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Images courtesy of Hope Community Church, Cary, NC.
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I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been asked, “So, how much should we pay for new digital signage TVs?” The question usually comes from someone staring at a budget sheet, hoping there’s an easy answer that will make the decision painless and who really doesn’t want to buy one, but is forced to because the blank black screen in the lobby is starting to appear on the comment cards. I get it, spending money on a “TV” doesn’t feel glamorous. Fun Fact: it’s not a “TV,” it’s the entry point to your congregation’s understanding of what your church identity is. Digital signage isn’t about the technology, but the impact it creates.
Pay once, cry once. Buy cheap, and you’ll pay forever.
That’s why the question of “how much should we pay?” isn’t really about the dollars and cents, it’s about the heart of your ministry. When someone steps into the church, they bring with them all the weight of their week, their struggles, and their hopes. Long before they sit in the pews or hear the sermon, they encounter the atmosphere you have created. If the screen they see is dimming and off colored, showing outdated content, still has that little broken crack that you can’t unsee after noticing it the first time, or really is just forgotten and treated as the 7:55 AM remote control “on” task, it can unintentionally communicate that the details don’t matter here. And by extension, maybe they, and visitors to your church, don’t either. But when the display is bright, clear, and thoughtfully cared for (both in content and aesthetic), it becomes an expression of God’s love, showing that His house is one of excellence. Welcoming and belonging.
Your signage tells a story—make sure it’s the one you want people to hear.
In truth, digital signage is not about technology, it’s about people. It’s about creating a space where distractions disappear, and hearts can focus on God. I know most churches view digital signage as just fancy, expensive PowerPoint players, but the fact is, they are a representation of the people you are shepherding. Just as we sweep the floors, tune the instruments, and set out the bulletins, we ought to tend to these screens in a way so that every single detail points to Jesus. Digital signage in the lobby literally proclaims: “You matter to God, and you matter to us.” When that message shines through even the simplest screen in the lobby, it can open the door for someone to experience God’s presence in a deeper way.
Ok so, exactly how much money should you spend? To be honest, to the untrained eye, every display mostly looks the same. From ten feet away most people can’t tell the difference between a $400 TV and a $4,000 commercial display. But here’s the truth I’ve learned the hard way and that you already know: You always get what you pay for. And I’ll be honest, when I worked at a large SoCal church and a respected Christian college, the big box store special down the street was indeed all-too-often my best friend. It was what the budget “allowed.” However, as I moved on to lead the technology decisions at two of the top R1 research universities in the world, my views changed… dramatically.
Your lobby screens are preaching before the sermon ever starts.
I remember travelling one weekend and doing the “church visit,” walking into one lobby and seeing half their screens dark, one flickering with a burned-in logo, and another literally having the cables duct-taped and spray-painted to the up the wall. And by the way, this was a well-known Evangelical church, headed by a “must see” pastor. I saw the tech guy with a hand reaching up awkwardly behind one, so I asked what happened. “They were on sale.” That was it. That was the comment. That church thought they were saving money by picking up whatever was cheapest at the time. The “TVs” always look fine in the store. They look fine in a residential home. But within a year of commercial use, they were failing… one by one. He told me that by the time they’d replaced them twice, spent hours of staff time troubleshooting, and taken calls from angry ministry leader wondering why the signage never worked, they had spent more in labor and stress than they were worth. And that’s not even counting the hidden cost of credibility lost in the AV team. It was a decision made by the budget people but forced on the dignity of the tech team. And hence, when the front lobby looks broken, so does the church. So does your reputation. So does the AV team. It tells a story you don’t want to tell
Fun Fact: Using a residential display in a commercial environment voids the warranty.
Fun Fact: Not all P&L’s are equal. This is the part your CFO needs to read. Yes, the “math” tells you that if a commercial display costs $3500 and lasts ten years (even after the warranty ran out five years prior), but you can spend $1500 on three residential displays over the same period of time, you “saved” money. But the math leaves out the TCO (“total cost of ownership”) in labor, maintenance, shipping, shopping, install, frustration, and all the negatives I began the article with. Not all dollars are equal, especially when we are involving volunteer teams. Why make our volunteers Band-Aid our lack of care for the church, in the name of “savings.”
In church tech, cutting corners usually costs credibility.
I remember another project where I consulted for a local Christian college on their digital signage strategy and where the team struggled with the same decision. The AV team wanted to enact my recommendation, but leadership pushed back. Rightly so, every dollar mattered to them, and no one was excited about adding more to the budget. It felt like a leap of faith to spend extra when there were so many other needs tugging at them. They sat me in a room with the CIO and CFO. While the conversation went on for nearly thirty minutes, the punchline came down to one simple question I presented: “What matters more at this moment, the money or the people? For every dollar you save in capital expenditures, you will spend 10-times in human capital. Would you rather the wear-and-tear be on the “thing” or the “person? That’s what needs to guide your decision.” In the end, they chose to invest in well-being over line-item, trusting that people and technology would better serve the mission. And they were right.
Now eight years later, those same displays are still shining just as bright as the day they went in. They’ve endured the long hours and quietly done their work without demanding attention. And the beauty of it is this: no one even talks about them anymore. They’re not a burden; they’re not a worry. They are just there, faithfully carrying the message of the Church week after week. In the end, sometimes the wisest investments are the ones that hurt a little at the beginning but give back peace of mind, clarity of purpose, and have the unspoken demands front-of-heart, for years to come.
Nowhere is this difference more obvious than with outdoors. Welcome to “the patio,” aka, the “weatherproof case” housing consumer TVs. On paper it sounds clever. In practice, it’s a disaster… Not to mention an insurance claim in the making. The sun makes images impossible to see, the enclosures trap heat, and the displays (as designed) shut down constantly to keep from overheating. At a previous institution, the students nicknamed one the “the black screen of death” because it was off more often than it was on. It didn’t help that it was thirty feet from Alumni Walk. Within months they had to rip the whole setup out and start again, this time with proper outdoor-rated displays. Yes, they do cost three to five times more. But they are readable in daylight, sealed against rain and dust, and cool properly. That first attempt wasn’t a savings; it was an expensive lesson.
The longer I’ve been in this industry, the more I’ve come to respect the total cost of ownership. Sticker shock fades, but service calls don’t. Replacements don’t. Angry emails don’t. Every hour spent swapping out a broken display, every call that starts with “the screen is blank again” adds to the bill. And in most cases, that bill ends up bigger than the upfront investment would have been. I’ve lived that cycle enough to know it’s not worth it. My prayer… I just wish that our churches recognized the same. We must get over “cheaper” and understand “better.” It’s cheap to take out savings on people over technology. It’s better to value the people and technology.
When I recommend commercial-grade signage displays, I’m not doing it to upsell or chase features nobody will use. I’m doing it because I know what happens when you don’t. Professional units are designed for long runtimes. They come with warranties that matter: Three to five years of coverage instead of one year with a consumer set. They include the control protocols that let us monitor them remotely, reboot them from a desk instead of a ladder, and integrate them into the broader system. They have brightness ratings designed for their environment. They’re built for the long haul… And that matters.
I’ve witnessed too many well-intentioned projects ruined by short-sighted purchasing. I’ve also seen the opposite: spaces where leadership bit the bullet, paid more at the beginning, and ended up with systems that simply worked. And in those places, digital signage became trusted, not questioned. That trust isn’t something you can put a price tag on; it comes directly from making the right investment up front.
So, when someone asks me how much they should pay for digital signage displays, my answer is always the same… Spend enough to get the right one for the benefit of the people involved. Enough to ensure you’re not replacing it every year. Enough that it’s bright enough for its environment, durable enough for its location, and supported well enough that your staff and volunteers can focus on the message instead of the screen. The number might vary depending on whether it’s in a lobby, on the patio, or outside the kid’s min check-in but the principle never changes. Pay once, cry once. Buy cheap, and you’ll pay forever. Correction: Your people will pay forever.
Good stewardship isn’t just about saving money—it’s about investing in tools that serve faithfully for years.
In the end, digital signage is about communication. If the screen fails, the communication fails. And when your message is on the line, the last thing you want to be is penny-wise and pound-foolish. Spend wisely at the start, and you’ll be glad you did every single day that your display quietly does its job.
Ok, so do you really want me to give you a number to give your leadership on how much you should spend on a digital signage display… The number is: Yes.
Bonus answer from experience, and what I “budget”: It’s not just about the display. There are three areas to decide: The display, the player (aka decoder), and the content management system (CMS). The industry “rule of thumb” (as of Fall 2025) is $10K per display location, not counting infrastructure (aka network and construction) costs. But that’s just me, and that’s an article for another time. ;)
