How the world worshipped this week: sharing your online services

How the world worshipped this week: sharing your online services

Online Church: How the world worshipped

With Covid-19 forcing much of the world into lockdown, churches have responded by diving into online services. Whether using Zoom, Facebook Live, YouTube or more complex set ups such as OBS, tech, pastoral and worship teams have found themselves in a steep learning curve in recent weeks.

This article celebrates those people and shares the photos of the services that they were part of creating. Be inspired and if you want more info on the tech solutions check out this article. Information here about using worship songs in livestreamed services.

What follows is a compilation of the photos and comments shared on the Musicademy Facebook Group. Credits for the photos and copy in square brackets.

Using Zoom

livestreaming all age worship

Church led by my husband from home. It was All Age service for us! [Caroline Bushman]

Combination of videos of drama, reading and songs pulled together by my husband with live prayers from things sent in on the Chat function in Zoom. 49 devices dialled in so about 75 people…. first time for everything!

Zoom church service

We met again on Zoom this week. As a small, highly participatory church, streaming just isn’t going to work for us, so we find zoom better. No special set-up or equipment, just a mix of laptops and phones, one per household (as the one who does a lot of our regular set-up at the school we usually meet in, I must say I am finding this to be a wonderful break!). [David Gibbons]

This week we had a couple more people join, and people are getting better with the technology–remembering to mute their mics when not sharing, etc..

This week for the first time we had a full teaching, which I gave, looking at the four different accounts of the triumphal Entry and what the differences can tell us. I had a Powerpoint prepared and shared my screen while I spoke. The only problem is that I couldn’t see the presenters view, so had to remember the order of the points I wanted to make. Next time, I’ll print out the slides for myself first.

The picture was captured by one of the attendees during a time of prayer. Names and some faces have been “stickered” where requested. [David Gibbons]

Delivering a sermon online

The pastor (my hubby) delivering his sermon on Zoom. We shared screens to see the PowerPoint for notes and Scripture reading. [Heather Perry]

Alastair Middlemist using Zoom for his services. One person played piano in their home and then had a recorded video of someone doing a Bible passage. We used shared screen for song words and video projection. We also shared all of this live onto Facebook which seemed to work well.

Using Facebook Live

Vicar leading an online church service

Hazlemere Church (High Wycombe), Vicar Mark Meardon leading on Facebook – accomplished preacher and worship leader all in one! Very simple, from his lounge at home via iPhone. {Arthur Davis]

online palm sunday service

A virtual Palm Sunday procession [Mike Whitaker]

The more technical home set-up

Church livestream setup

Mike Whitaker’s home set-up for livestreaming services

Mike Whitaker’s set-up

  • iMac: on the left. the QuickConnect upload page for anyone with the link (and no, you don’t see all of it in the screenshot :D) to drop files to my 12TB Synology NAS (down the far end of a network cable back in the house). On the right, building the Apple Photos slideshow for our virtual Palm Sunday procession – this will export as a single video I can edit over ‘Ride On, Ride On in Majesty’.
  • Right hand screen (LG Ultrawide via Thunderbolt): Final Cut Pro, busy editing together Sunday’s service. Tucked under its left hand side is the WD MyBook 8TB Thunderbolt drive for video files (this stuff generates a LOT of data!). Hanging off it is a Steel Series headset on loan from my son – sound quality isn’t 100% studio, but it’s very very comfortable to wear for long periods.
  • Above: two very handy cheap LED filming/video lights from Amazon. and a Logitech webcam (and my stash of model railway stuff, but I’m not about to move that out of the way :D)

Essentially, people send me bits of service, our AV team screen grab the liturgy off Easy Worship (saves typing!) and I edit it all together. Synology’s QuickConnect is a lifesaver for file uploads – it saves massive headaches with ‘this is too big’, ‘I can’t get Dropbox/One Drive/Google Drive

I am a bass player and bandleader from a Foursquare Church in the Netherlands
My worship ministry summarized in one photo. [Bram Hubregtse]

Leading worship from home online

OBS- with lyrics being controlled by one foot pedal, power music another, and a keen worshipper by my side lol [Thomas James]

Here’s David Woodman with his son and daughter ready to live stream. 2 x vocals, guitar and cajon streaming via OBS into YouTube (Onsong lyrics on screen).

East London vicar Graham Hunter’s home studio

Pre-recorded services

Online church service broadcast

Sarah Webb pre-recorded the entire service prior to the broadcast

I recorded on Thursday to give time for my tech man to get it all together. Recording was too stressful (keeping my kids out of the room, just a camera and tripod, but having all my props and notes to hand as well as water) to get photos but these are the finished result. I included lots of different contributions – dancing, prayers, readings and message – all filmed at homes and pulled together by our miracle man. [Sarah Webb]

Preparing for online church

Pre-records prepared in VMix & uploaded to YouTube channel as a playlist. Less midnight oil as last week! Far more labour intensive than normal church! [Andi Moore]

Pre-recording church services from a home office

Mission HQ set up in our loft conversion featuring my assistant producers chair. Sundays are run through Livestream Studio to Vimeo and Facebook. Our pastor is coming in live on the laptop using Skype (Canon C100 and blackmagic web presenter at his home) mixed with pre recorded material made by the wider church family. All then going out using a LiveU Solo+ as internet where we live is very sketchy! [Josh Payne]

Online church service

Here’s where our service comes together in my home office. Our sermon and worship are recorded separately in the church during the week, and the BSL interpreting is filmed at home. Everything is uploaded to our GSuite shared Google Drive where I grab the individual videos, put it together and upload to YouTube scheduled for Sunday morning.
Church recordings are done using our existing 2 camera setup with VMix. This allows worship lyrics and sermon PPT to be overlaid as it is recorded to save time in editing later. [Colin Cameron]

The view from the congregation

Watching church services online

Tuning in to my home church in Australia, where I was meant to be now. [Edythe Tham]

Filming from the church building

Obviously only for areas not on lockdown.

Livestreaming church

Pastor live streamed from church via Zoom. Prayer, bible reading, kids talk remotely live from peoples homes. Worship music pre-recorded during the week. Savoys and juice are sound tech’s communion!

Recording a service in church for livestreaming

This was the stage view for this mornings live stream at my church. The main hall is set up at one “studio”, the sound gear and camera gear were in another room and then we had a second “studio” set up where our leaders spoke. (I’ll add photos of these spaces if I can). Here in QLD Australia we are not in complete lockdown so are still able to travel to church to live stream. [Laura Gittins]

filming a church service online

The second “studio” – we have some people with some amazing resources.
[Laura Gittins]

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this article. So inspiring to see all these different resources in action.