Durham Diocese

With all the uncertainty of the COVID-19 suspension of regular church services, there has never been a better time to think creatively and take your church online. Please read this article on Live Streaming to get started.

The Church of England regularly publishes and updates a series of guides and links to resources that churches can use to be more proactive online.

The ‘A Church Near You’ portal is a window to every single parish church in the Church of England and gives parishes an excellent and free opportunity to publicise their church, services and events. You can even add a link to the services you are live streaming whilst we are amidst the COVID-19 crisis.

I recently ran a series of workshops for the National Church talking about using mobile phones and the simplest of equipment to ensure good audio that can then be used for Vlogging (Video Blogging), Filming events and Services and also live streaming. The slides from that presentation are embedded below for your information. A shopping list of essential gear to get you up and running is included.

Useful Links

• • CofE Blog on going live with youe service or event for free
    An excellent resource outlining what you need, what you need to do and more importantly where you need to do it; be it through Facebook Live, YouTube or Instagram.
  • Premier Christian Media also have a blog about live streaming your church service
    Covering some of the same as the CofE it also talks about video meetings, social media and a couple of other online resources to get you going.

There are lots of videos on YouTube which you can refer to if you are completely new to using a smart device for live streaming. As of 18/3/20, one video I found that puts things really simply for churches is shown below.

One thing it fails to mention is that you need to have a Facebook page set up for your church if you don’t already have one. Then you need to have the Facebook & Facebook Pages APP downloaded from your APP store and installed on your smart device.

See what you think of the following …

Webinars from the National Church

The National Church is running a series of webinars to help church maximise their live content.

These include:

– Five ways to keep your church connected
– Live stream question and answer session
– How to use A Church Near You during social distancing

All of these can be booked for free in the Labs Learning section of our website: cofe.io/Webinars.

Please feel free to share these webinars with your churches to help them increase their digital output, or join a webinar yourself if you’d like to hear what’s being advised.