r/churchtech

Our church is growing (praise the Lord). We went up to 3 services in 2023, and we're going to bump it up to 4 services every Sunday morning at the end of the summer. We've got a building project for a larger campus in the works, but it'll probably be a year or two before that's complete.

We currently require the tech team from 7:15AM-12:00PM, but that'll be moving to 6:45AM-12:30PM. I know it's not that much more, but it's another full service, and we're cutting the 'between-service-time' from 15 minutes to 10 minutes.

How do I thank my tech team (and keep them sane) for doing 4 straight services on Sunday morning?

Our church hosted a denomination meeting a while back. We have a “traditional” worship space that doesn’t have a permanent screen.

In addition to a worship service, there was also a business meeting with slides. We setup our (somewhat) portable screen. It was while testing the setup that I learned that our church’s projector was not only not very bright but was also SVGA and the slide deck for the business meeting where 16:9.

I brought my projector from home. Not much brighter than the one at the church, but 1080p. The pastor didn’t understand why I brought mine in because the church has a projector and as far as she’s concerned, a projector is a projector. She told me she couldn’t see the different in the images.

I’m not sure what to do with this as I would think most people with eyes can see the difference between 800x600 and 1920 x 1080, not to mention how putting a 16:9 image through a 4:3 projector looks.

We’re talking about potentially adding a permanent screen of some kind (it will likely be a TV instead of a projector), but how do I make sure we get the right thing when people can’t SEE the difference in the options. The church bought the projector during COVID, so there were better options available then that would have still been affordable. This was purchased because someone chose it (I wasn’t here then).

Thoughts?

Hi everyone. My question might have been asked multiple times already. I just don't know the keywords to type 🙁

Our church sanctuary has a balcony and our in-house electrician installed 2 televisions so the congregants upstairs can see the lyrics and the pastor clearly. What kind of system can we use so we can feed the televisions upstairs the video that we also flash from the camera and computer? Can we also use that system or equipment for livestream? Thank you for your time and patience.

Edit: We are using a videocamera plugged into a computer via Elgato camlink (HDMI). Someone has mentioned the HDMI splitter extender. I think that's what we need. Thank you all.

Today we were in service and I went to make a small adjustment to the pulpit mic (senior day discussions). At that moment my son spun his seat in a circle and hit my elbow with the back of his chair (something I have told him not to do many times), which immediately added 15db to the mic. I got it corrected, and when half the congregation turned around to take a look I just pushed my son up against the desk so they could all see him too. He was terrified of all the immediate attention and is now backed away from the desk and not moving his chair an inch. Sometimes they just have to learn the "why" the hard way instead of trusting the source. I hope this lesson sticks.

If you have an older Behringer X32 and the rotary encoder knobs under the LCD screen are jumpy, unresponsive, or just don't work, I made a video tutorial showing the process to fix them so they work good as new. It's a relatively easy fix, there's no soldering required; just some DeOxit Fader F5 spray and a screwdriver.

I bought this X32 used off FB Marketplace and it needed some TLC. I was surprised to find that there aren't many repair videos out there for this console, which seems odd based on how many of these are out there.

Hi everyone, I'm Manuel, a worship musician from Italy. A couple of years ago I noticed some distractions and technical problems when playing music in church, so I prayed about it and I started building my own app. It's called PraiseTune.

It's been used by worship teams here in Italy and the feedback has been really encouraging.
But honestly, I have no idea how it holds up against what you all are used to.

It does the core things: lyrics and chords, transposition, setlists synced across the whole team , song change in real time (no Wi-Fi needed), a built-in chord editor where you tap to place chords on syllables, PDF and ChordPro import etc.
But it surely misses a lot of things.

I'm thinking about whether it makes sense to bring it to a wider audience, but before I do I'd genuinely love to hear from worship leaders outside Italy. What would make or break an app like this for your team? What am I missing?

Happy to answer any questions or just listen. Just trying to build something actually useful.
Thank you so much.

praisetune.com if you're curious.

Edit: I forgot to add that since this doesn’t want to be an advertising post, I’ll offer a subscription for anyone that wants to try the app and give me a feedback!

Just curious as to what people have come up with for cable management in their smaller sound booths? Routing and mounting and all of that.

I have a hot mess that I want to clean up and organize. Just lots of cables added over the years and I would like them to be nice and clean and easy to replace. Plywood? Pegboard? Skadis pegboard?

I have access to a 3D printer and better than beginner CAD skills.

Anyone have some sample images and advice?

Hi

I go to a very small church which isn't very techy. However as I am technically minded I have been volunteering to do the techy stuff. Operating the laptop during services for powerpoints and worship videos and more recently I have created a website for the church, which didn't have one before.

I would love to hear from other people in small churches. How are you using technology to help your congregations?

Need help/recommendations for my setup.
We have a dual monitor pc and two TV’s in our sanctuary. We mirror one of the monitors to the two tv’s using an hdmi splitter. The pc connects to the splitter using a 6ft hdmi chord. However the two hdmi chords running out of the splitter are both 50ft cables.
Recently one of the tv’s has been either displaying a black screen, or sometimes it will display the image as green and stretched. Doing some reading the consensus is that the cable has gone bad. I also read that 50ft is kind of the upper limit of hdmi chords. And rather than run into the same issue down the road, i’d rather future proof my set up now since ima need to replace the current hdmi anyways. And a lot of people are recommending hdmi to sdi converters or hdmi over cat6 extenders.

Budget isn’t really an issue. But we are looking to keep the setup as simple as possible, so in my mind, hdmi to sdi converters seem less than ideal. Given that we would need a sdi to hdmi for each tv, and a power bank for each as well. Would the same be true for the cat6 extension? Or is there another simpler solution im over looking?

Hi everyone,

I’m helping set up a low-budget streaming system for a small church and I’d really appreciate some advice.

Currently we have:

A fairly powerful laptop

OBS Studio

One main camera (phone), and we want to add a second one (tablet mounted on a side wall)

A sound mixer (we can get audio from it, but the cable is currently damaged)

TVs connected wirelessly for lyrics and Bible verses

Our goals are:

Stream to Facebook and YouTube

Switch between 2–3 camera angles

Display Bible verses on screen

Record the service

We also need to show Bible verses and song lyrics both on the in-house screens and on the live stream at the same time.

We are trying to keep the budget low for now, so I’m considering two options:

Using multiple HDMI capture cards + a USB hub into OBS

Saving up for a hardware switcher like the Blackmagic ATEM Mini

Questions:

Is it stable to run 2–3 capture cards through a USB hub?

Would a switcher be a better long-term investment for reliability?

What’s the best way to get clean audio from the mixer into OBS without noise or distortion?

What would be the minimum and maximum budget to achieve a professional-looking stream while keeping costs low, and what essential equipment would you recommend?

Can we continue using the same laptop, or would upgrading it be necessary?

Is it possible to project content to the church monitors and also show it on the live stream at the same time?

Any tips for a simple and reliable live workflow?

Here is the list of equipment we currently have available:

ASUS ROG Zephyrus M15 (Intel Core i7 10th Gen, NVIDIA GTX 1660 Ti / RTX 2060, 16GB RAM, HDMI + multiple USB ports)

4 Smart TVs (used for hymns, lyrics, announcements, and Bible verses)

Wired HDMI capture device (used with the TV system)

J-Tech Digital HDMI Quick Share Wireless Presentation System (wireless HDMI transmission to TVs)

Behringer XENYX X2442USB (24-input analog mixer with built-in USB audio interface, AUX sends and multiple outputs)

Peavey CS1200H (professional stereo power amplifier for speakers)

Behringer ULTRAGRAPH PRO (multi-band EQ for sound shaping)

Laptop connected to 3 monitors (extended display setup)

Haivision Play Pro (currently used for mobile streaming tests)

Thanks in advance!

Hey, we are a church tech team that has functioned every week over the past several years with a FOH sound tech and a BROADCAST sound tech. We're running into some availability issues where we're considering prioritizing FOH on tight scheduling weeks and using the FOH mix for broadcast. However, we don't want to use send the stereo feed as it is inconsistent. Anyone have some advice on what we're thinking to have some simple control, but doesn't necessarily need a dedicated broadcast sound operator:

Current: foh console + broadcast console, broadcast console utilizes a combination of gain shared inputs from the FOH console + dante inputs.

Option 1: send stereo feed of FOH mix to broadcast console

This is not exactly desired because we have no control of mix, acoustic guitar for example comes in very strong, vocals inconsistent, mid-range low, etc

Option 2: send post fader buses/groupings of band, vocals, speaking, media

The problem here is that there is a desire from leaders to continue use pitch correction on the vocals.

Option 3 (desired): send more post fader buses AND individual channels of drums, band, vox1, vox2, vox3, vox4, vox5, vocal effects, speaking, room mics, media

The idea here would be to send each of the vocal mics post-fader individually then group them at the broadcast console. The hope would be to route each of those vocal mics through our Waves Soundgrid pitch correction, but still manage the whole vocal group to sit in the mix even if we set it and forget it.

I am seeking any guidance and redflags, things to think about, etc. Thank you!

Hey yall, my church is trying out some software to have live translations during the services. We've tried out Glossa and it is inconsistent. When it works it works it works amazing, but when it doesn't work it is minutes behind and gets worst. I am currently only using a free trial (if that changes anything). Does anyone have experience with Glossa or other language translation software?

Hello

We use ChurchSuite for our CMS, and it's functionally been good for us, in terms of what our actual needs are based on our size and structure.

However, we have had difficulty getting our congregants to engage with it. We're looking to do a push this summer to increase involvement, and were curious what any other churches have done that have been successful in this regard?

If anyone has any tips on driving that usage, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks

We are creating a space for a dedicated stream room for our live stream sound tech and camera controllers to work from. There I a wide opening between the room and the sanctuary that we would like to block of with something where they can still see the service but the sound is reduced. it won’t be full sound proof as the walls etc weren’t built that way (even though that’s preferable from what I’ve read). but what would be the best material and where would I buy it or what type of contractor would I call? all and any advice appreciated. The issue we have is our live stream sound techs have a hard time mixing when the sound from the room is so loud. We cannot move them to another part of the building

What do your guys' churches use for mass emails? My church is wanting to change from print bulletins to digital, monthly, newsletters. Right now I or someone else on the team will be creating the newsletter, potentially in Canva. But we are looking for a platform to deliver the newsletters, email first, maybe text (as a link) as a second option. We looked at Mailchimp, but that is a full marketing platform and is overkill for what we need.

Hey folks.

We're a church plant (small, new church) using an OBSBOT Meet 2 to stream our services through a laptop into OBS to youtube at 1080p 30. Ideally, we'd be able to have the camera pick up both the speaker and the power point slides within the same shot, but it's looking washed out. We don't have much control over room lighting and such. We tried adding the slides as a seperate element in OBS but that crashed our stream.

Any input on what we could do to make the bottom portion of the screen more visible? Thanks for your help.

https://preview.redd.it/ks2th9g1tjzg1.png?width=1373&format=png&auto=webp&s=dcbd34747e80e921957a73742f32c8cbb4f71f97

Anyone have any idea what “good” traffic is for a church website? It’s likely relative to local population, I’m just curious how our site is performing relative to some other sites out there — determining if it’s worth putting extra effort and money into SEO or something.

I’m really looking for website stat examples like visitors/page views for a given city. Also curious what that should translate to as far as physical visitors on a Sunday.