When church leaders at Blue Ridge Community Church in Forest, Virginia made the hard decision to temporarily close up two thriving campus locations in favor of online worship, film team lead Josh Etheridge saw it as an opportunity.
“We were excited about the prospect of getting to a larger online audience and being able to look closely at the analytics to see what is working and where people might be falling away,” Etheridge says. Once fully engaged, however, the team realized that there were more and different challenges to going online than they had envisioned.
Maintaining quality, crafting intimate environments
One of Etheridge’s first challenges was with maintaining the quality of what the team was delivering. “We immediately recognized the need to keep great worship music and a sense of community in services going online,” he says. “Our tradition is to be an exciting alternative, make personal connections, and make church a quality experience. Making that all happen with limited rehearsal time, with restrictions on space, and in a live setting without post processing turned out to be more of a challenge than we expected.” Not satisfied with the quality of the music, a key element of their services, the team gave thought to pre-recording a full service at rehearsal to polish before broadcast, but ultimately landed on working from a studio-captured production of each service.
“Our focus when the church was closed was to adjust our teams’ manpower to create pre-recorded content that could be cut together so that the end result was an intimate worship experience.”
Andre Harrell, Video Producer and Content Creator, Prestonwood Baptist Church Media Ministry, Plano, Texas
With the pressing need to connect online, Blue Ridge took all resources used to support their in-person services and reapplied them to a third campus, Blue Ridge Online. “In the beginning, we were excited to bring people the same experience at home as they had come to expect in church,” Etheridge recalls, “but we quickly became aware that you’re not in the same space mentally. It became apparent that we needed to shift our focus from efforts to recreate the live experience to an approach that was more about better communication—one with fewer ‘big moments’ designed to move people, but could reach people in different ways.”
Photo courtesy of Blue Ridge Community Church, Forest, VA.
One way in which the Blue Ridge team has adjusted to church online is knowing what content works best for what platform. “Obviously, live church is different from church online, but different Social media app users have different expectations, as well,” Etheridge notes. “Some video content just won’t work in the 15-second story you might have on Instagram, but a cool graphic or animation in the same slot might reach people. Some platforms are better suited for people looking to scroll and move quickly through a feed. Whereas, ‘Youtubers’ might be [readier] to sit for a bit and watch.” With experience, the Blue Ridge team has learned to refine different approaches for the content that works best for each platform.
The content for Blue Ridge Online considers what Etheridge and his team define as home worship. “It’s got to be different than what you experience in church,” he says. While he has brought in more gear to produce content for online, his productions are calculated to be more intimate. “We’ve made quite a few adjustments, including keeping it super simple. We’ve also moved in by taking over seats closer to the stage for better camera positions. The overall look becomes more intimate and so a better fit for watching at home. If I’m going online for music, I’m not looking for the concert experience; it won’t be big, but may be acoustic, intentional, and may be something soft. At home, that fits.”
In all its efforts, Etheridge and his team were fully supported. Blue Ridge Community Church’s 70-year-old senior pastor, Dr. Woody Torrence, without reservation, encouraged his video team to accept the recent forced move to online as natural. “He says that we should be excited about change in all we do, if for no other reason than we live in a changing world.” These words of wisdom from Torrence are emblazoned on the church’s coffee mugs: “What got us here won't get us there.’”
Andre Harrell, video producer and content creator for Prestonwood Baptist Church Media Ministry in Plano, Texas gained an immediate appreciation for just how much church means in a global health crisis. “Like other churches, we expected more interest in online,” he recalls, “but what we saw was a huge increase in online attendance—people were afraid and turned to the church.” In the first weekend that the church was closed, Harrell and his video team saw worshippers join online in numbers that were greater than they expected. In fact, online viewers that weekend topped the church’s in-person and online attendance records combined. The analytics showed that the church was reaching close to 150,000 unique IP addresses.
“We were fortunate to have a good framework already in place to handle the increased volume and distribute our content,” says Harrell, “so our focus when the church was closed was to adjust our teams’ manpower to create pre-recorded content that could be cut together so that the end result was an intimate worship experience.” To make it happen, Harrell had to balance the schedules of staff and volunteers to replace two live services with pre-recorded streams, plus add a midweek service that could function as a replacement, to the extent online experiences can, for events that would have typically taken place at the church during the week. “Good communications with all team members and centrally handling the logistics of producing content for our online services, allowed us to continue worship and keep in touch with our church community,” Harrell notes.
To be able to facilitate the creation of content suited to online worship, Harrell and his team consolidated gear and human resources into a smaller student venue, adjusting lighting and camera positions to make productions more intimate. “We moved some camera positions from 100 feet away to 20-30 feet and added a jib. It really gave us an opportunity to be creative while adhering to our team’s mantra of ‘keeping details of any technology out of the way of worship.’ Then, we all had to adjust to a new approach to worship and teaching,” he notes, “to make it more engaging and personal.” While some pastors were familiar with being on camera, one of the biggest changes for Harrell’s team was to encourage and capture preaching to the camera, as if to one person, knowing that it would reach many in a more personal way.
Photo courtesy of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, TX.
While Harrell’s church has reopened and the team has returned to curating recorded services, his video team continues to attract new worshipers with snippets of weekly services produced for Instagram and other social media outlets.
Empowering teams
Church by the Glades in Coral Springs, Florida is also back to in-person services, but lessons learned by the church’s film team under the guidance of its director, Mauricio Tinoco, have the church poised to succeed with an online audience into the future. Although Tinoco had to make dramatic changes to address the church community’s immediate needs during the pandemic, many of the changes resonate with the growing number of worshippers who may not be going to church every Sunday in the traditional sense.
“When the pandemic hit,” recalls Tinoco, “everything changed.” His team would face the creative challenges of shaping a worship environment online, while addressing many practical issues, from having at-risk team members, to how best to reorganize and direct content to be most effective. “There was no playbook to follow,” he says. As a result, Tinoco’s team expanded with volunteers repurposed from other ministries and, often, team members were called upon to shift to new positions and learn new skills.
Mauricio Tinoco is film team director at Church by the Glades, Coral Springs, FL.
Despite having to arrange equipment and schedules to have people work from home locations where necessary, Tinoco kept his team intact to create creative content retooled and redirected to be most effective for online worship. In addition to tighter shots, just one of many techniques to make online worship more visually appealing, the team worked on producing shorter segments that would keep interest levels high.
It's important to note that throughout the process, Tinoco listened closely to feedback from his social media experts, allowing them to help his team to make cuts and deliver specific content that would resonate best with online audiences. “We trusted our other teams to help us know what content was working and where we needed to adjust to drive internet traffic to our website—[and] even with timing—when to hold off after posting a song to social media.” In many cases, the team reaped the benefits of a try-and-tweak approach instead of posting everything everywhere. “It’s okay not to be the expert,” says Tinoco. “It’s more important to be aware. Leaning on people with expertise, working in the right places, makes you a better leader.”
