Dear People of Annunciation,
With Lent and Holy Week behind us, one of my current projects is navigating our livestreaming to a permanent platform. If you have not been in the church since the beginning of the pandemic, I have had a small tripod set up on the third pew of the church. My iPhone has been the device through which we have gone online through Facebook Live. We’ve made a few tweaks, including upgrading to a faster broadband speed through Spectrum, and I have created a “mesh” Wi-Fi setup in the Nave which connects to the internet connection in the rectory.
Like many things in the early stages of the pandemic, I figured that livestreaming would be a temporary measure that would last a few weeks. A year later, it is clear that broadcasting liturgies online is going to be a permanent adaptation of the church. I am not aware of any parish that plans to terminate livestreaming once COVID-related safety measures come to an end. While livestreaming services should not be a perpetual substitute for physically engaging with in-person Christian community for those who are able, we have seen some clear benefits from maintaining an online liturgical presence. I think this is especially true for a parish such as ours where portions of our congregation live elsewhere for part of the year.
Beginning with the Thursday liturgy for April 8, and covering the next three Sundays, we will be using a free trial to stream on a platform called Boxcast. Many parishes in our diocese are using this platform and are satisfied with the results. For those of you who would prefer not to use Facebook, we will also be able to broadcast on YouTube as well as Boxcast’s own system. The links above to the online services will take you to our Boxcast site. (For those of you who have become accustomed to seeing us on Facebook, fear not, we will still appear there also.)
You will notice a few changes to how things look online. Boxcast is designed to automatically turn on and turn off the livestream. In order to ensure that the system is on when we begin, the livestream will begin 5 minutes before the scheduled service time. Do not fear if you pull us up when we begin, and it looks like “dead air” for a few minutes. For those coming to the 9:30 service in person, please be aware that anything you say may be broadcast without the warnings I have given in the past that we were about to go live. The same holds true at the end of a liturgy.
For now, I am continuing to livestream through my cell phone. The real advantage to this system is that if we choose to invest in this system on a permanent basis, we will be able to acquire an encoder that can integrate into our sound system as well as an inconspicuous mounted camera. This is important, because I hope people will once again be sitting where my cell phone is currently located!
As we are in a trial period, please let me your experience. It’s hard for me to know what’s happening in your home while I am presiding, so I rely on your feedback to make tweaks. Plus I want to make sure it works as advertised before asking our Vestry to invest money in the system. Do you find getting to the livestream easy to use? While the permanent system would be using better equipment, how is the video and sound? Let me know!
Christ’s peace,
Matthew+
