CSL 015 – All You Need to Know to Set Up a Professional Live Stream for Your Church

Isabelle Faletti (00:00:54):

Hello, hello, and welcome to ChurchSpring for everybody who’s joining us. Happy September also. It is September 3rd, but don’t worry, summer is still here. It is technically not fall yet for all of those who love summer like myself.

Rohn Gibson (00:01:11):

Denial. Denial. It’s coming.

Isabelle Faletti (00:01:12):

No, I know. I know. Yup. I’m wearing a tank top today. I refuse to put on a sweater.

Rohn Gibson (00:01:17):

You’re not ready for pumpkin spice everything?

Isabelle Faletti (00:01:20):

I am not. No.

Rohn Gibson (00:01:21):

Really?

Isabelle Faletti (00:01:22):

I’m not. I like lemonade and strawberries.

Rohn Gibson (00:01:25):

Awesome.

Isabelle Faletti (00:01:25):

The days of living in Arizona got in to me.

Rohn Gibson (00:01:28):

There you go.

Isabelle Faletti (00:01:31):

Well, for everybody who’s joining us, hello. My name is Isabelle. Joining me today is co-founder of ChurchSpring, Rohn Gibson. Looks like Melvin, hello. Good to see you. I would love to know who else is attending us today for this live event. So, be sure to introduce yourself. Put your name, your church, and where you’re from in the comments below. You will need to give StreamYard access, so that we can display your name on the screen here.

Isabelle Faletti (00:02:02):

So, while you are introducing yourself to all those who are listening, I do want to welcome a few new members that we have of the ChurchSpring family. We are really excited to welcome all of our members. These are just three that I pulled this morning. So, if I’m not calling you out, we’re still very excited to have you. So, welcome Wayside Chapel from Chicago, Illinois, Friendship Baptist Church from Hudson, North Carolina, and Purpose of Life Ministries from Washington, Georgia. So, welcome.

Isabelle Faletti (00:02:37):

If you’re new to ChurchSpring, we help churches build intuitive, affordable, and frustration-free website because you don’t have time to be spending a ton of time and stress trying to build a website. So, we are here to help you out.

Isabelle Faletti (00:02:54):

We are in for a great ChurchSpring Live episode today. Yes, I say that all the time, and it’s true because every Thursday, we have a good one. So, if you’ve ever wondered how to set up a professional livestream for your church service, stay tuned. So, if you help manage communications and you want to invest in a professional livestream production, but you’re not quite sure what are the steps, and you just need an expert, you need that person to talk with, we have that person on ChurchSpring Live today, and it’s not us. It’s not myself, and it’s not Rohn.

Isabelle Faletti (00:03:33):

Even though we’re experts in our own on other areas, we are talking about the livestreaming expert today, but I’m not going to get into that yet because Rohn is going to share some announcements here.

Rohn Gibson (00:03:45):

I know. Don’t you just want to dive in right now?

Isabelle Faletti (00:03:47):

I do. I do.

Rohn Gibson (00:03:49):

I can’t wait. I can’t wait. I just want to bring him on. I want to click the button and bring him on, but we’re almost there. Just sit tight. Again, we do want this to be a livestream that’s very engaging for you. So, as Isabelle mentioned, please let us know where you’re from. We’ve got some people joining us now. We’ve got Al from Polk City, Florida. Let’s see. Joseph. Man, now they’re coming in. All right. Joseph from Eagle’s Nest Christian Fellowship in Philadelphia.

Rohn Gibson (00:04:18):

Douglas, welcome back, brother, from, let’s see, Southwest Church of the Nazarene.

Isabelle Faletti (00:04:24):

Omaha.

Rohn Gibson (00:04:25):

Omaha in the house. We’re very close, very close. I was just there a couple of weeks ago. All right. Jason Whittaker, Emmanuel Temple Church, Buffalo, New York. I can’t leave out my Michigan fan. I’ve got to put Reverend Christina on here. Even though I may have a bone to pick with Michigan for voting to postpone the football season, but we won’t go there.

Isabelle Faletti (00:04:49):

We will not go there today.

Rohn Gibson (00:04:50):

Yeah. We’re not going to go there. As I just said, we’re not going there.

Isabelle Faletti (00:04:51):

If you just did, you know that you went there.

Rohn Gibson (00:04:58):

Yeah. Oh, my goodness! Anyway, so we want to engage with you again if you’re just joining us. I see we’ve got a few new that have joined. Let us know where you’re from, the name of your church, and where you’re from in the comments below. So, get ready to engage.

Rohn Gibson (00:05:11):

We have got quite the show lined up for you today. We want to answer as many questions as you have. This is our fourth episode in a series specifically on livestreaming. Obviously, the importance of livestreaming just drastically increased over the last several months. We don’t need to talk about the why’s. We all know.

Rohn Gibson (00:05:31):

So, this is the fourth episode and we are bringing the big guns on this one. So, if you’ve got questions about gear, about whatever, throw it in the comments. We’re going to answer as many questions as we can today. So, super excited about it. So, feel free. Put that in there. Leave us a comment, and we will try to filter through them the best that we can.

Rohn Gibson (00:05:56):

Again, like and share if there’s somebody there at your church or maybe even a friend at another church that could benefit from this. Feel free. Reach out to them. Shoot them a text and say, “Go over to ChurchSpring. There’s a live episode right now. You can get your questions answered.”

Rohn Gibson (00:06:10):

I mean, seriously, the value that you’re going to get from this is just through the roof. So, definitely stay tuned. Don’t feel like you have to take perfect notes. So, we are going to post a replay of this episode on our website at churchspring.com/csl015. Again, CSL015 for ChurchSpringLive. Easy to remember. You can go check it out. Well, actually, we’re going to take notes for you. So, we’ll give you show notes. There’d be a transcript. Obviously, the video here, you’ll be able to rewatch that as well. So, we are just super excited about this episode. I think we’ve said that 25 times-

Isabelle Faletti (00:06:50):

I know. I know.

Rohn Gibson (00:06:53):

… in six minutes and 52 seconds. So, real quickly, on this episode, we’ve got my good friend Zac. Zac and I met several months ago. This episode has actually been in the works for several months. Zac and I are part of a men’s mastermind called Iron Sharpens Iron. A little shout out to my mentor Aaron Walker. So, if you want to learn about what’s a mastermind, how does that work, anyway, go check it out. Do a Google search, Iron Sharpen Iron Aaron Walker, and you can check that out.

Rohn Gibson (00:07:24):

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Zac and getting to know him. I’ll tell you, there’s lots of things that really blew me away about my first conversation with Zac. The first one was just this heart for ministry. It’s easy to get blown away by somebody’s technical abilities, and their experience, and the work they’ve done, and the names they’ve done work for, and all that kind of thing, but a lot of those people you meet, they’re, I don’t mean to be rude or derogatory, but they’re so full of themselves.

Rohn Gibson (00:07:56):

One of the first things that just really hit me about Zac was his just desire to serve. I mean, the very first phone call conversation, we talked about the possibility of bringing him on, and he’s like, “Man, whatever I can do to serve, whatever I can do to help.”

Rohn Gibson (00:08:10):

I’m like, “You are exactly the person that I want to bring on.” This is the first episode like this that we’re doing with ChurchSpring and friends, and it’s going to be a great one. So, Zac owns Medianet AV based in the Buckeye state. Go Bucks! Yes, there you go. So, anyway, without further ado, we’re going to bring Zac on here. So, let me make sure I click the right buttons and bring him on.

Rohn Gibson (00:08:36):

Awesome, brother. How you doing?

Zac Novak (00:08:37):

Great. How you guys doing?

Rohn Gibson (00:08:39):

Wonderful. Wonderful, man.

Isabelle Faletti (00:08:41):

We are good.

Rohn Gibson (00:08:41):

We are so glad to have you on. I know the people who are joining livestream, they’re going to get so much today. So, let’s just jump in.

Zac Novak (00:08:51):

Sure.

Rohn Gibson (00:08:51):

Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself? Give us the 30,000-foot view of Zac.

Zac Novak (00:08:57):

Yeah. So, we’ll start from the beginning, if that’s okay.

Rohn Gibson (00:09:01):

Yeah.

Zac Novak (00:09:01):

So, yeah. Really started in production work 20 years ago when I was in high school. I met my wife in high school. Actually, we’ve been married 16 years now, and we have three kids. Actually, one is in seventh grade, fifth grade, and first grade.

Isabelle Faletti (00:09:18):

Wow.

Zac Novak (00:09:18):

So, I’ve been married 16 years. One thing we were talking about awhile ago is that we have been together more than half our lives now as friends and dating, and stuff like that, which is pretty cool. So, I’m old. That’s okay. I call it experience, right? Yeah.

Isabelle Faletti (00:09:34):

Yes, experience, seasoned, I think we call it now.

Zac Novak (00:09:37):

Yeah. Gray hair, you can’t see them, but they’re starting to show up. So, started production work years ago when I was in high school and serving in the church and whatnot, grew up in the church. I started working in a theater where they bring concerts in. You mentioned working with some big acts. They were big back in the ’90s, Billy Ray Cyrus, and started there, and just wanted to learn about production. I really loved it.

Zac Novak (00:10:05):

What I realized there is that people didn’t have lives at home, right? So, I knew I didn’t want to be on tour. So, I just kept learning, learning, learning. Went to school. After high school, went to Full Sail University, which was much smaller then. Learned a lot of stuff there, but really worked at a few churches down in Florida, and got to learn more and more. That’s when I knew I had a burning desire to serve in a church and work in churches, right?

Zac Novak (00:10:32):

That’s when I came back home, couldn’t find really a job. Started working at a hotel, and that was terrible doing AV stuff. I had to wear a suit and tie. It was miserable. I quickly realized didn’t want to do that. In corporate for a few years, and then started looking at churches. We got married, and really just wanted to serve in the church, and found a great ministry about an hour away from us in Hudson, Ohio, Hudson Community Chapel.

Zac Novak (00:10:58):

In 2006, started there as a tech director, small church, about a thousand. Well, not really small, but a church of about a thousand. Over the course of years, it grew to 5,000 or 6,000.

Isabelle Faletti (00:11:08):

Wow.

Zac Novak (00:11:08):

So, great being a part of that. One thing I was thinking through last night was we started streaming in 2007. So, when I started in six, we put together a video team, and all this video gear, all standard def analog stuff. Yeah. It was early, I think it was February 2007 we had a DSL-dedicated connection, a 768 upload speed.

Rohn Gibson (00:11:30):

Wow.

Isabelle Faletti (00:11:35):

How far we’ve come.

Zac Novak (00:11:36):

What’s that?

Isabelle Faletti (00:11:36):

How far we’ve come.

Zac Novak (00:11:36):

I know. It’s crazy. We thought, “Wow! This is amazing.” It was really, really bad, bad quality, but it helped grow the church, and people were able to view. I think especially in Ohio, in our area, we were one of the first churches that were streaming, and it looked terrible compared to today’s standards, but it was just a great thing that we were starting back then. Basically from their churches that come to us, “How are you doing what you’re doing?” I would either point them to this company or that company, and with my parents being business owners and everything, I wanted to own a business doing something.

Zac Novak (00:12:08):

Really, when we started having more kids and living on church salary, I needed to make more money, anyway. So, I was serving in the church, helping other churches, and it just grew and grew and grew, where I was working two full-time jobs, and at a church that was growing with multiple campuses and a family that was growing with multiple kids. My home life was suffering. That’s where I had to pick one or the other. What God told me was, “You can go out and serve other churches. You don’t have to serve one church.”

Zac Novak (00:12:38):

So, that’s basically what we did. I grew out of the Christ Community Chapel or Hudson Community Chapel, and from there, started Medianet. In 2015, did that full-time and it allowed me to serve churches in this area and all around the country as well. We would still do corporate stuff, and we do stuff with high schools and universities and colleges, but, yeah, I mean, God’s opened up so many doors for us where we can serve a whole different client base and just focus on one church.

Zac Novak (00:13:08):

So, I’m still in ministry. It’s just a different beast of the ministry, serving multiple churches. So, it’s been great. It’s been a great journey.

Isabelle Faletti (00:13:16):

Wow! That’s amazing. I love to hear just how God uses your own talents and skills and here you are just helping. I mean, helping our ChurchSpring members, those who are not members of ChurchSpring who are tuning in. So, I just love to see how God uses the body of Christ to spread the good word. So, thanks for sharing. I really appreciated that.

Isabelle Faletti (00:13:42):

So, I know that you and your team, you guys work with Alistair Begg’s Church and, really, his ministry, the radio ministry. So, can you tell us a little more about what your production team looks like for that, and what the livestream, yeah, just what you guys are doing with that?

Zac Novak (00:14:04):

Sure. Yeah. So, several years ago, we got connected with Truth for Life, and that’s Alistair’s radio ministry and they want to do more video production of their services and whatnot. So, they brought us in. We talked through what it could look like, and yeah.

Zac Novak (00:14:17):

So, right now, what we provide is a shader, someone that controls the light levels of the cameras, a technical director that’s switching all the cameras, graphics for lower thirds, the worship and scripture, five camera operators. We have seven cameras between four man camera and three PTZ cameras, and then we also do broadcast audio engineer as well to help mix the band separately from in the house.

Zac Novak (00:14:44):

So, that’s what it looks like, three services in the morning and one in the evening, which now that COVID is here, that’s changed quite a bit, but because of what they put in place, we’ve done one service, and it’s live, and we’re reaching literally tens of thousands of people in their homes every single Sunday from around the world.

Zac Novak (00:15:04):

I just got an email yesterday, two people from one in country and one of the country of how they’ve been watching in the past few months and how their small church that they’re plugged in doesn’t have livestream capability, but they’ve been able to watch Parkside Church and be able to stay connected and how their souls are being fulfilled. It’s great.

Isabelle Faletti (00:15:22):

Wow! That’s amazing.

Rohn Gibson (00:15:22):

That’s awesome.

Isabelle Faletti (00:15:24):

So, how big is the production staff then? I was counting and then I lost count.

Zac Novak (00:15:31):

Yeah. Basically, there’s five, six, seven of us, depending on the service and whatnot. So, I’m usually there overseeing more of an engineer waiting. If something goes wrong, I’d jump in or someone has to leave or whatever, and I’ll run gear whatever needs to be done. We work with Parkside Church and their tech staff to be able to bring it all together, essentially.

Isabelle Faletti (00:15:53):

Okay. Wow! So, for our listeners here today, they may be listening and thinking, “That’s amazing, but that’s a little overwhelming because how do you even get to that professional livestreaming production?” So, what would you recommend as a first step that a church will consider when they want to start livestreaming at this professional level?

Zac Novak (00:16:24):

Sure. That’s like the high end. That’s TV quality, if you will. So, a lot of-

Isabelle Faletti (00:16:32):

Oh, looks like he froze or I froze.

Rohn Gibson (00:16:35):

I think it’s him.

Isabelle Faletti (00:16:37):

Okay.

Zac Novak (00:16:38):

Yeah.

Rohn Gibson (00:16:38):

There we go. Now, you’re back.

Isabelle Faletti (00:16:39):

There you are.

Rohn Gibson (00:16:41):

Carry on.

Zac Novak (00:16:42):

Sorry.

Rohn Gibson (00:16:42):

You are good.

Zac Novak (00:16:43):

Everything went black at my end. So, yeah, obviously, that’s a high end television, right? Not all churches have the financial capability to be able to do that. So, a lot of the churches we work with are much, much, much smaller. Rohn, we were talking about, well, who your audience is for ChurchSpring, and that’s really our audience is the hundred to 15 or 2,000 people churches. They don’t need all of that, but it is important now with COVID and as people are staying home to have the gear and the people in place to be able to produce a livestream that people are able to engage, and that’s the key.

Zac Novak (00:17:27):

I think people always maybe had livestreaming or the churches had livestreaming, but 5% of the people are watching it. Now, 100% of people are at home watching it, and they realize, “Wow! We have to do something better. We have to step up our game because everyone is watching.” So, that’s why there’s no gear on the shelves. Everyone bought everything, and everything backward, a lot of stuff I guess I should say.

Zac Novak (00:17:48):

The way we approach, when we go to a church and we approach, we talk to a pastor, worship pastor, whoever, and we say, “What’s your vision for the livestream?” Because that’s the biggest thing of having a vision for the livestream and not just buying a whole bunch of gear and hopefully it works. We want to make sure that you have a vision that is really focused.

Zac Novak (00:18:09):

Then from there, we’ll design a system or a gear for that and then create a budget for you. A lot of people will say, “Well, we want to be like this church, but we have this amount of money.” It doesn’t work like that. We have to give and take a little bit. You can have a huge vision but your budget may be down here. So, we have to try to even that out.

Zac Novak (00:18:29):

Yeah. We always start with what’s the vision for the church and livestreaming. A lot of people, “We just want to get on the air. We want to be able …” Well, that’s great, but we have to be able to narrow that down a little bit more. Are you going to be able to do IMAG down the road or you’re showing it on the projectors? Are you just going to stream from here on out and not centered anywhere else in the building? So, there’s a lot of different pieces with that that we talk through with the pastors and team members, committees, whoever.

Isabelle Faletti (00:18:58):

Yeah. I know that’s really important because, I mean, here on ChurchSpring Live, we talk often about creating a goal for your church website, for digital communications, and really, what you’re saying is when you understand your vision, that is ultimately your goal. I love how your team, you work with the church to identify all of the things they may be thinking about to get to that vision because if someone is new to livestreaming, if a church is newer to it, then they’re probably not thinking the questions that you will be asking of, “Well, where do you want to livestream this to, the types of cameras.” So, that’s where your know-how, your expert level as we talked you up lots in the beginning of this how that does come in use.

Isabelle Faletti (00:19:49):

So, I have a couple of questions. First off, I actually want to take a quick break just to see for all those who are listening, if you have any questions or a couple of minutes in here, we’re talking with Zac with Medianet AV. He’s what we call a livestreaming expert. He always shakes his head at that because he’s humble, but he is. He is an expert at this.

Isabelle Faletti (00:20:15):

So, for all those who are listening or even on the replay, if you have questions about livestreaming, about livestreaming at a production level, drop it in the comment below and we will make sure to get to that question either during the live event or even after. So, definitely engage. If you love what he’s saying, let us know, and drop that comment.

Isabelle Faletti (00:20:38):

So, all right, Zac. When we were talking before in preparation for this, you said something that really resonated with me, that it’s more than livestreaming. So, it’s about creating an experience. I love having that perspective because it’s not just pressing play and talking. Even for ChurchSpring Live, we do prep work. We’re talking about what is our goal, what is our vision, what’s our longterm vision.

Isabelle Faletti (00:21:07):

So, when a church is looking to create an experience, to have it more than a livestream, what are some of the key ingredients that are important to achieving that professional livestream.

Zac Novak (00:21:23):

Yeah. It is an experience. What we always tell people is you’re basically telling a story of what’s going on in the room, right? I mean, it could be one camera, but ideally, you have more than one camera to be able to help it be an engaging livestream as well. Obviously, the word of God is engaging in itself, but people are used to television now where there’s multiple cameras, a lot going on, and it is engaging. Switching cameras helps the end user be engaged, right?

Zac Novak (00:21:57):

I always get some pushback with some pastors about that, “Well, my preaching is engaging.” Well, yeah, but people are watching on TV or on their phone and there’s always something else going on that can pull them away. So, we want to help keep them engaged as much as possible.

Zac Novak (00:22:11):

Yeah. To answer your question, what it really comes down to is great video is supported with great audio and great lighting. A camera can only work so well if it has good lighting. If I turn off the lights in here now, it would be black and it will look really, really dark, right?

Zac Novak (00:22:31):

Same thing if I just use my computer microphone. It’s not going to sound as good as this nice Sennheiser microphone. So, they all support each other, audio, video, lighting. So, when you put all those elements together, that’s where you get a better, more professional level livestreaming experience.

Zac Novak (00:22:53):

There’s one more component. It’s the people that are running it, right? So, you can have the best of the best gear, but if your volunteers, your staff and team don’t know how to use it, it’s not going to look great, right? So, we have to train them up and that’s something that I love doing. I was in a church two hours away last night training for several hours and doing a Wednesday night service with them and building into their teams, and I love that. That’s my favorite part of my job.

Zac Novak (00:23:20):

When I work at the church, that’s what I love to do. We had over 75 volunteers between multiple campuses that I just love building into and teaching how to use the gear because they’re only on it one day a week for two or three hours. So, how are we teaching them to be able to use the gear?

Zac Novak (00:23:38):

So, part of it is the people you’re running it. Again, you could have really crummy gear, but a high end professional. They’ll probably make it look as good as they can, but it’s really hand-in-hand between the gear, audio, video and lighting gear and the people using it. So, we really need to build into them and teach them as much as we can to be able to use the gear for the livestreaming experience. Does that answer your question?

Isabelle Faletti (00:24:02):

Yeah, that does. So, Rohn, it looked like you had a question over there.

Rohn Gibson (00:24:07):

Yeah. I think that’s such an important point. It’s like you give Picasso a paintbrush and you give another person a paintbrush, and it’s like, “Okay. What’s going to come out?” It is all about the people, investing in the people. I think that’s just one of the things in the pastors that we’ve talked with. They think of the expense and the technology, but not about the training of the people to actually know how to use that paintbrush correctly. So, such an important thing that we’re talking about and why, I mean, I would encourage churches right now, if you’ve got setups and you don’t feel like you’re getting the most out of the setups, we’re going to give you a way to reach out to Zac here, but I can’t encourage you enough. I think this is really, yes, Zac knows the tools and how to combine things and how to create that vision technologically for you to actually have that be communicated and engaging.

Rohn Gibson (00:25:04):

I think one of that, I mean, just like he said, he loves that, and that’s evident and just even you being present here. We’re not paying you anything to be here. You’re here because you want to minister and you want to help the church. I think that that’s so important, people. It’s always about, in every aspect of ministry, it’s about people.

Zac Novak (00:25:23):

Yeah, and it’s finding the good leaders because a lot of tech people, I mean, we’re weird, let’s just call it that.

Rohn Gibson (00:25:30):

Yeah, yeah, right. Amen.

Zac Novak (00:25:32):

After some time, they don’t know how to deal with us. So, I mean, a good technical leader in your group that can lead multiple people and build into them, that’s the key. I’ve been to, I wouldn’t say hundreds, I’ll say dozens of churches where they have really good leaders, and I’ve been at dozen churches where they don’t have good leaders in place. I’ve had them have those conversations with the leadership of the church and say, “Part of your problem is your main tech guy or your main volunteer. You need to either talk with them to build into the team or you need to find someone else.” Those are hard conversations to have. So, it’s important, though.

Rohn Gibson (00:26:10):

It is.

Isabelle Faletti (00:26:10):

Yup, it really is. Can that be a quote for social that I will use? “Tech people, we’re weird.”

Rohn Gibson (00:26:20):

Amen. You’d get a lot of Amens If you think the tech person in your church is weird even if it’s you, if you’re watching this, put an Amen in the comments. It’s okay because I’m going to go down here and put Amen because we’re weird, and let’s be honest. Sometimes it sounds like we’re talking another language.

Isabelle Faletti (00:26:39):

We need you guys. Obviously, we need you to help us with livestreaming, with tech. Oh, that’s great. So, I feel like one of the most frequently asked questions that we actually haven’t gotten yet on the livestream and I’m a little surprised, however, just knowing how it reminds work. The big question is, “Okay. How much is this going to cost me?” So, when you’re talking about, “I’m going in to churches to help train the team, help train the leaders, how to use the equipments,” the big question is, yeah, budget. It looks like-

Rohn Gibson (00:27:19):

We got some Amens coming in.

Isabelle Faletti (00:27:20):

We have a couple of nerds.

Rohn Gibson (00:27:23):

Yeah. Again, an affectionate term at ChurchSpring, we embrace the nerds. It’s all good.

Isabelle Faletti (00:27:29):

Yup. You are in a safe space here.

Rohn Gibson (00:27:32):

Yes, yes.

Isabelle Faletti (00:27:34):

So, how would you define the budget for a professional livestream? I know that it could be the sky is your limit, but starting out for a church who would be interested in just leveling up their livestream at this professional level, where can they start, and then what is a higher limit or higher package that you would recommend?

Zac Novak (00:28:01):

Yeah. It’s a huge range. We get that question all the time. We’ll talk with a pastor and at the end he’ll say, “Okay. What are we talking here? Can give me a round number?” It is tough because it’s like there’s a lot that goes into it. Every church is different because they already have some gear. It’s not we do new construction. It’s great because you start from scratch, and so you build from bottom up, and that’s phenomenal, but a lot of churches, they have gear that’s old, and we have to try to make it work because the budget isn’t there.

Zac Novak (00:28:29):

Yeah, I mean, we just work with the church here in town. They have 80 people, but they wanted to livestream to Facebook. I think it was less than five grand to be able to do what they wanted to do. It was tough for them. I mean, they had to go to the boards several times and then finally, they’re like, “Yeah. This is something we have to do,” and that’s a lot of money for a church that size, right? They know that that’s something they had to do because everyone’s at home watching.

Zac Novak (00:28:56):

Someone would put an iPhone directly to Facebook and, again, they know it wasn’t engaging and the quality wasn’t there where they want it to. They want it to have two cameras where they can switch between, record it, stream it, make sure the audio is coming from the soundboard from the pastor’s lapel or podium mic. They saw that this investment is going to help their audience engage and have a better livestreaming.

Zac Novak (00:29:18):

So, I typically tell people, “Yeah, we’re starting at a few thousand just because of the quality of gear that we recommend.” Could you go out to Best Buy and get a cheap camera? Absolutely. There was a church a few hours north here we visited, and he did that. When I showed him what he could have spend a few hundred dollars more and got a professional video camera versus the cheap Best Buy, it was night and day of what he could have done.

Zac Novak (00:29:44):

A lot of this, people don’t know. There’s a lot of stuff on the Google’s, a lot of YouTube videos about what you can get and what’s out there, and it’s all preference, obviously. I don’t like to do packages. One thing we put together some packages on our website of what some tiers are, what you can do. I don’t like that. I think that’s a good starting place. I think that’s a good conversation starter. This is what we can start with, “What do you have? What can we bring in to help support what you already have?”

Zac Novak (00:30:16):

Yeah, it ranges. I mean, it really ranges. Again, it comes from that vision for your livestream to one camera, two camera, three, four cameras, going into a video switcher, and then streaming out to the end users. So, how many places do you want to stream to? Is it YouTube, Facebook, and your website? So, I mean, there’s a lot of variables there, but I would definitely say, “Yeah, you need a few thousand dollars to do it right.”

Isabelle Faletti (00:30:43):

Yeah. Okay. That’s great. Rohn, do you have any questions that I’ve missed?

Rohn Gibson (00:30:52):

No, I think we’re going to give a resource, and I know Zac mentioned, and I totally get the idea of when you’re looking at the product value and quality, it’s like sometimes you give a package, and it’s like putting a square peg in a round hole. It’s nice because it’s this little package thing, but when you actually try to apply it, it just doesn’t really work out like you want it to.

Rohn Gibson (00:31:16):

So, Zac did go the extra mile for us, though, and put together some packages. We’re going to share that resource here in just a little bit. I would encourage you when we share that, go check them out because, honestly, I look at that right before we jumped on, and I looked at the price compared to what you got, and I was blown away because I’m like, “I can’t go on Amazon and buy this for that price.”

Rohn Gibson (00:31:41):

So, this is awesome. Zac’s really going to hook you all up. For those that want to take advantage of one of these packages or at least start the conversation. That’s one of the big benefits of working with somebody like Zac is you could say, “Hey, I’m interested in this package because that’s about our budget,” but to Zac’s point, “Here’s what we have. Here’s a photo of our sanctuary. Here’s what we’re trying to do, the big vision of what we’re trying to get across.” Zac and his team can really tailor that to meet your specific needs.

Rohn Gibson (00:32:12):

I think that is where packages fall apart because here’s a one size fits all, and let’s be honest, this isn’t a baseball cap we’re talking about here. We don’t want a one size fits all necessarily when it comes to livestreaming. It really gets you the best experience for the financial investment that you’re going to make.

Rohn Gibson (00:32:34):

So, I think totally 110% agree. I think every church watching this on a livestream, as well as those who are going to watch it afterwards, absolutely. Reach out to Zac and his team and, yeah.

Zac Novak (00:32:50):

You mentioned something and we talked about I haven’t brought up yet. We travel around the country doing this. I don’t enjoy it because I’m away from my family and other things. So, one thing we’ve learned to do is work with a church remotely by taking a ton of photos of your room, your current equipment. Give me the dimensions of the room. We do Facetime and other videos, stuff like that, to understand what you have and then we help design the system for you that you and your volunteer team can install, and then we’re there to support you as well.

Rohn Gibson (00:33:24):

That’s also really budget-friendly because now you’re not having to pay for hotels and travel and all that stuff. You can even help them more quickly because now, you’re not on the road for three days. So, yeah. That’s awesome.

Zac Novak (00:33:36):

Yeah. That’s something we do. On the website, there’s nowhere to buy anything. We’re not an ecomm. It’s a starter. Like you said, it’s a conversation starter where we can start talking about what you really need instead of just one camera and an encoder and a switcher.

Rohn Gibson (00:33:52):

I think one of the big points to make with that is when we talk about packages, again, we’re talking about the equipment. One of the main points we made earlier, and I just want to reiterate that, you can have the best equipment in the world, but if you don’t have trained people on how to get the most out of that equipment, it’s going to be a lack cluster livestream and not create the greatest experience for your users.

Rohn Gibson (00:34:17):

That’s, again, where Zac and his team can really help you. It’s not just, “Show us all this information. Here’s the tools,” but also, as he starts working with your team, here’s some of the gaps. Here’s some of the gaps that we see and areas for improvement and training, even at a leadership level. I mean, to have somebody who works on a production like you work on a week in, week out basis, to be able to identify, “Oh, this is a leadership issue,” or “This is an operator issue, and here’s how we can change,” or “This is an equipment issue, and here’s just a slight adjustment that we can make.”

Rohn Gibson (00:34:51):

I mean, even before we were on here, we were talking about my church, and I’m like, “Oh, man! I got to have you help me with some of the color settings on our camera because that’s exactly what we need.” It would have taken me forever, and I know the tools, but, again, even with me, it can be a people thing because I just don’t have the level of experience that you have. I think that’s absolutely invaluable. So, anyway, just wanted to come back to that. People. Yes, it’s equipment, but it’s also the people and their skillset on how to use it correctly.

Isabelle Faletti (00:35:24):

Yeah. We do have a few questions from our attendees here. So, I think most of them, well, two that I see will be for Zac, and then, Rohn, I might toss you a couple here. Zac, we have a question from Greater St. Mark, and I’ll add that on the screen here. So, “What is the recommended size of staff to cover weekly service that you would recommend? Is there a guide for new construction?” They are embarking on creating a media control room in their sanctuary. “Should we do DIY or do a turnkey job?”

Zac Novak (00:35:59):

Yeah. There’s a lot to cover there.

Isabelle Faletti (00:36:00):

Yeah, there is.

Zac Novak (00:36:04):

The size of the volunteers or staff to do all the video stuff really depends on the gear. You don’t need three audio guys to mix one board. You don’t need three … So, really, it’s graphics, video switcher, camera person, and then if you have the audio broadcast mixer for livestreams specifically, then you have that. The more cameras, the more operators you need.

Zac Novak (00:36:27):

So, again, a lot of my answer is always, “Well, it depends.” It’s always fluid. So, I mean, with the new construction, you mentioned a control room in the sanctuary. A lot of times, video control rooms are out of the sanctuary in a separate room that’s sound controlled. The reason why is because you have the video director directing the camera people that are in the room, and if he’s directing there in the service, standby camera one, dissolve camera one, standby font, things like that. He’s directing. You don’t want to hear that in the middle of the worship service, in the middle of the sermons. So, they’re in a separate room. So, keep that in mind.

Zac Novak (00:37:04):

In the room, though, you want your audio engineer for the live. You want your lighting guy typically in there, and then sometimes graphics are in there. Sometimes they’re in the video broadcast room. So, it really depends on your level. We have installed video gear in the worship center, at the front of house tech booth.

Zac Novak (00:37:22):

So, again, it depends on people, depends on do you want to DIY it or turnkey. It depends. Contact me, and we can talk. I mean, it would be good to talk, James.

Isabelle Faletti (00:37:39):

Yup. To go back to your answer for James’ first question here, “What is the recommended size of staff?” It really also goes back to their vision. So, what is their vision for the livestreaming and that will also impact the budget and equipment. So, Rohn, I think that-

Zac Novak (00:37:56):

Sorry, and they’re capabilities. One person can run everything. It’s not going to be as efficient, but one really good person can run a lot of stuff, but if you have volunteers, again, that are doing it two hours every week, you need more people to be able to spread that load out to run graphics, audio, switch video and PTZ cameras.

Isabelle Faletti (00:38:17):

Yeah. That’s great. Thank you, James, for asking that question. That’s really good. We have two other questions here. Rohn, this may be a question for you or you can toss it to Zac, and whatever you guys, whoever is to fight over the answer. So, we have a question from Tom. “What is the best livestream software to broadcast to different social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and the church website?”

Rohn Gibson (00:38:43):

Yeah, Zac, why don’t you … We may have different answers and that’s okay because we also have different experiences with different back to the vision. My experience versus Zac’s experience, it doesn’t make Zac right, me wrong or vice-versa. It’s the correct application. So, I’m curious. What would you say there, Zac?

Zac Novak (00:39:02):

It depends. Seriously, it depends on budget. There’s a whole bunch of different options. You have vMix, which is a great option, runs on a PC, but, again, it runs on a PC. So, that’s sometimes an issue. Livestream Studio is another one. OBS, it’s free. That’s all I’m going to say about that. I don’t like that just because it is free and I think you could pay a little bit of money and get a better product.

Zac Novak (00:39:34):

That software, I think there’s Tricaster, also, new tech that’s higher end, probably overkill in the church market, but we do a lot of new tech stuff, and then you also have a lot of hardware-based with Black Magic and Ross and AB Matrix, and all these other smaller switchers that …

Zac Novak (00:39:53):

So, again, it depends on your vision. I know that’s redundant, and we keep talking about that, but that’s what we need to talk through a little bit of what’s the best one. It depends on how you’re going to use it. Are you going to, like I said earlier, do IMAG or are you going to send video to in-house screens and distribute the video throughout the building? If so, then software may not be the best option. It might be a hardware switcher of that one. So, what is the best?

Rohn Gibson (00:40:18):

Yeah. It depends on your used case. Absolutely. You gave quite the buffet of options there, which is awesome. I’d be only honest. I would echo everything you just said, and I would add one, which would be Restream. I think that one, that’s a very low budget service that creates a bridge to go to multiple places. So, I think, again, depending on what your used case is. That could be another potential option there as well.

Zac Novak (00:40:47):

So, maybe I misunderstood the question because, yes, Restream. I saw that as a video switcher, but I think BoxCast if we’re talking about an encoding software and a reflector site to push out to multiple locations. Obviously, software switchers have that and hardware encoders have the capability to go to multiple locations, but it depends on bandwidth that you have for upload to multiple locations.

Zac Novak (00:41:13):

So, I like to push everything to one location, BoxCast or Vimeo or Livestream or whatever, and then from there, there’s, what? Churchstreaming.tv, I believe. There’s a whole bunch of them. Stream Monkey is also good. From there, it pushes out to multiple locations. So, again, it depends. It depends on features you want. It depends on price.

Rohn Gibson (00:41:35):

I know we’ve even got a customer from one of our previous episodes on livestreaming, where we actually talked about very beginner livestream for churches just getting started like StreamYard. I mean, that’s what we’re using right now. We’re streaming to multiple sources right now through StreamYard. So, it’s the encoder, the switcher, going to multiple locations all in one.

Rohn Gibson (00:41:55):

Obviously, you give up some things, but you also gain a tremendous amount of simplicity. So, to your point earlier, it really depends on your used case, but really get options that will answer that question.

Isabelle Faletti (00:42:06):

Yeah. We have a lot of our ChurchSpring members who use BoxCast and Restream. It’s super easy to integrate with the ChurchSpring website, easy for them to manage, to understand. So, yeah, that’s great to hear the livestreaming expert also recommend that.

Zac Novak (00:42:26):

Yeah. I’m still learning all that. I mean, there’s tons of companies, and it’s hard to even know what they all offer. So, we focus on two or three that we offer to customers and help them, point them in that direction. I’m not going to sell them anything. I’m just going to point you to the context I know at those companies, and you talk with them and figure out what works best for you.

Rohn Gibson (00:42:46):

The one thing, just to say, this industry is changing so fast. I mean, new switchers, new sound. I mean, it seems like every other week there’s some brand new thing, and that’s going to continue to be that way. I think it’s a little bit of the Wild, Wild West when it comes to livestreaming video production, all of those things as it relates to the world we live in today.

Rohn Gibson (00:43:12):

I mean, the interesting thing about Facebook, a year ago, the livestream through Facebook, it’s totally different now. There’s so many more options available now. That’s just one distribution source, let alone all the tools that connect to that. I mean, it’s absolutely crazy. So, I think that’s one thing I would just put out there for churches.

Rohn Gibson (00:43:34):

There’s a ton of options. Don’t look for the magic needle in the haystack, “Oh, there’s only one solution for me to do this thing.” That’s not true. That’s not true at all. We’ve talked about some really great options previously depending on your budget, again, your vision for what you want to do, and as Zac’s talking about, again, really good options. It doesn’t make the previous ones bad and these good or vice-versa. It really depends on what your specific, again, used cases.

Rohn Gibson (00:44:01):

I just want to encourage. I think it’s so easy to get overwhelmed when you start talking about church tech if you’re not into technology. I know we’ve got pastors on here, all different levels of seasons in their ministry. It can just be overwhelming. So, I think that’s one thing I would say is just don’t focus on there’s only one solution. There’s many solutions to your problem. Pick one, run with it, know your vision, align the tools, train your people, and you’ll have an effective livestream.

Isabelle Faletti (00:44:32):

Yeah. That’s great. We have a couple of questions from Matthew. So, Matthew, I’ll put your question up here. “Can I go from StreamYard directly to my website?” Can I livestream, basically?

Rohn Gibson (00:44:48):

Yeah, I’ll take that one. Zac, feel free if you want to chime in on that. You can, ultimately. You can do that because you can actually stream to YouTube. You could create a specific livestream page on there. Go through all the hoops you have to jump through through YouTube, which then will give you a URL that doesn’t change. You basically embed that, and now, it’s on your site.

Rohn Gibson (00:45:15):

So, that is an option. It’s not the least course of resistance. So, that’s why, typically, we would recommend sending people over to Facebook, specifically, for us. That would be our recommendation. Part of the reason for that recommendation is many times, churches get stuck on the idea that it has to live on our site. Well, there’s trade offs, right? There’s trade offs and all these different scenarios. So, we decide to trade off. Would we like people to stay on the site? Absolutely. I mean, we would put our hand up and say, “Yes, we want that, too.”

Rohn Gibson (00:45:50):

However, what we put more important is engagement and shareability or virality of the content and making it super easy for people to connect with your content. By putting it on or basically using our livestreaming engine with the countdown clocks and all those resources to then send you over, you’re basically getting the best of both worlds and then you can go grab that Facebook embed code or even a YouTube embed code. Add it to your sermons. You can add the audio. So, you’ve got the podcast built right in, literally, right into ChurchSpring, embed the video in the description, so people want more of the video experience. You get the best of everything.

Rohn Gibson (00:46:32):

So, that’s what we recommend specifically for where your videos should be. There’s always trade offs. Make sure you’re trading off the right thing. For us, we care more about … Churches tell us the outcome they want is they want to reach more people, and they want to communicate more effectively with their church. You will do that specifically by leveraging some of these other tools like Facebook. Again, Facebook isn’t your home base. So, you always want to take that content and put it on your digital home base, which is your church website, but specifically for livestreaming. That’s where we would start.

Rohn Gibson (00:47:09):

Then reach people where they are. There are some people they prefer Facebook or YouTube. So, great. Go to both places just like we are right now, but also understand the tools, and this goes back to the training and the people. A lot of people don’t realize like Facebook, you used to have to have an account on Facebook to be able to watch a livestream on Facebook. That’s not true anymore. I mean, literally, you can create a telephone number now where people who don’t even have a computer, again, more of the seasoned people in your congregation. Well, you can give them that number and they could call in and listen to the livestream through Facebook.

Rohn Gibson (00:47:44):

So, amazing tools out there. Make sure you understand your trade offs and then choose what’s best for your specific used case. So, Zac, what are your thoughts on that?

Zac Novak (00:47:52):

I think you nailed it.

Rohn Gibson (00:47:54):

Awesome.

Zac Novak (00:47:54):

I agree. I agree. I think it’s important to go to multiple locations. We’re supposed to go to the people and a lot of people are onto all different social media outlets. So, yeah, give them every option if you can.

Rohn Gibson (00:48:09):

Yeah, agree.

Isabelle Faletti (00:48:10):

That’s great. That was a perfect answer. I would agree, Rohn. That answered a lot of the other questions that we had regarding how to set up livestreaming, “Do I choose Facebook or do I choose a different platform?” So, thank you for that.

Isabelle Faletti (00:48:24):

Ron Gardner said, “Gives an answer to my question also. Thank you, Rohn.” So, glad to hear.

Isabelle Faletti (00:48:30):

I know that we did have a couple of questions come in about the specifics of how to set up livestreaming on your ChurchSpring website. So, we won’t dive into that today. So, if you are a ChurchSpring member, go ahead and send in a support ticket in your website. So, just log in to your website, click settings, and then you’ll see a tab called Support. Click that, and then send in a ticket, and we can help you set up your livestream, help you troubleshoot any issues that you are experiencing. So, again, we won’t cover those specific questions, but make sure to reach out because we have a team here who would love to help you out and get your livestreaming up and running by your next service. So, don’t be shy.

Isabelle Faletti (00:49:15):

All right. If anybody else has last questions for our live members, be sure to drop it in the comments right now for Zac. We can take about one or two other questions. Otherwise, I know we have a question from Bob, it looks like, asking Zac’s contact info. Yes. So, Zac, if a church is ready to just learn more about how your company can help them with their livestreaming, what are the next steps that they can do to contact you?

Zac Novak (00:49:49):

Yeah. So, obviously, we have a website, medianetav.com, and then if you go to backslash ChurchSpring, that’s … Oh, perfect. There it is. You can go there and that’s a one page of some tiers or options of video components we’ve put on there. Again, I don’t think it’s going to fit everyone’s need, but I think it’s a good starting place to be able to talk through.

Zac Novak (00:50:13):

Yeah. That’s a good place to start where you can reach out to me and someone on our team to be able to talk through some of those options. So, everyone that works for me, whether full-time or contractor, they’ve all worked in the church in so me aspect, whether full-time in the past or served as a volunteer leader, which I think sets us apart. So, we understand how the church works and a lot of companies don’t necessarily understand the church.

Zac Novak (00:50:47):

So, I think that’s what sets us apart. So, yeah, feel free to reach out to us. We’ll try to answer all your questions. We’re in the process of a lot of projects right now. We’re in Ohio. So, it’s starting to get cold here in a few months, right? Everyone’s outside services, and they’re going to start moving in or going full-time livestream until things open back up a little bit more.

Zac Novak (00:51:12):

So, by November, we have a dozen projects we got to get done. So, we’re just trying to help everyone and serve the best as we can. So, yeah. That’s how we can help.

Isabelle Faletti (00:51:22):

Yeah. That’s awesome. Oh, I think you’re muted. You are muted, Rohn. Let me unmute you.

Rohn Gibson (00:51:28):

There we go.

Isabelle Faletti (00:51:29):

There we go.

Rohn Gibson (00:51:30):

No, I’m just messing with you. That’s what I was doing there.

Isabelle Faletti (00:51:34):

I have to learn how to read lips now.

Rohn Gibson (00:51:36):

You thought I was kidding earlier. So, no, no, totally my fault there. So, yeah. What he’s really saying there, for those who are listening, don’t wait until November to reach out and start working on how you’re going to livestream your services if you’re doing this outside type of scenario right now. You need to start now. I mean, actually, you should have probably started two months ago, especially with equipment being what it is. I just want to give a quick shout out because I know he’s not going to say it. So, I’m going to say it for you there, Zac.

Rohn Gibson (00:52:06):

So, this is the website. If you go to medianetav.com/churchspring, down here, I was checking this out like I said before, and you can’t buy these packages for these prices buying it yourself on Amazon. So, I would encourage you to reach out to him. Like we’ve said, we’re not really massive package people because we want to make sure it’s your used case. Just talking to him is going to save you money because you’re going to make sure you get the right thing for your specific used case.

Rohn Gibson (00:52:38):

So, anyway, just want to encourage you, for all of you, go check it out. You can see he’s got some buttons on here to reach out regarding more information. So, do it right now. I mean, literally, pull up a new tab. You can still listen to us. Go on his website, request information. Do not wait even a week because all these guys who are in Zac’s spot, and even us, honestly, I remember right at the beginning of this thing, it was absolutely crazy. I mean, we literally limited our advertising because we wanted to make sure we served people well.

Rohn Gibson (00:53:14):

So, we could have brought on so many more ministries during that time, but we wouldn’t have been able to serve them like we wanted to. So, we really throttled things back, and I know Zac follows that exact same model. It’s more about creating an amazing experience for their customers not just selling stuff. So, don’t wait. If this is a need you’re going to have, maybe it’s a need you have now, maybe it’s a need you’re going to have a couple of months from now or maybe even with that question as far as the potential of new construction, maybe this is something that’s 12, 24 months out, start having that conversation now, so you do the right thing and you’re not painting yourself into a corner so to speak to make maybe not ideal decisions later. So, anyway, we just encourage you to reach out to Zac here. Awesome.

Rohn Gibson (00:54:01):

Any other questions come in? Looks like we’re … Let’s see.

Isabelle Faletti (00:54:06):

Not really. I think we’re good. Al, I see that you had a question of how to listen to Facebook on the phone. I’ll add that in the show notes. I’ll pop that up here, churchspring.com/csl015. So, Al, be sure to look for that resource later today, churchspring.com/csl015.

Rohn Gibson (00:54:27):

Awesome. Cool. Well, Zac, man, I can’t thank you enough.

Zac Novak (00:54:32):

Sure.

Rohn Gibson (00:54:33):

This has been awesome. Thanks so much for joining us.

Zac Novak (00:54:35):

Absolutely.

Rohn Gibson (00:54:37):

I have a feeling this won’t be your only time on ChurchSpring Live, not that I have a crystal ball or anything, but I think bringing you back on is going to be a really cool thing here in the future. So, man, thank you for joining us.

Zac Novak (00:54:48):

Yeah. Absolutely.

Rohn Gibson (00:54:49):

Any last thoughts you want to share before you jump off?

Zac Novak (00:54:51):

No. I think next time maybe we can focus in a little … I feel bad because I feel like we just went on a high level and taught about all this stuff, but I think, yeah, it’s hard. There’s a lot to go over with media and production. So, I would just say, church leaders, love on your tech people. A lot of times they feel like no one’s paying attention to them or no one cares about them. You got to love them, and show them that you appreciate them on a regular basis because they need it. They need the encouragement.

Zac Novak (00:55:18):

A lot of times, we only get recognized when things go wrong, right? So, praise them and tell them how great they’re doing when things go right, which hopefully is all the time. So, yeah, just love on them. Show them you care, all right? That’s all.

Isabelle Faletti (00:55:32):

That’s good.

Rohn Gibson (00:55:33):

Good word there, brother. I just used an Aaron Walkerism. Good word. It is, man, because we need it and we do. Good tech people, they don’t get recognized because, typically, they’re doing it right. It’s only when those problems arise. I mean, that’s great advice. There’s your action item. Yeah. You want to talk about action, there’s your action item. Reach out to your tech person today and just send him a text and just say, “Man, thank you for what you’re doing to serve in our church,” because they’re using their God-given gifts.

Rohn Gibson (00:56:06):

As believers, we’re in full-time ministry. If there’s sound, video, audio, whatever it is, however they’re working in the church, if they’re using their gifts, man, that is so important as the body working together to reach your community. So, man, thanks for sharing that. Can’t say that enough. Awesome, brother. Hey, have a good rest of your day. We’re going to keep going with the livestream. We’ve got some other things, so don’t jump off if you’re listening. We’ve got some new product announcement. Man, thanks again, Zac. [crosstalk 00:56:32] brother.

Zac Novak (00:56:32):

Thanks again. I appreciate it.

Isabelle Faletti (00:56:32):

Thanks.

Rohn Gibson (00:56:33):

Yeah. Bye-bye.

Isabelle Faletti (00:56:34):

Bye.

Rohn Gibson (00:56:35):

All right. So, let me get the screens reorganized here. Got a little changed up. All right. Here we go.

Isabelle Faletti (00:56:44):

I would love to know for all of our listeners, what are your thoughts? Was that really helpful to you? I learned a lot just from the past 50 minutes here. So, drop a comment. Let us know what you learned in this, and maybe that’s just, “I learned I need to take action,” and send a text to my tech guys here or maybe you learned that there’s a lot more out there on livestreaming, and you need to be reaching out to Zac for some helpful how-tos, but, yeah, we love to know your thoughts on that. So, drop a comment and while you’re dropping your comment, I know, Rohn, you have some exciting news of a new feature design. What is it this week?

Rohn Gibson (00:57:30):

Yes, yes, yes. It’s going to be awesome. Before we jump in there, though, again, take action. Like we’ve talked about before, imperfect action is better than perfect inaction. So, that action that you may need to take today is like what we just talked about. Maybe a handwritten note, maybe a text message. Thank that media person in your life that’s showing up every single Sunday faithfully to do the work behind the scenes. I know Zac, myself as well, I’d rather be in the background not in front of the camera like this. Anyway, just let them know.

Rohn Gibson (00:58:06):

As well, if you are in need of services like what Zac offers, don’t wait. I can’t encourage you enough. I’m not trying to be sales hypey or any of that. I just want to make sure that you get the help you need when you need it because Zac is about to experience an avalanche of churches reaching to him as they go into this new season of dealing with the pandemic and where we’re at. So, definitely reach out to him.

Rohn Gibson (00:58:32):

I know we haven’t gone a lot into this, but, again, if you’re brand new, I know we have people every week that aren’t even ChurchSpring users and like, “What do you guys do again?” So, again, we’re home to the most intuitive, affordable, frustration-free, church websites on the planet. So, if you’d like to learn more about that, go to churchspring.com/demo, and you can join myself, as well as my co-founder. We literally launched a website right there on the demo from beginning to end. We’ll walk you through many of the main features, including livestreaming of the ChurchSpring platform. So, go check that out. Sign up for a time that works for you, churchspring.com/demo.

Rohn Gibson (00:59:12):

Then if you’re like, “Hey, I don’t need to see anything. I’m ready to go,” well, we have got a seven-day free trial, risk-free. Literally, you can sign up within seven days. If it’s not a good fit for you, just cancel and there’s nothing. You’re not out anything. So, go sign up. You can start your website literally within 90 seconds, churchspring.com/trial. Again, man, it’s been just so great to have Zac on.

Rohn Gibson (00:59:36):

So, even if you only go to his website and reach out to him and just say, “Hey, thanks for joining,” definitely go do that. Let him know how much you appreciate him. All right.

Rohn Gibson (00:59:46):

We’ve got a new feature that we are introducing today. We’re on a roll.

Isabelle Faletti (00:59:53):

Yeah, we are.

Rohn Gibson (00:59:56):

Our team is crushing it. Our team is crushing it right now. So, we’re rolling out a new design today, and this design is unlike any other design that we have ever done before. This isn’t being hypey. When you see it, you’re going to be like, “What?” because it is absolutely incredible design.

Rohn Gibson (01:00:13):

So, without further ado, let me introduce Revelation to you. So, this is one of our most contemporary designs, really, that we’ve done. We’ve really tried to push the framework in what we’re doing. So, anyway, awesome new design. I absolutely love it. I’ll just walk you through a couple of the main key things here.

Rohn Gibson (01:00:37):

Obviously, you see the logos off to the side. We’ve mixed up the navigation. If you click on the navigation, you can see that. Again, all of this still works inside of the ChurchSpring platform. So, how easy it is to edit your site. We’re not giving up ease of use for you. Our team has done between Harrison and Mike and our entire team have done an incredible job to make this. So, you get all the new coolness of the design, but you still have all the ease of use with this new design.

Rohn Gibson (01:01:13):

So, just scroll through here. You can obviously see. It’s very apparent. Some of the main differences, but a new look here as far as our events. Totally new look when it comes to latest sermons and how that works. Obviously, we still have all the best practices implemented with a map. You click on it. You can get directions super easy to get to your church location.

Rohn Gibson (01:01:38):

Just to walk through again navigation, totally different. Brand new style to the navigation. Super excited about that. You can click on Sermons. Again, see the look of the new Sermons page. So, just an unbelievable new design. So, if you’re a more contemporary church, you’re really trying to push the look with a bold statement, this is not a “I want a more traditional looking site.” We’ve got some great designs for that. Don’t get me wrong. This one isn’t going to be it.

Rohn Gibson (01:02:11):

If you’re really looking to push it, this is a great new look that you can check out. That’s available now. So, you can actually check it out if you want to look at the preview of it. You can just go to Revelation just like here, revelation.churchspring.org. You can take it for a test drive just like I’ve been doing. See if it’s a good fit for your ministry. If it is, all you have to do is log in to your ChurchSpring website. Go to settings, go to designs, and one click, your site can look like this. You don’t have to pay thousands of dollars to do a website redesign. You literally go in there. All your contents automatically available and you are ready to go.

Rohn Gibson (01:02:48):

So, super excited about this new design. Again, it’s just another added benefit to your ChurchSpring membership. If you’re a current member, you don’t pay anymore for this. It just keeps getting better every week for the existing membership fee that you’re already paying.

Rohn Gibson (01:03:05):

So, I do want to say this. We have never raised the prices at ChurchSpring ever. Since day one, we’ve been doing this. We have never raised the prices of ChurchSpring. I know I’ve mentioned this on a previous one. It is going to change. You’ve got the next couple of months to make up your mind, do you want to upgrade? If you upgrade, you lock in your price. So, literally, we’re never going to change your price. So, if you’re not in the flourish plan right now and for the rest of this year, this is the cheapest the flourish plan is ever going to be where you’ll get every single software update that we make inside of ChurchSpring. You’ll get it inside of that church management.

Rohn Gibson (01:03:43):

We’re getting ready to release a massive new feature that for those people who your goal that you want to improve is communication with your existing church members, so let me just say that again, if your goal in the outcome you want is to dramatically increase the communication with your existing church members, you don’t want to miss this next update that we’re going to be doing over the next couple of months. It will only be available in the flourish plan. It is so good. It’s only going to be available there.

Rohn Gibson (01:04:17):

So, if you’re on one of the other plans and you want to upgrade to get that at the lowest rate it will ever be, I mean, we’re literally still the founders club level with ChurchSpring, and that’s going to change because we’ve made so many updates and never changed our price. So, just to keep things going, to keep improving the product, that’s going to have to change a little bit, so we can continue to add to the team, develop things. Don’t wait. Don’t wait. Go do it because once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Rohn Gibson (01:04:44):

Oh, Ron, I love it. “We are locked in and loaded.” Brother, love it, man. That’s so awesome. Very cool.

Rohn Gibson (01:04:52):

All right. So, again, if you want to go check out Revelation. It’s available now. You don’t even have to wait. It’s literally right there. Go to settings, designs, and you can change over your site or just go to revelation.churchspring.org and check that out. So, any questions? Have any other questions come in?

Isabelle Faletti (01:05:11):

No. No new questions.

Rohn Gibson (01:05:13):

All right.

Isabelle Faletti (01:05:13):

We have some great feedback. Tom says, “Thanks for the informative livestream.”

Rohn Gibson (01:05:18):

Awesome.

Isabelle Faletti (01:05:19):

Thank you, Tom, for tuning in here and engaging with us. Really appreciate it. Ron Gardner loved the new design that we’ve launched, as did Melvin. So, thanks for that feedback. Also with any new design that would push out, any existing website design, they are all optimized for mobile, for different devices. So, we get that question pretty frequently from people who are looking into ChurchSpring. They ask, “Okay, but how much do I have to pay to have it optimized, look good, basically, on my phone?” or “Where’s the different log in that I have to do to edit the desktop version versus the mobile version?” It’s all done for you.

Isabelle Faletti (01:06:03):

So, our designers, our super smart and amazing and every piece of your website will look beautiful no matter which device you’re looking at it on. So, that’s just another way that you can save money in the long run, so you don’t have to pay a website designer to be doing all the hard coding, and you don’t have to learn how to code to make that look good because-

Rohn Gibson (01:06:26):

Yes. You don’t have to have a separate mobile site. It amazes me. There’s still people that have separate mobile sites. You don’t have to do that anymore. You can literally update one place and it looks good on desktop, mobile. It looks good in all of those different locations. So, anyway, that’s awesome. I just want to get out.

Isabelle Faletti (01:06:42):

Yeah. Well, I’m excited to invite everybody to next week’s ChurchSpring Live. As always, it will be 10:00 AM Central, Thursday. So, that’s September 10th. For those of you, put it in your calendar right now. Otherwise, I will be creating a post on the Facebook page later this afternoon, so you can just click the Get Reminder button on that. Then when we do go live next Thursday, September 10th, Facebook will alert you, “ChurchSpring is going live.” So, make sure to click that little Get Reminder button. It is there for a reason, and it helps. So, do that.

Isabelle Faletti (01:07:21):

I have a question for all of those who are listening. It is September, and I’m still in summer mode, but is your church ready for the holidays? Maybe just hearing me ask that question, oh, you think, “That’s a little overwhelming. I’m not quite ready to prepare my church communications for Christmas.”

Isabelle Faletti (01:07:45):

It is definitely not too soon to prepare for the holidays. I mean, we were just talking about how you need to be preparing for your livestream come November, come winter months. So, this is your reminder. Christmas is coming very … Well, yeah, we won’t get into all the why’s, but you know why. So, if you’re wondering, “What do I need to do to prepare my church for Christmas?” make sure to tune in next week, again, 10:00 AM Central, Thursday, September 10th.

Isabelle Faletti (01:08:17):

We are going to review the top five ways that you can effectively prepare your church for Christmas. So, we are going to help you just basically get a jumpstart on the action items that you need to take this holiday season to welcome guests, and share communication with your members, and really share your church services with your community. So, Christmas is coming.

Rohn Gibson (01:08:43):

Yes.

Isabelle Faletti (01:08:44):

You need to be preparing now.

Rohn Gibson (01:08:46):

I’ll tell you, no other year that I can remember and I’m sure there have been other years. There’s so much hurting in the world today. Christmas is one of those times that typically even if they’re not a regular church attender or maybe they’ve never even been to a church, but I think this year with so much hurt, with so much obvious pain going on in the world, such a massive opportunity for the church to be the church. We want to help you.

Rohn Gibson (01:09:16):

So, do not miss next week’s episode. There’s going to be some actionable things, some things that you are going to have to plan out. You don’t want to wait to the last minute to do some of these things. Again, we have people all the time tell us the number one outcome they want to experience is they want to reach their community and they want to bring traffic into their church or depending on where you’re at, your livestream. Well, next week, you are going to get some amazing tips and tools to help you do just that. So, you absolutely do not want to miss it.

Rohn Gibson (01:09:50):

Any last thoughts? Otherwise, you good?

Isabelle Faletti (01:09:55):

We’re good.

Rohn Gibson (01:09:55):

Okay. You’re good. So, I love what Zac said, and I know we’ve said it two times and third time is a charm. I want to say it again. You’ve got an action today. Thank the tech person in your church. Thank that person that’s showing up every single Sunday, dedicating their time, maybe even coming in on Saturday nights to make sure everything is working right. Be sure to reach out to them and just say, “Thank you for your service and using your gifts to grow the kingdom in that way.”

Rohn Gibson (01:10:24):

So, it’s been awesome hanging out with you all. Again, churchspring.com/csl015 if you want to check out the show notes or if you even just want to show this episode with somebody in your ministry that you think can benefit, absolutely do that. So, have a wonderful rest of your day, everyone. Again, do not miss next week.

Rohn Gibson (01:10:45):

You can miss a lot of things in your schedule. This one you don’t want to miss because we are going to give you some powerful tips to prepare your church to reach a hurting world in this Christmas season, and I can’t wait. I’m already excited. I just wish we could jump in right now.

Isabelle Faletti (01:11:02):

I know. I know.

Rohn Gibson (01:11:03):

You got to wait. One week out. We’ll see you next Thursday, 10:00 AM Central time. Have a blessed day, everyone. Bye-bye.

Isabelle Faletti (01:11:10):

Bye.