Get Your Worship Services Online! Part 2, Bring Online Worship to Life.

It was unsafe to attend in-person worship services when I wrote my previous blog post, and it hasn’t become any safer in the past few hours. My previous post talked about streaming and online worship with minimal equipment that is probably lying around the typical church. Now, let’s talk about making a podcast into a meaningful worship experience. The basic format that works for ordinary Sabbath worship will work just fine online, but with a few little tweaks. Suggestions: 

Music

Start with music. Well, not right away. The pastor can make a brief introduction or welcome. Keep it to two sentences – not three. (You’re not-in person. Short is good.) Then go straight to the music. If you have an organ, use it and turn up the volume. (Many church organists keep the volume down during services. But you’re online!) Monitor the feed to make sure that people can hear the organ. Contemporary worship can start with a lively vocal and band performance. If you are using a piano, get it professionally tuned. Almost any piano sounds great if it is in tune, and even a priceless Steinway is a piece of junk if it’s out of tune. Zoom in on the musicians. 

Earlier Post: Part 1, Make the Technical Stuff Work in Online Worship

At this point, homebound worshipers are going to want to hear and see a familiar experience. Include the usual prayers, reflections, and testimonies that you would usually have. Put the prayers on the computer screen to help people participate at home. Individual church members can, if you wish, record brief testimonies at home and send them to you to include in the podcast. That adds a nice touch to help people feel in contact. If your videographer is an amateur (which will almost certainly be the case), bunch testimonies and clips right at the end so you don’t have to switch back and forth too much. 

A Sermon?

Sermons and homilies: of course you should have a sermon or homily, if that is your usual practice. But that doesn’t mean you do it the same as always. For one thing, good microphone technique is essential. The microphone should be a consistent 2 inches in front of the speaker’s mouth at all times, no matter what. Remember, you don’t have your live human voice as a backup. Breathe from the abdomen. Don’t yell, but push your voice to the back of the room, even though you don’t see anyone there. 

Are any of my readers children of the 60s? Do you remember Marshall McLuhan? He said that “the medium is the message,” and media (the plural of “medium”) are either hot or cool. Television is a cool medium: speakers are calm and conversational. Radio is a hot medium: speakers are energetic and forceful. Internet streaming is a moderately hot medium. What that means is that vocal delivery should be enthusiastic, quick, and lively. The voice needs lots of variety: loud and soft (not too soft), fast and slow, and loud and quiet (not too quiet). Don’t overdo it like a 2:00 a.m. used-car commercial. Watch some of your favorite YouTube videos; you may notice that the most successful Internet speakers are lively and speak with lots of variety. Don’t speak too quickly, however, since the audience is listening on cheap speakers and you don’t want your words to blur together.
 

More Music?

Hymn singing? Great idea! However, gathering the choir for worship is unsafe these days. If the church has professionally trained singers, let them do their thing but only one or two at a time. Please practice substantial social distancing – have singers at least three times as far apart as your local health department recommends and have them wear appropriate cloth masks. Set a good example of public health and safety. No, the mask won’t hurt their singing. They will feel strange but they can still sing just fine. Put the words up on the computer screen to help people sing along at home. If your singers are not professionally trained, you can give the at-home audience a much better experience if the piano or organ (best) accompanies the singers. Amateur singers can follow the organ to get the pitch and rhythm right. That’s the main reason that churches install organs to begin with. 

Finally, people often love short YouTube videos. In addition to full-length worship services, it’s possible to post multiple short, inspirational videos. A song or two, a five-minute meditation, a 10-minute scripture lesson, whatever. Set up a YouTube channel and invite people to subscribe.
 

Involve the Online Audience

How can you help people feel they are participating?

People want to feel involved. I already mentioned having people record testimonials to post. Viewers can run online commentary on YouTube. Any teenager can show you how to do that. (When you want social media skills, the teenagers are your top experts.) People can write comments below the video. Encourage members and viewers to share the video with their friends. There’s a button on YouTube that helps you do that. You can reach past geographically close members to reach a larger congregation. 

If speakers and singers are new to the online experience, well, so are the rest of us.  Don’t worry if you feel awkward. We all feel awkward at first. Pretend that you are projecting to the entire congregation, and not just to the camera. You may think that nobody is listening, but, trust me, they are. And they will be grateful that you’re there for them.

Peace to all. 

Get Your Worship Services Online! Part 1, Make the Technical Stuff Work.

No matter what the Supreme Court says, the coronavirus pandemic makes it unsafe for people to worship together in large groups. Stay home! Please! It’s wonderful to worship in person with our friends and family, but that is not a good reason to meet our maker ahead of schedule. This is the 21^st Century, and for the time being we can worship online. 

So, religious people who want to engage in systematic worship have two safe, healthy choices. One option is to have private worship services at home. There’s plenty of precedent for this. For example, it’s not unusual for Orthodox Jewish families to hold Shabbat services at home if the nearest synagogue is beyond walking distance. Nothing wrong with that at all. 

The other option is electronic worship. Many churches, synagogues, and other religious groups are presenting their services online. If more people receive a better online worship experience, more people might want to worship safely at home, so let’s talk about how to worship online. I’ll talk about Christian churches, since that is my own religion, but several of my points probably apply to other religions well. Give online worship your best shot; offer the congregation a spiritual experience that means as much to them as worshipping in person.
 

Make a Big Effort!

With modern equipment, you don’t really need that much expertise. No one expects a typical local church, even a big one, to have the electronic expertise that television evangelists bring to their television shows. What you need is effort. An electronic worship service requires planning and execution. It’s not something to throw together at the last minute. The pastor, Dr. Jack North, who married my wife and me in 1977, spent two full days every week preparing his sermons. Likewise, expect to spend two full eight-hour days preparing for an hour-long worship service online. The more you put into it, the more the congregation will get out of it.  

Make at least a partial run-through or rehearsal to make sure that you have all the technical stuff working before the final presentation. Facebook, YouTube, and various online hosting services offer options.
 

Monitor the Livestream

My wife and I have been worshiping online for several months, and – obvious though it seems – not everybody monitors their livestream. Someone who has basic technical skills needs to sit in another room and watch the entire podcast to make sure that the online audience can see and hear everything. If your feed goes blank or silent, you want to know right away so you can fix it.  It’s seriously embarrassing if you go dark and don’t realize it for 20 minutes. 

Also, the person monitoring the broadcast can keep an ear on volume levels. Sounds that seem balanced in person might be badly unbalanced over the Internet.
 

Obtain Basic Equipment

A church does not need a lot of fancy equipment to present good online worship. At a convention several years ago, I saw a professional independent film that was shot entirely with one off-the-shelf Canon DSLR camera. You can buy those at Walmart for a few hundred dollars. (I don’t care what brand the camera is; all major manufacturers make excellent cameras these days. Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Panasonic, Sony, and Olympus are all just fine. Mirrorless cameras are fine. Advanced point and shoot cameras are fine.) Make sure the camera has an external microphone input – that is essential. For livestreaming, the camera also needs to have an HDMI connection. A dedicated camcorder is also a good choice; a camcorder’s zoom lens is better adapted to video.  Unless you have a professional videographer, use only one camera. Not two. Just one. For livestreaming, you’ll also want a long HDMI cable. Get a tripod. A better-quality tripod will pay for itself. Practice with the camera until you know how to use it automatically.  

Here’s a website that offers useful technical information.    

Most churches have plenty of microphones, so use them. Singers and musical instruments should be miked separately if possible. Aim microphones at a grand piano soundboard from about a foot above. Aim acoustic guitar microphones from the front at the point where the guitar’s neck joins the body. Use a specialized microphone for electric guitar cabinets; if you have contemporary worship, you already own one. Singers and speakers should hold a microphone about 2 inches in front of the mouth. That will work more smoothly if you have a sound mixing board; if you don’t, just improvise.

The standard room lighting may or may not be adequate for video. If you can afford a few hundred dollars to buy some fluorescent or LED light banks and big lighting umbrellas, well, blessings upon you. Otherwise, turn on every light you have, especially at the front of the room. Look carefully on the computer screen for shadows and control them. Good, even lighting solves most video problems. 

You also need a good computer – a laptop is more convenient – and reliable high-speed Internet.

Many churches probably already own that equipment; if not, you might borrow it from a church member. Or buy it (sorry).
 

Record Your Broadcast or Go Live?

The choice is yours. A live service brings excitement that you can’t get from a recorded worship experience. But, if you have video editing software and someone who knows how to use it, a pre-recorded worship service gives you more flexibility. 

In any case, although modern equipment makes it possible for total amateurs to put on an effective online worship experience, don’t expect it to be easy. Spend time on everything, and make sure you have every detail worked out. Practice, practice, practice! Your first online worship service is not the time to find out that you’re missing a cable or don’t know what buttons to push on the computer. 

And, finally, never get so lost in the equipment that you lose sight of your online worship service’s true purpose. Worship together, and stay healthy. 

My wife and I used to attend concerts at St. John United Methodist Church in Augusta, Georgia. I think they did a nice job at presenting a prerecorded experience. Would you like to look at the link? I got some good ideas by watching it; maybe you will, too. 

I have now posted Part 2, Bringing Online Worship to Life

 

P.S. Safety first! Do I need to say it? Tape cables securely to the floor. Other than technical staff, keep everyone a long, long distance from cables, lights, cameras, stands, and computers. Electrical equipment should be grounded. CRASH! is not a sound that enhances worship and it’s also bad for the budget. Follow all public health precautions religiously. Please go the extra mile to keep everyone healthy. 

Update, March 28, 2021: I forgot to mention that the piano lid should be raised before the service. Makes a huge difference in the instrument's projection.