Who is watching what?
One of the challenges of allocating resources to online worship is having some sense of how often it is accessed and by whom. In North Dakota, where we serve, both of our congregations have had radio broadcasts for decades. We never knew how many people were listening, for how long, or where they lived. At one time, the signal strength of the AM radio signal gave some sense of the geographic area that could be reached. Once radio stations began streaming their programing through their websites, the geographic boundaries disappeared. Fortunately there is far more information available about the consumers of online content, but making sense of the information that is available and understanding what it does and doesn’t tell is important.
If you have ever watched a livestream worship service and paid attention to the participants number you know that it starts small, grows, reaches a peak at some point, and tapers off. Not everybody joins and watches the same things. Some join after 10 minutes, some leave after a few minutes or at the end of a particular part of the service. Even though the label is “participants” the actual number of eyeballs is not known. An individual, a couple, a family, or a room full of people may be participating on the same device. After a livestream ends, the replays or “views” begin to add up. By the end of the day, 25, 50, 150 views may be recorded. Again, this tells how many times the content was accessed, not how many eyeballs watched it. For a given worship service, views tend to rise for a week and then plateau. A special music event, children’s program, or baptism may draw repeated interest/views for much longer than a regular service.
Online worship participants choose what parts of the service to participate in and what parts they are willing to skip. Synchronous viewers, those participating in a live stream, may watch someone they know leading the prayers or the message of the preacher for the day. But may get a cup of coffee during a song or announcements. More than once, Erik’s own mother said, “I watched until you finished your sermon, and then I left.” Asynchronous viewers may skip ahead or re-watch parts of the service. One online worshiper noted that she sometimes will go back and watch part or all of a sermon again during the week because something spurred a desire to rehear something that was said. She also said that sometimes her Sunday night Zoom Bible study will include a clip of the sermon as a conversation starter.
Pastor Bob Bekkerus at St. Mark Lutheran in West Des Moines, Iowa, pays close attention to the analytics of online worship and notes that viewers tend to drop off after the sermon. He pays attention to those parts of the service that retain as well as shed viewers. Christ Lutheran in Charlotte, North Carolina, uses pre-recorded video introductions and conclusions to their streaming services, even as some activity continues in the sanctuary (communion distribution). Leaders should understand the basics of analytics if for no other reason than to get a sense of what online worshipers are paying attention to as they worship. Even knowing the average number of minutes watched can help leaders interpret the overall engagement of online worshipers.
Online worshipers value an onramp and an off-ramp to their time in worship. Acknowledging those gathering online and participating is a simple way that directly speaks to distant participants and welcomes them to worship. For congregations celebrating communion and who choose to invite online participation, looking at the camera and announcing the Body and Blood of Christ given and shed for you, is a genuine announcement of God’s grace. Designing an off-ramp for online worshipers doesn’t have to be elaborate, but it should be clear that this is a time to conclude online worship together. As congregations navigate hybrid worship, consider the online experience as in-person elements are resumed.
Tech Specs-
We did not spend any time investigating the individual hardware or software that congregations use to generate online worship.
Sound and picture need to be adequate for online worship. Oddly enough, sound problems seem more annoying to online worshipers than video problems. All of the congregations that we visited have excellent sound systems in the sanctuary that are actively monitored and fed into the video stream. The question for cameras is can you get a good shot of what you want to show (Pulpit, Altar, Chancel, musicians, other). At the time of our visit, Calvary Lutheran in Clarkston, Michigan, used two cameras with fixed, preset shots and it was up to the worship leaders to stand in the right spot to be seen. St. Thomas/Holy Spirit Lutheran in St. Louis, Missouri, used one camera for their outdoor worship service because portability and ease of set up and take down was important.
In general, two cameras used well can provide an engaging online worship experience. Multiple camera operations become much more complex and require skilled technicians to produce beneficial shots. Christ Lutheran manipulates computers and seven cameras for a worship service operated by a team of up to eight people to produce each worship service.
Different churches utilize different church management software platforms. Christ Lutheran and St. Mark Lutheran utilize different systems but both allow for an online landing page for online viewers to share their contact information easily. Each congregation we visited utilized some form of online giving options that were referenced during worship and prominently displayed on church websites. The system at St. Mark allowed for easy identification of new online donors.
Each congregation has dealt with intermittent problems with the tech needed to offer a livestream. Ensuring a stable internet connection with adequate bandwidth is a baseline necessity. Resi is a streaming technology used by St. Mark to address bandwidth fluctuations in their livestream. It functionally delays the stream about 90 seconds as a form of pre-buffer that smooths the online content.
Software updates, new hardware, aggressive bots scanning for copyrighted material, and even turning on components in the wrong order have all lead to interruptions of livestreams. No matter how many times you check and double check things, sometimes tech is not your friend.
Give your online worshipers a break. Go live with something before the scheduled service start time so that they know if you are live because everything that can go wrong with church tech equipment can also go wrong for participants at home. Scrolling announcements or even a placeholder image or countdown timer let people know that you are getting ready. A week before joining St. Thomas/Holy Spirit Lutheran in-person, we worshiped online with them, but the stream didn’t start until 3 minutes after the appointed hour. We were minutes away from giving up on the service.
Rev. Kristina Weber, Senior Pastor Trinity Lutheran, Jamestown, North Dakota
Rev. Erik Weber, Senior Pastor St. John’s Lutheran, Jamestown, North Dakota
July 2021