In March of this year churches around the globe were suddenly confronted with the reality of a worldwide pandemic, forcing ministries to literally close their doors to the world. The challenges of COVID-19 would require a complete and fundamental reimagining of how the core mission of the church could be carried out without weekend gatherings or face-to-face interactions.
Installation Profile: Streaming Generation
For Generation Church in Jupiter, Fla., meeting that challenge began with a complete overhaul of how to effectively reach its congregation with hope and purpose. Right away, staff concluded that their current approaches wouldn’t be enough to effectively reach a world full of people who suddenly found themselves in quarantine.
"A and B cameras were Sony A7R IIIs, one with an 85mm prime and the other with a 70-200 2.8 G Master lens. Then we had three Fuji XT-3s, two with Fuji 16-55mm f/2.8 zooms and one with a 35mm prime, all mounted on DJI Ronan gimbals that could fly around the set."
Neil Dick, Volunteer Broadcast Director, Generation Church, Jupiter, FL
“We’ve been streaming Sunday morning services via the Boxcast platform for a few years,” explains Aaron Schwindt, creative arts pastor at Generation Church. “It allows us to connect with our [congregants], who tend to travel a lot for work or for leisure on the weekends.” He adds, “Our people like to check in with Generation when they're on the road.
We’ve also found that the stream has also been a great way for local folks to explore what services are like before their first visit.”As the national response to the coronavirus began to evolve, keeping up-to-speed required the leadership of the church to adjust on an almost daily basis. “Heading into Monday the 16th, we did an all-staff planning session to figure out how to create weekend experiences that stayed within the 50-person limitations for the state,” recalls Schwindt. “Then, on Tuesday the 17th, we got the new 10-or-less gathering guidelines—and we had to start planning again completely from scratch.”He adds, “Our lead pastor, Ben Pierce, laid out a vision for where we ultimately wanted to go, then he just trusted us to figure out how to make that happen. We looked at what other churches had done on the previous weekend, as well as what other worship artists had created for their acoustic sets, and began dialing in an approach that could work for us.”
Check out this recording of Generation Church's live stream. <Click Here>
Engineering for a new reality
Aaron Schwindt, Creative Arts Pastor, Generation Church, Jupiter, FL.
Rather than being overwhelmed by the challenges of reimagining a core function of the church, the volunteer broadcast director, Neil Dick, decided to lean into the opportunity. “I feel so strongly about giving back my time and talents, just because so much has been given to me,” shares Dick. “Going into the weekend of the 22nd, we just wanted to do something creative and interesting.” He continues, “We decided to see this as an opportunity for us as a team and a church to do something different. We initially started by talking about doing something more conservative, but I’ve learned in my life that when I’ve gone for it and trusted God, it’s really paid off,” he states. “In the same way, our leadership trusted us that we could do something good, which was good as we really only had two days to pull the whole thing off.”Generation Church typically runs in the 450-500 range in weekend attendance, says Schwindt. “which means resources are limited.
One of the biggest things this project has taught us is how powerful it is to put onscreen exactly what you’re trying to inspire in your congregation.—Aaron Schwindt,Creative Arts Pastor, Generation Church, Jupiter, FL.
That forces us to raise up high-capacity volunteer leaders, and with a church at this size and season of ministry, you can’t have to wait until you’re big and have a lot of staff and budget to do something great. As we were brainstorming a real ‘moonshot’ type of effort, Neil just stepped forward with a strong vision for what we could do.”In order to create something totally fresh that created the right energy and mood, Generation decided to create a unique “unplugged” set against the front picture windows in the lobby. “The big concern was that we didn’t have a lot of experience crafting services to engage people to worship from their couches at home,” continues Schwindt. “We wanted to inspire real participation remotely, and what we were doing wasn’t really engineered for that approach. Our live stream was a lot like our IMAG feed in the auditorium.” He adds, “Florida is a bright, open-air kind of place, and we wanted something that would match that vibe. The ultimate vision for us was to create an online experience where people sitting at home with their families, or hanging out in a very small group setting, could watch on their computers or screens and not feel silly participating.”
The right tools to deliver
Neil Dick, Volunteer Broadcast Director, Generation Church, Jupiter, FL.
For Dick and his broadcast team, creating something cinematic required finding the right gear from cameras that could be loaned out from people connected to the church. “Our A and B cameras were Sony A7R IIIs, one with an 85mm prime and the other with a 70-200 2.8 G Master lens,” recalls Dick. “Then we had three Fuji XT-3s, two with Fuji 16-55mm f/2.8 zooms and one with a 35mm prime, all mounted on DJI Ronan gimbals that could fly around the set.” The team created its own custom color profile inside the Sony cameras to match the Fuji's as closely as possible. “Everything was filmed at 1080/24p so we could post as fast as possible without having to transcode,” Dick notes. “We also added a lot of soft lighting to the set, with an Aperture 120D being our main key light, to help balance the subjects with all of the backlight coming from the windows.“Once we wrapped, our team dumped the footage into a multicam sequence in Adobe Premiere, which allowed us to begin editing in near real-time. Our A, B, C, and D camera operators framed up usable shots almost the entire time (the fifth camera was our wild card), which made cutting even easier. From there all we needed was the lay in the final mastered audio mix later that night and output.” The other half of creating an effective live streaming solution meant capturing quality audio onset and crafting a custom audio mix in post.
The drums were something we spent a lot of time dialing in. We ended up putting a t-shirt over the snare drum and using Blasticks just to balance the drum tone without letting the volume get out of control. —Brinton Lindsey, Creative Technical Director, Generation Church, Jupiter, FL.
“The whole worship service in the lobby was recorded on a Behringer X32,” says Brinton Lindsey, creative technical director at Generation Church. “From there we used a lot of Waves and Universal Audio pre-amp plugins to warm everything up.” Lindsey adds, “We also used CLA and Teletronics compressors to even things out without making the mix feel overly flat, as well as reverb to help put the viewer right there. Our main goal was for it to sound like you were in that specific room, rather than in a generic big venue, which meant using a shorter verb, something like .7 seconds, to make it feel right.” In terms of instruments for worship, he says, “The drums were something we spent a lot of time dialing in. We ended up putting a t-shirt over the snare drum and using Blasticks just to balance the drum tone without letting the volume get out of control. I also found it helpful to mix the acoustic guitar as more of a percussion instrument. The overhead cymbal mics were picking up a whole lot of the room during the service, which meant that it ended up being better to use the acoustic more like a hi-hat.”
Moving into the next evolution
Brinton Lindsey, Creative Technical Director, Generation Church, Jupiter, FL.
For the creative team at Generation Church, a commitment to learning and growth remains a priority moving into the future. “One of the biggest things this project has taught us is how powerful it is to put onscreen exactly what you’re trying to inspire in your congregation,” explains Schwindt. “We’re learning how important it is to visually model and demonstrate that relationship between the leaders onstage and the worshippers in the room.” He continues, “Sooner or later we’re going to return to larger gatherings, but for our broadcast ministry we want to be far more aware to move some of our shots off the stage and onto the worshipers and context of what’s happening in the room. We’re seeing the immediate impact of that now, and it’s been eye-opening.”The team also remains committed to the process of leaning into a crisis and embracing whatever opportunities arise from it. “It was so affirming to see our whole congregation really get behind this project,” Dick shares. “It’s been the culmination of years of work and team development. Realizing that all of that hard work we’ve been doing for so long is what’s made this moment possible today is deeply satisfying.”And he closes, “Some of us had a sense that this next step was somewhere around the corner, so in a way this evolution was something we knew eventually needed to happen. We’re excited that we can have this moment to raise up the culture, and we definitely felt good about where we’re heading next with our broadcast ministry.”
