Lots of churches have been embracing live streaming through Facebook and YouTube as a way of moving their services online. This often provides the best way to create and share an online service. Provided your technical skills are up to scratch and your internet connection is quick enough to cope, of course!
However, live streaming directly through either platform is not ideal. Here are four reasons why, this week, you might want to stream through Church Service Planner instead.
1. No Distractions or Advertising
Any social platform is full to the brim with distractions. Just spend a few seconds on YouTube or Facebook and your focus is taken in all kinds of directions - often unhelpfully.
You wouldn't accept pop-ups or advertising, 'promoted posts' or 'more like this' within your normal church meetings, would you? So why accept it online?
By streaming through Church Service Planner you can give your church family an ad-free environment, with no additional distractions, on which to participate in your online service.
And the best bit? You can continue to use your preferred platform just like before. Simply copy and paste the 'embed' code from your YouTube or Facebook feed into your service plan. It's as simple as that.
2. No Accounts Required
Secondly, there are no accounts required to use Church Service Planner.
Do you have people in your church family who don't use Facebook? Or people who don't like using sites like YouTube, for whatever reason?
If you do, how are you sharing your services with them? Why not use Church Service Planner. Setup a service, send them a link, stream your service live and everyone can participate without feeling pushed into signing up for something they don't want to use.
Win!
3. Easy to Find Links
Thirdly, services created on Church Service Planner can be made really easy to find. Just share the link via email, or over WhatsApp or whatever your church is using to send messages.
No instructions required. Everyone can just click on the link and immediately access your service content. Easy!
If you want to you can link to your service plans from your church website. All services will remain accessible for a number of weeks at least, so you can build an archive of online services for your church family to enjoy.
4. Include Additional Content
Sure, YouTube and Facebook make live streaming easy. But what if you want to include things like sermon notes, or song lyrics? How would you do that?
On Church Service Planner it's easy. Make use of our PDF option to provide a download of anything your church family need to participate in the service. Or just use the Text option to add song lyrics, Bible passages, or whatever else you need to include.
Church Service Planner was designed to make life easy for both leaders and congregations. Please consider your congregation carefully when choosing how to deliver your online services. If people find the platform you've picked distracting or difficult to use they may avoid coming back.
Click here to view the 'Demo Service' which includes a live-streamed video from YouTube.
