The East Coast got hit with a pretty decent snow storm. Here in Va Beach is was the largest amount of snow we’ve seen in 20 years. With inclement weather on the verge and needing to make a decision, we knew getting people on the roads could be a bad idea. As a leadership, we began to brainstorm and talk through some of our questions:

“How do we still engage people?”
“Do we just not do service all together?”
“What are other churches doing? What about the larger churches in our area?”
“How does this affect the weekly budgeted needs?”
“How long can we wait to make this decision?”
“If we cancel, how many people will get mad? How many will be thankful?”
“Is there another way to do this and still connect with people?”

Dozens more questions ran through our heads and passed over our lips. It was an interesting time of juggling it all over a couple of days. When we recently had a large Nor Easter and the power outages all across our area, the high school we meet at was without power. We discussed back up plans then and someone mentioned using a streaming service to do everything from our warehouse space. It was entertained if need be, but the school received power back just in time. Well, discussion and weather collided and we decided to go for it-

we’ll have an internet service this week.

We chose Livestream.com to go with for our web/internet service. It’s free, pretty reliable, and you can customize the interface  for the viewers. We’ve used it to bring staff members into meetings if they are out of town, training volunteers from the comfort of their home, and recording our creative planning meetings for series to go back later and see anything we might have missed. It is a great tool and has served us well in other areas.

So, here is what we used to make it all happen (techy stuff): 1 Sony HVR-Z1U camera, a MacBook (second edition white model), 5 mics, a power mixer, some garage shop/work lights, and a firewire cable to connect the camera to the laptop. Here are some photos & video of the set-up:

We loaded the videos we need for the day (opening service video, sonic commercial spoof, and a small groups promo commercial) into the interface, wrote up the order of service, prepped, practiced, and launched it at 10am EST last Sunday. Before the service began, quite a few people were in the chat interface making friends and getting to know one another a bit more. It was plastered all over Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. People we didn’t even know were promoting it, other churches were directing their people to it since their services were canceled. “No pressure,” I told our team as we an hour before we went live. Friends from Texas, SC, NC, CA, and DC tuned in as well to join in the experience. All in all, we were pleased with how it went. When our choices were gathering as a body and putting people’s lives in danger, not having services at all, or doing things online- I’m glad we made the decision we did.

Here were some of the responses:

• “very cool thing this am.. was very thankful you all put this together, and so fast!! Our church rocks!!”
• “I LOVED it!!! Forefront Rocks…and James gave a great sermon!”
• “Awesome job on the online service guys. Although Jason didn’t look any better in HD … LOL ”
• “Very impressed with the Forefront Service…..good job guys”
• “WOW! What an unusual Sunday………….first church on-line, thank you Forefront”
• “I’m eating a bowl of cereal and Watching Forefront Church @livestream”
• “We are having church on line….pretty cool to sit at home and still be able to go to church…”
• “I thought you guys did an awesome job putting things together. Everyone was on point. I will have to agree about the chat feature, it was cool during the singing and before and after the service, but a little distracting during the message.”
• “Caught a few minutes of it, and I dug it. I’m not a big fan of internet campuses, but in the work I do to pay the bills (hospice chaplaincy), I can totally see this working in facilities or homes of people who can no longer make it out to church–and “old school” churches wouldn’t have to change how they do a thing. Just invest in some technology.”
• “It was awesome! Everyone in my house was tuned in. We even had some friends in TX join too! Very great outreach for those who aren’t sure or aren’t comfy attending a service yet. Not to mention sick, shut-in, etc! Amazing!!”
• “I was impressed with how smoothly it seemed to go; I was afraid there would be lots of technical difficulties! Great message from James, and Jessica and the guys sounded awesome, as usual. The chat thing was kind of neat, a little distracting though. Great job, thanks for putting it all together!”
• “We thought it was great Jason, good job gang!”
• “Great service today. I am really glad I got the chance to watch it. I def would have been at service last sunday but was in a car accident that sat. Came out with whiplash. I thank the Lord that I didnt get seriously injured or that I had anyone else with me. The other driver is ok too. Plan on being at service this coming Sunday. I am def making changes in my life and letting God finally in. And ForeFront is def helping. So thank you.”

I just grabbed those from Facebook and from Twitter. Take away- it went well. Our measuring tool, people’s response in how it connected them to God. During the music portion, we prompted people to talk about their joys in life, what God was doing through them in the community, how we could pray for them, and what brought them to God or to church today. With each question, the response was received well.

All the people involved did a fantastic job making it happen in a matter of less than 48 hours. Just under two days planning. Seriously, that was it. We had to act quickly and if it only moved one person closer to God, it was worth it. But…

the question still remains, “Is the ‘online church’ experience- church?”
We will tackle that with looking at the “pros of online church” in the next post.

Jason *over and out*