talked about that I don’t have to do that you do automatically for me is enough for me go sign up for our seven day free trial. Literally there’s zero risk. You can go sign up. I always like to use the term, kick the tires look under the hood. So to speak, to see kind of, Oh, is for real like, is what he’s talking about. Does it really work that easy? We’ve had a ton of awesome church bring members who are commenting. Yes, it’s for real. Yes, it really is this easy. So thank you all for doing that. Honestly, that’s a massive, massive blessing to hear that that it is beneficial, that all the work is actually providing value. That’s, that’s our goal. We want to provide as much value as we can to you. So if you would like to, if you’re not currently user, you would just love to kick the tires and give it a try seven day free trial church, bring.com for slash trial. See if it’s a good fit for you. If it’s not cancel, if it is a good fit for you. Awesome. Just keep on going and then reach out to us as you have questions. And we’re here to answer any of those that you have.

Isabelle Faletti (01:11:59):

Yep, exactly. That’s great. Do people actually kick the tires when they’re buying a new car? Is that actually a thing?

Rohn Gibson (01:12:12):

It’s probably like an old term, honestly. One of those more seasoned people I was talking about earlier,

Isabelle Faletti (01:12:16):

Tell you how to cut a call in well, Reverend Christina I have to highlight you real quick because you made me chuckle. You said for next week as I invite myself back to your next session. Yes, you are invited back to our next session. Everybody invited back. Yeah, we will answer your question about the best streaming service to use for a conference. That’s a really good question, actually. So that’s gonna be fun for next week. Before we wrap up here, I do want to highlight some really fun, new features that we have at ChurchSpring. Rohn you’d mentioned that. I mean, we, we, our goal at ChurchSpring is to add value to ministry leaders. We know that you only have so much time, you only have so much capacity to be doing everything that you’re responsible for, that God has called you to do.

Isabelle Faletti (01:13:08):

So we want to equip you with the tools that you need to easily manage your website so that you’re not having to get decision fatigue on your website. We want to really make these decisions for you with website best practices so that we can, we can help be your, your ex, the experts for website. We’re a part of your communications team here at ChurchSpring. We’re not some third, third party service who doesn’t ever want to interact with our members here. So a part of that is I’ll actually go ahead and I’ll share my screen here. Okay, perfect. So every well, every week right now, Mike and Harrison they’re part of our development team. They have been just killing it with new features and new new updates. So I wanted to share our let me pull up my screen here.

Isabelle Faletti (01:14:04):

Sorry. My, my screens went, went crazy. Okay, here we go. So this week we released five new font selections and color palettes. So with ChurchSpring. You do not have to spend all the time updating your text page by page. You don’t have to update your colors button by button because I would take a really long time. And again, you don’t have that time. So with ChurchSpring we make it super easy, where you can easily update your colors and your text in one click. So I wanted to highlight those images or I’m sorry, those texts and colors for you and show you how you can do that. So I’m logged in here to my demo site and to change your, the text and the colors. All you do is click this little side tab. This will pull up, what’s called your design center. This is part of, part of the engine for looking under the engine. This is engine a over here, obviously, I don’t know cars. I shouldn’t even speak, there’s no engine a and engine B.

Isabelle Faletti (01:15:18):

Yeah. Go-Carts. but this is where you can change your font sets and your color palettes. So I am just in love with our five new color palettes that Mike, our other co-founder has been working really hard on. So to do that, you simply click and look at that my buttons and my colors changed immediately. So we have some five new, new selections here. We have a really two really cool is it gradient? Yeah. Gradient color options here. So you can see that there’s some nice do some, some really cool different colors. One of my favorites is actually this purple and, and blue option. So go ahead and just change your, your color palettes. You can always change it back. We have a ton of different color combinations. Again, these are kind of website best practices for what we recommend for color combinations.

Isabelle Faletti (01:16:23):

So if your church’s colors are purple based, then we have those options you have here for you. And then I’ll, I also wanted to show you how you can change your font sets. So this is one I’m also, again, one of my favorite features of a ChurchSpring because I’ve been a part of website design before, and it can be a pain to have to go through and change all of your texts. And you may not know this, this text actually look good. I’m at like this text, but is this, is this font good for an 18 year old and an 80 year old so that they can read on mobile and on a desktop device, we take all that guesswork out of, out of it for you. And we have ready to go font sets. So again, same thing with colors.

Isabelle Faletti (01:17:10):

You can simply click on a new font set and your entire website font immediately changes. So go ahead and play around with that. We have some, some really fun, different options that will speak to kind of your, your type of church, whether you’re yeah, just whatever type of ministry you are. We have the perfect recommended text font. So have fun with that. Since I’m sharing my screen, I want to highlight Melvin, Melvin. Hello. So for those of you who did not attend our live stream last week we talked about the number one most underutilized feature on a church website, and that is your blog. So we had a challenge to those listeners of, we wanted everybody to create your, a blog page if you haven’t already and upload your first blog. And then to let us know so that we could highlight that and then give you even some next tips that you can make it even better. So Melvin, you did that. Thank you. We love you,

Rohn Gibson (01:18:20):

Melvin. Great job. You learned and you took action. So awesome. Great work brother. That is, that is great. So what we wanted to do, so Isabelle’s got your website up, so Grace Place International. So this is your website that we’re sharing here on our screen. And what we wanted to do was just kind of give you a couple thoughts. All right. So number one, I just want to encourage you with continuing to take action. I think it’s so awesome, Melvin, that you continue to show up and you don’t just show up and learn, but you take action and that is all important. There’s so many of us that become I can’t think of a different word to use. So I’m just gonna say we become constipated with knowledge, right? We learn so much and then we don’t put it into action. So Melvin, you’ve done an incredible job of showing up of learning, improving and taking action.

Rohn Gibson (01:19:17):

So I just want to say hats off to you, brother. So a couple of quick thoughts on number one, you, you were an overachiever, you didn’t just do one post. You did multiple posts which was awesome. So a couple of thoughts related each one something to consider depending on what it is. So let’s go ahead. Let’s just go ahead and click on pray for our next president. Okay. A couple of thoughts that you can do. So, number one, I love the call to action because it’s pray for our next president. This isn’t just read some little bit of context and not actually do anything. It’s Hey, let’s take action. So a thing that you could do, maybe even simply is just even say, what does the Bible have to say about prayer and list five scripture verses? How should we pray for the president?

Rohn Gibson (01:20:01):

Well, what does the Bible say about how so we, how should, how should we pray maybe for our current president and our next president? How should we pray for our president? And then in the end, I’m trying to kind of hard to read it, but you did ask a question, which is awesome. And then ask you a question to engage them about the scripture, about the scripture references. So again, it’s not you having to come up with all these words of copy, but just very simply bring scripture into it. Hey, we need to take action. We need to pray. Here’s what the Bible has to say about prayer. Okay, let’s take action on this. Let’s pray. You can even write out a prayer. Some people it’s so easy to assume that people who are going to stumble across this post, that they even know how to pray.

Rohn Gibson (01:20:47):

So maybe even just writing out a, pray, a prayer for the next president. So just a couple of thoughts there to add a little bit more length and a little more substance. It’s not about length. It’s really about substance. I’ll just tell you that. So just some thoughts to consider there next is to make sure, and I check this out. It was either yesterday or the day before make sure that you are then posting this out on your different social media, whether it’s your, your church, for sure, as well as your post, your personal profile and use that social scheduler. We see that you, you have access to that now. That’s awesome. Awesome. Next step. Now let’s start using that and you can even, here’s one of the really cool things from your post itself. So let’s say that you post five verses or 10 verses, whatever it is actually in your social scheduler, don’t feel like you have to write all new things, share the verse, share one of those verses schedule that post with, Hey, click here to learn more about how you can pray for our next president and then schedule there’s posts.

Rohn Gibson (01:22:00):

So you literally, you can take, let’s say you did five verses. That could be five different social media posts that you share, bringing people back to this blog post on your website. So utilize that social scheduler. It’s there to work for you. Okay? It’s not there to work you over. It’s there to work for you. So make sure that you use that. And there’s just an easy way of not having to create more content, just use the content you’ve already created in that blog post, and then use that and just small chunk, what was called content chunking. So just using a small chunk of that content to then promote that blog post. And then lastly, and I know Isabelle has some thoughts here too. She’s the content queen here at ChurchSpring. So continue to add a variety of different types of content. So you’ve got one on COVID, you’ve got one on praying for our next president.

Rohn Gibson (01:22:53):

So very current event related stuff. Keep doing that. That is awesome. However, also start maybe mixing in like a Friday announcement. I know we talked about that during the blog posts are during last ChurchSpring Live, but literally just pulling out, look forward to seeing you all on Sunday. Here’s some things to, here’s some things to consider, and then it’s just on Fridays. Like that could be your routine, just posting that about here’s the scripture passage. Here’s some questions to consider if there’s any like COVID updates or things like that that you want to update or whatever. Maybe if you have a special speaker or special meal afterwards, you know, once the world gets back to normal you can share all those things and kind of that Friday update. So yeah, just a thought there, as far as adding some content leading up to specific things related to things that are happening at the church.

Rohn Gibson (01:23:46):

So keep doing current events. That’s awesome. Keep it up and then start to kind of mix in some of these other things, but you’re doing an awesome job. I just want to my last comment, Melvin, so encouraging, so encouraging to see you taking action. So keep it up. We’re going to continue to keep on keeping on, and I just want to encourage you to keep on keeping on, keep on learning, keep on taking action, the impact that you’re going to make from these efforts, you may never know on this side of heaven, the impact that your efforts are making or are going to make in the lives of people, not just in your community, but across the world. So just the impact you’re making on me by you doing the work. Like it makes me want to get to work even harder. Like how can we provide more tools and resources? So I just want to encourage you, pastor Melvin, keep up the great work brother.

Isabelle Faletti (01:24:39):

Yeah, yep. Agreed you everybody who, who attends is live streams. They are such an encouragement to us and yeah, it just makes us want to do that much better and continue serving you. And I mean, we, we talk in every single of our internal meetings at ChurchSpring, we talk about how can we serve our members and, and it’s true. So however we can serve you let us know. Melvin real quick. I just wanted to say first off, I love that you’re using some images in the ChurchSpring image library. Yeah. We put those there so that you can use because those are kind of relevant, updated, seasonal images. So great job using those. And then I did just want to comment on the COVID-19 update first off. That’s awesome that you have this blog article because your church website is the home base for your members to know any updates that are going on.

Isabelle Faletti (01:25:36):

I mean, I know for my church and where I live there’s, everything is constantly changing with COVID-19. So I love that you’re using your website as that home base. You could even update your, you can add a new blog article every week as things do change so that your members can go to your blog article, learn of any updates, any any, any changes to when they go into your, to your service. So I know that you said we’re practicing social distancing, if there’s any other specifics that members would need to know, be sure to include that in this blog article. I know for myself I like to know all the details especially nowadays, just so I can know how I need to be prepared with a mask with not a mask, like all the information. So you can use this blog article tool as a way to really decrease any anxiety that your current members and your visitors may experience by just giving any details specifically for COVID-19. So I love that you have this blog article for COVID keep that up so that people will know how to interact with, with your church.

Rohn Gibson (01:26:48):

Awesome. Very good. Are there any other last questions I saw? We had some chat going on as far as David, it sounds like you have got quite the setup there. That’s so awesome. I can’t wait to have more of these conversations as we continue to level up, get to that next level of live streaming, which we’re going to talk about next week. But the endurance of the people on this live stream, I guess this is awesome. So we’ve got a couple of things from you and I want your feedback. So I know it’s already been an hour and 27 minutes and 20 seconds. We have a little countdown clock to tell us that, but I want your feedback. We’re actually considering starting another show. So just like this, this is ChurchSpring Live, and our goal in ChurchSpring live is obviously we want to equip you share tips and tools and resources to help you communicate better in the digital age.

Rohn Gibson (01:27:40):

So a lot of the focus on ChurchSpring Live is all about strategy. So we talk about strategy like today, we talked about live streaming basics and kind of some of those how to things. And then we also obviously get product updates and we’re going to continue to do that. One of the several weeks ago, I had a conversation with a pastor in Texas and I didn’t I didn’t get permission to share his name so I won’t share it, but had a conversation with him. And it was just, it was great. And one of the things he talked about was just the ability to be able to communicate in a way like this related to getting questions answered specifically regarding how to use the product, not in a strategic way, but like we just had the question of how do I like, is it the toggle button that I needed to do?

Rohn Gibson (01:28:24):

Or is it the settings area that I need to go to and put in my link? So we’re considering doing another show and where don’t, we don’t have the date time, anything like that yet, but basically what, what it would be is what we’d call it, you know, loosely ChurchSpring Office Hours. So if you have a question specifically related to the product, more from a support perspective , obviously the fastest way is going to be submit your support ticket. We’re going to follow up with you as quickly as possible. However, if there are some things that man, it would just be really cool to have office hours where you can go and like show me live. And then I can ask my questions to get clarification. If that’s a show that would be interesting to you. I want you to do this for me.

Rohn Gibson (01:29:06):

Go ahead and put office hours in the comments below. Okay. It might be Isabelle. Hopefully it’s not me, but we’ll see here. Go ahead and put office hours. Yeah. Nuts and bolts. Exactly. Thank you, Larry. That’s exactly what it would be kind of the nuts and bolts of very specific. So kind of thing, customer success. How do I do this in the program? I don’t know how to do that. And we would in that one, do our best to do a screen sharing and actually literally walk you through how to do that. So if that would be something that would be super helpful for you, go ahead and type office hours in the comments and let us know, like, would you even be interested in something like that? So I’m just going to kind of let that be the for the moment, go ahead, type in office hours.

Rohn Gibson (01:29:53):

If that is something that would be valuable to you. So yes. Questionnaire, Benjamin, Benjamin, man. It’s been awesome to see you in the chat today. You’ve been super active. Love it, brother. As soon as the live feed is completed, the entire show will be available. Yes. ChurchSpring.com for slash CSL. That’s exactly what it is for. This is being our 11th episode. Awesome. So it looks like we’ve got a lot of people that want you to do a August hours. So I can’t wait. Melvin gave us yes, yes, yes. So, all right, well we’ll keep you posted on that again. We’re not, we’re just kind of putting the feelers out. What kind of interest would there be? Our goal is we want to serve you. Well ultimately as God’s called us. Yeah. And if this could be yeah. In a way that would be beneficial, then we absolutely want to do that.

Rohn Gibson (01:30:46):

I love that Larry. Sometimes I feel like I’m sitting in the cockpit of a seven 47 and expected to fly the plane, so I totally get it. And that’s where this could really be beneficial Barbara office hours. Okay. So, well more feedback on that. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like there’s interest now. We’re just going to have to figure out how to best do it and fit it in, but we will definitely follow up with you on that. Great. This has been a great show an hour and 31 minutes. We’ve covered a lot of ground and I want to invite you all next week. Same place. It’s going to be episode 12. And what we’re going to talk about next week is really kind of, you know, if we, if you kind of think of this as a sermon series, this is all about live streaming.

Rohn Gibson (01:31:28):

And next week, we’re going to talk about how to take your live streaming up a notch from what we’ve talked about today. It’s awesome to see that we have, even what I would consider more advanced people doing multi-camera and all this kind of stuff. So we’re going to tell you next week is how to take even a phone set up. Like we just talked about and how you can do a multi-camera style set up with just your phones. You don’t have to have some wifi connected camera that you connect remotely, or you control remotely through a Apple device or whatever device, or even through a joystick with multiple cameras. There’s kind of a next step that you can take to really increase the, I say this loosely, the production value or the quality of your live stream without having to break the bank. So next week, we’re going to talk about that in addition to not only how you can do multiple camera, but also how you can go to multiple locations utilizing a tool like Restream. So you don’t want to miss that episode next Thursday, August 13th at 10:00 AM. Central time. Do not miss it. I already can’t wait. Honestly. I just want to keep talking. This is, this is so much fun. I get so energized after I’m done with this. I just I’m like ready to go run a marathon because it’s so, Oh man, I just get so much energy off the action that’s happening and the questions that we’re getting. So can’t wait, I’ll bring the donuts. Awesome. Rebecca, Christina. Oh, now you’re talking my language.

Isabelle Faletti (01:32:55):

I love maple donuts – Just putting that out there.

Rohn Gibson (01:32:58):

What’s your favorite donut and maple donut maple. Well like the cake style doughnut or like the dough style,

Isabelle Faletti (01:33:07):

As long as it has a maple icing on it. I’m happy.

Rohn Gibson (01:33:11):

Yes. Oh man. Donuts.

Isabelle Faletti (01:33:14):

Oh, all right. All right. Robin and Kristina will be holding you to that.

Rohn Gibson (01:33:17):

No, I’m definitely hungry. I’ll tell you. Right. Awesome. We’ll do this next week. There’s August 13th, 10:00 AM. Central time. We’re going to talk about taking your live stream to the next level with multicam multistream. So if you have any questions on that, we’re going to post the event. We’ll publish that out there. You can put your comments on that as well as you can go to ChurchSpring.com/contact submit any questions you have related to that. And we’ll hit as many of those as we can during that time. So woo. What a great one today. Wow, this was awesome and good. You were right. You predicted this before we got on, there’s going to be a lot of questions and a lot of engagement today and you guys did not disappoint. So thank you all for joining us today. David. Awesome. Maple maple is over the top.

Rohn Gibson (01:34:05):

It’s so cool. Cool. All right, everybody have a great rest of your day. God bless. And we cannot wait to see all of you next week. So same time, same place August 13th, 10:00 AM. Central time. We’ll look forward to seeing you then have a great day everyone. Bye bye.

• Welcome to ChurchSpring Live Episode 011 – what to expect (00:11:54)
• Let’s Learn!
  • What is live streaming? (00:16:16)
  • Why should my church integrate live streaming on my church website? (00:17:49)
  • What are some tools I can use to live stream on a zero-limited budget? (00:26:35)
  • What are the top 10 key ingredients to a successful live stream? (00:41:34),(00:54:15)
  • Q&A (00:34:48), (00:49:01), (00:56:14)
• Action Time!
  • Action Item#1 (01:08:46): Start Live Streaming!
  • Action Item #2: If you are already live streaming, take action on one of the success ingredients you are currently not doing.
• Wrap Up (01:31:28): Join us next week for ChurchSpring Live, Episode 12 to learn the must-have tools and resources you need to take your live stream up a notch.