I Can Hear You Now

One of the many paradoxes of our current times is that everyone is sick of talking about COVID (not sure if that pun is intended or not), they want to talk about anything else, but everything somehow comes back to COVID. I hate to carry on that vicious cycle, but I can’t talk about some of the exciting things in our church right now without talking about the catalyst for all of this and how we got here.
Last March, I was preparing for a mission trip to Texas with our youth group. We had a dozen or so students who were excited about spending their spring break in another state helping out a pastor friend of mine who does a phenomenal job of reaching those that a lot of us would consider unworthy. (You can look at his posts on Facebook to see how God is using him). week before we left, he called me and said that because of his serious health concerns and the virus starting to go around, he was going to have to cancel our mission trip. There were a lot of disappointed people, but it was just a few days later when the entire nation went on lockdown. A few of the church leaders and staff gathered in the main part of Hildreth Hall, chairs more than six apart, and talked about what our church was going to do. None of us had any ideas that 20 months later we’d still be trying to figure out how to navigate a pandemic, or that the decisions made in that meeting would forever change our church.
The very first virtual Sunday we had was rough. The announcements were blurry (it’s what happens when the camera man is on the wrong side of the camera), the sound was awful, and the whole thing was only 20 minutes. We shot most of it on just one camera, except for the music part which was shot on a phone, and there wasn’t much in the way of post production. We really had no idea what to expect, but we reached over 1,200 people with that video. It was weird, but even when we couldn’t physically be together, we somehow developed a sense of community with our online groups. We had zoom coffee fellowships, complete with all the “You’re muted” and “Can you hear me now?” stereotypes that we’ve all come to know and hate. But at the time we were just excited to be able to worship together at all and the novelty hadn’t yet worn off.
The weeks went on and it became apparent that church would be virtual more than just the 30 days of lock down. We started bringing in one or two extra people to sing with Mike (with lots of hand sanitizer and distance) and we brought in another camera. The worst great idea of the whole lockdown was our Easter video. It was the first time we had ever attempted a virtual band, and 40 hours of video and audio editing later it still wasn’t perfect but at the time we were just thankful to be able to pull anything off.
We eventually brought back a full band. To keep the number of people in the building down, I was the audio guy trying to mix the room for what a couple of microphones placed at the back of the room would pick up (which sounds nothing like what it should) and would (literally) run back and forth between my two cameras and the booth. We were still prerecording everything which meant that there would still be hours of post production before we could premiere the video for church.
Once we finally set a reopening date we had another key meeting that, at the time, seemed insignificant but completely changed the course of our church. We could either keep prerecording our services and post them a week later, or we could live stream our services. Everyone knew that live streaming was a better option, but it also came with a couple of drawbacks. The first one was money. We had looked into what it would take to live stream or multicast back in 2017 and had a rough idea that it would cost somewhere around $30,000 to get everything we needed. The second drawback was the need for additional volunteers at a time when we were already low on volunteers. I researched, bargain hunted, and did my best to come to the Trustee committee with a live streaming set up that only cost $10,000. In my mind, that was still going to be too much money and we were going to have to make cuts to the already bare bones set up.
While I was presenting this package to the committee, I could see a couple of people shaking their heads and making notes on the plans I had handed them. I knew there was going to be an uphill battle. The very first question after the presentation was why I was spending $1,000 on an iMac to run sound. I started trying to justify it by saying it’s a used one, it’s cheaper than a lot of other options we have, we might be able to get away with a different computer but reliability might become an issue and so on. Finally the trustee stopped me and said, “No, why are you buying a used computer? Wouldn’t a new one do better and last longer?” Of course it would, but with such a limited budget we had to make a lot of compromises. And then something I never would have believed happened. A trustee who works at a university spoke up and said their department just developed a live stream studio and it was well over $30,000. They then asked what I would change if I had an extra $5,000.
In the course of one meeting, I went from presenting a $10,000 proposal and expecting to get only half of that, to them increasing the budget by $5,000 to make sure we had what we really needed. That extra $5,000 took us from a basic, passable, setup to a much more professional and adaptive setup that we can expand. The second big surprise was when I held the first media volunteer training. I was expecting maybe one or two people to show up, and we had almost a dozen show up with others who couldn’t make it but still wanted to serve. We now have volunteers who are retired all the way down to 6th graders running cameras, mixing the audio, and directing from the switcher, volunteers with no experience or knowledge to those who have done semi professional work before.  

I can’t express how much these volunteers mean to me and all the ways that they make a legitimate difference for the kingdom, but here’s a start. We’ve continued to live stream every Sunday, even when we worshiped in Hildreth, and people from all over the world have watched our services. We have regular watchers in Germany, Ireland, Alabama, and Georgia that wouldn’t be connected with us except for what we are able to put online now. We have our ups and downs, but over the last 30 days we’ve reached over 8,500 people and had over 1,400 engagements, all of those organic.
As people are getting out more and returning to in-person worship, we have seen a bit of a decrease in our live viewer numbers. However, these videos of our service aren’t just for our members. When someone is checking out our church online before their first visit, they will check out our website and Facebook page and come across our services. That means that a guest’s first impression of us happens long before they step foot on our campus. Because of our amazing volunteers, some who serve nearly every week, we are still connecting with people who aren’t able to be at in-person worship, we have a great first impression, and we have even been able to help other churches get off the ground with their own live streaming services. 

None of this would be possible without those volunteers, but it also wouldn’t be possible without some other leaders in our church who realized our mission was to make disciples by telling people about Jesus. Even if the method we had to use to carry out that mission changed, we still had to tell people about Jesus. It also wouldn’t have been possible without the financial gifts of other people in our congregation. All along the way, you can see how God has had his hand in what was going on. Even though you don’t see the hundreds of people who see part of service from home, they are there and they are hearing about Jesus, perhaps for the first time. If you want to become part of this amazing team of volunteers, I’d love to talk with you. Feel free to email me at NathanP@navarreumc.org or catch me on a Sunday.