Hybrid Worship Discussion Forum

My name is Janet. I am a parishioner at St. George Anglican Church in Ajax. We began live-streaming our services to FACEBOOK at the beginning of the pandemic. We broadcast morning prayer 3 days a week from our homes (hosted by our incumbent, our deacon or me) The Sunday service is live-streamed to Facebook from our worship centre by a small group of volunteers. We also have in-person services in our historic church that can not be broadcasted.

I am retired from Human Resources consulting (Pension systems) and living in Pickering. We have no pets but we do have two grown children and two grandchildren.

My name is Jan. I am at St. Stephen Lutheran Church in Kitchener. I am a retired elementary vice-principal and currently serve on the Boards of a small NGO that supports education in Ethiopia called Education for Change, an interfaith organization (where I also run a podcast on YouTube that allows people to meet others outside of their silo https://www.youtube.com/@interfaithgrandriver), and of my own church.

Although I was a member of the AV crew in high school, I have to drag myself kicking and screaming to learn new AV things. As a VP I needed to know how to run the AV system in order to run assemblies. When we started a band at church I needed to learn more about how sound systems are set up. When covid restrictions came in I became the one coordinating our online presence, which forced me to learn how to operate in YouTube, how to add video to our audio system, and how to connect with people in a virtual environment. I do not want to learn anything more. Having said that, I am amazed at how much we can do virtually, and how much more needs to be done.

My name is John. I'm a warden at the Church of the Resurrection in Toronto and look after AV here. I teach computer science at York U but in a previous life I mixed sound for a rock band and did some video production (do you remember Betacam SP?).

When the pandemic hit we started with YouTube and a USB webcam (it was primitive) but then switched to Zoom. The Grant from the Diocese allowed us to purchase a PTZ camera and a couple of simpler cameras. We use OBS to mix the video and an Elgato StreamDeck to control OBS and move the cameras. You can find a description of our setup here: https://resurrectiontoronto.ca/video/

Hi, Reinhard Pees here, from St. Andrew's United Church in Cumberland, Ontario.
My technical background includes working with call centre technologies (telephony, networks, and desktop applications)
The transition from Zoom-based services (Covid years) to hybrid services has been a real challenge for smaller churches like ours.
Our journey has led us to the current environment using OBS software, a Focusrite audio interface, and 2 PTZ cameras and controller (using Network Device Interface/NDI) for streaming to our YouTube Channel. We still use a traditional projector & screen to present service slides in the sanctuary, simultaneously (using the OBS Fullscreen Projector output of the Image Slide Show files). To facilitate production, we have added an Elgato Stream Deck to make Scene transitions easier for the non-tech support team. The operator is able to just push the appropriate Stream Deck button to trigger everything from Start/Stop Stream to transitions from one preset Scene (camera angles, slides, etc.) to another throughout the service. https://www.youtube.com/@st.andrewsunited-cumberlan6652/streams

I am John Bedell, Tech Lead for St. John's Stevensville United Church. I have been doing "church tech" since the days when that was just an amplifier, microphones, and a couple of speakers! Around 13 years ago I created Niagara Online Worship, and spent a number of years doing live-streaming in a series of United Churches on a rotating monthly basis, using portable equipment. I eventually settled in at St. John's stevensville United Church doing tech support (including our live-stream ministry). During the pandemic I created an online tech forum called "Canadian Churches That Live-Stream", to help churches get online or improve their online presence. I have designed and installed live-streaming systems at many churches, and I continue to provide "tech support" services to quite a communities of faith. I am here to see what new things I can learn, and to help out by sharing my experiences.

Hi there,

I'm Rev. Janet Jones who is in ministry with the fine folks at High Country United Church in Mono, Ontario. We're a small-ish rural church with a big church attitude.

I've learned most of my church tech AVIT from COVID University (aka self-taught and guided by some fabulous folks on the Facebook Group). I finally have a young person who knows about streaming who is able to take some of the load off of me on Sunday mornings. I also stream some of our lunch & learns as well as Sunday night prayers from home (aka "Worship Studio" - sounds soooo cool). We're learning if you're not online, you're missing a lot of people. I'm determined to keep our system small and easy so anyone can step in. Sure, it would be great to have different camera angles and picture-in-picture stuff, but my volunteers might feel overwhelmed. We have a desktop that runs OBS and a laptop that runs our powerpoint. We have 1 PTZ camera. When responses or songs are on the screen, the camera zooms in on one of our screens. Voila. Nice and easy. We post to Facebook and YouTube and add links to our website's home page and video page. We also started a nicer digital newsletter we can add the video into.

I'm blessed to work with a forward-thinking congregation who put some memorial funds up for our tech upgrades to start streaming. I'm not looking forward to upgrading things in the next couple of years, so I'm creating a network of support so I don't lose my mind. We're due for a website overhaul but I'll need to set a few days aside for that... sounds like a good 'resurrection' timing project. And hopefully, I can learn some new tools and tricks to keep wowing my folks.

That being said, we've also started some tech classes and times for tech support in hopes to empower our folks. Highly recommended. Soon they'll have a surprise lesson at the AVIT station. Shhhh. It's our little secret.

Jan