Most churches don't have all the resources they need. If money goes to one thing, it usually means money doesn't go to something else. So, when you get a chance to get a service for free, it's hard to turn that down, especially if you have been or planned on paying for it.
Why pay?
So, why would a church pay for live streaming when they could just go with a service that's free, from names you know like YouTube and FaceBook or even a hot new tech start-up?
Let's start with copyright. Assuming your church is doing everything to stay “above reproach” in this area, like only using public domain and original music or buying a license that covers the use of copyrighted music, you should be safe, right?
Wrong. For some of the free alternatives, live streaming is an after thought. It's also not something that they're making a lot of money on. Maybe it draws people to their platform, but they're not supporting it like a core business. They just don't have people devoted to help your church by putting you on a whitelist of those with a license.
Also, most copyright notices are generated automatically. False positives can and do occur, so churches doing only hymns from before the twentieth century or original music may get the occasional take down notice for an ancient song. Who do you talk to when this happens? There probably isn't a person to talk to who can discern that organ music written by Bach sounds nothing like a rap by Eminem. Usually, you receive just a script saying something like, “Do you believe this is a mistake? Click ‘Yes' to dispute this notice.” Maybe that helps, or maybe it doesn't.
That's a problem.
There are also technical challenges. What happens when your live stream refuses to work right before service? You might be able to find a troubleshooting article, but if the article isn't easy to understand or doesn't help, what do you do? Free doesn't come with good customer service.
Free services often lack features as well. Unlike paid services, “free” is what differentiates them. Paid services have to provide more value to justify their cost. Your job is to determine what features would make the cost worth it to your church.
Imagine that you have a paid staff member who comes in during your church services (and is on the clock) to set up and monitor your live stream. Let's say that person only makes $10/hr. You have two services, one at 9:00 and one at 11:00. She shows up at 8:30 to make sure it gets started and stays until 12:30. That's 4 hours a week or $40. In a four-weekend month, that's $160. In a five-weekend month, that's $200.
Now, let's imagine that there's a paid service which costs $150/month. The same staff member can set up and schedule the streams six months at a time. Doing so takes one hour. The interface is simple enough and service solid enough that someone who volunteers can take over for the staff member, merely making sure the live stream is working.
Your church isn't saving thousands of dollars a year, but having that staff member only work on live-streaming one hour every six months instead of 104 starts to add up. The monthly subscription isn't a lot cheaper than $160 a month, but it costs $900 + $10 (for the one hour set up) instead of $1040.
Perhaps there are other features that your paid live streaming host includes, too. Maybe they act as a podcast host. Maybe they give you a countdown that automatically embeds in your church website when the live stream is off the air. Maybe they sell an encoder that is more reliable than the one that you bought used off of Ebay. Some of these incidentals might save you in other areas too.
There's also a frustration cost that people often fail to figure into the cost of free. Maybe your staff member has other duties that are shoved to the side in order to do the live stream. Maybe setting up the live stream is a repetitive job that is just frustrating because of the number of steps week in and week out. Maybe the service just doesn't work as well as one would hope.
No matter the situation, are you chipping away at someone's sanity by insisting on using a service that makes his or her life harder than it has to be? That's the way free things can be sometimes.
Finally, consider what happens when, whether justified or not, the free service decides you have breached their terms of service and your account needs to be shut down. Or maybe you're using a free service that's a start up and the investors decide that they don't like the results and pull the plug without warning. The internet is full of stories that fall into both of these categories. Building on a platform you don't control is like building a house on a sand foundation, and we all know how that ends.
How to switch
Once you've decided to switch, for whatever reason, you might not be able to just switch. It may take some time.
Let's say you're using FaceBook or YouTube and people are used to firing up their app to watch. That's not going to work anymore.
Consider getting an app for your church, instead. Make it something that does more than the other one does. Maybe it connects them with daily devotions, allows online giving, provides real-time chat, etc. The idea here is to provide an alternative that gives them more than they had before and makes them wish you'd made the move sooner, not later.
Maybe you're using a service that doesn't allow embedding or you never used it. Dropping that service one week and starting to stream on another means that many members of your online congregation will show up and not know why you're not there. Maybe they'd chalk it up to a technical problem, but as one week turns into more, you're likely to have some very sad people that you can't guide through the pain.
Even if your church has set up your live stream so that it's embedded on your church's website, you may still have some work to do.
First, you'll need to make sure you're choosing the right live streaming company for your needs. Just because another church in town uses them, doesn't mean it's a good match for your church. Do your research.
Also make sure that you mention an easy to remember URL where your stream will always be available. Maybe people are finding you on the free service's site and don't know where else to go. Making it a practice to mention that you're always located at FirstChurchHackensack.com/live (not a real site) will train them to know that they can always find out what's going on there.
Start early letting people know that you'll be moving off the free service, well in advance. Make sure you make weekly announcements about it, so they're not confused when it happens.
When you do make the move, leave an announcement on the former page for a while. Maybe you won't be able to do it from church, but perhaps you could stream a simple “We've Moved” video during church from a member's home, saving your church's bandwidth for the new stream.
Finally, make the move as smooth as possible. Test everything before you flip the switch. Maybe you throw the “beta” tag on it to lower expectations. Maybe you live stream on both for a while (or maybe forever) so that those who don't want to switch don't have to, or have more time to compare the two.
Switching to a new live streaming host is like moving to a new church building. Even though it's necessary or advances the ministry in a meaningful way, it can be a rough transition. When it's time, do everything you can to make it the best transition possible.
