October 16, 2024
5 min read
Modern houses of worship thrive on their ability to engage and inspire audiences. That's where audio visual (AV) solutions can help. Church AV can transform the worship experience for local congregants and remote audiences alike.
At Panasonic Connect, we offer solutions that empower AV professionals in the worship space to create capture, shape and deliver experiences that help connect with congregants on a deeper level and grow the community. Here are three ways that our church AV tech can help you to elevate your sermons.
1. Stream the Word With Church AV
Churches face a unique challenge as they struggle to retain audiences. Distractions from high-quality online media and a general loss of interest in worship have decimated in-person attendance. In 2000, Gallup found that 13% of Americans said they never attended church. Today, that figure stands at 31%.
Smart houses of worship are bringing back congregants by meeting Americans where they are: at home. This approach means upgrading audiovisual equipment to deliver the best possible live streaming video over modern high-bandwidth connections.
When the 17-year-old standard-definition cameras began to glitch at Milwaukee, Wisconsin's Oak Creek Assembly of God, it was a kind of blessing. The 480p broadcast quality hadn't been satisfying its remote congregation in a long time. The problem had become more pronounced as more of the congregation went online during the pandemic.
"Making the switch to remote worshiping was challenging for congregants accustomed to the interactive nature of our in-person services," explained Oak Creek's Tanto Husain. After all, who really wants to squint at a blurry display as a pastor carries the light?
The church fell back to a consumer smartphone to stream its services as it searched for a more viable solution. It found one in Panasonic's AK-UC4000 studio-quality cameras, which now capture its entire large venue for both live streaming and local church displays.
An AV-UHS500 production switcher enables Oak Creek to channel high-quality 4K video to church projectors while delivering bandwidth-friendly high-quality 1080p streams to remote worshipers.
"We've seen increased viewership, as congregants praise the high-quality, realistic imagery," said Husain.
Investments in high-quality streaming services can also breathe new life into congregations. Redemption Church in Greenville, SC was eager to expand its assembly after it noticed that worshipers were skewing older.
The church upgraded its cameras from 720p to UC3000 models that output 1080p for streaming, controlled by a Panasonic AV-HS6000 2ME production switcher. Even though its Facebook live streaming broadcast currently offers a 720p stream, it has already garnered more views than its 1080p TV broadcasts, helping it to spread the word more broadly than ever beyond its 20-acre premises. Inspired by its success, the church plans on expanding the Facebook stream to 4K as quickly as possible.
2. Create an Immersive Worship Experience
Redemption Church's investment in church AV tech went beyond streaming to include a more immersive experience for in-person worshipers. This ability to create more impactful visuals and sound is key in an environment which is entirely experiential.
Alongside the live streaming feeds, the church's UC3000 cameras output 4K imagery to two church projectors. Redemption Church found Panasonic's RQ32K to be the best projector for church services, delivering images to 21' W by 12'H church displays on either side of the sanctuary stage. A church video wall with 300 LED panels also displays custom content to enhance the experience still further.
Before the projector upgrade, the church's video looked like dubbed VHS tapes, quipped Joe Hayes, the media director for Redemption Church. "The 4K projection is blowing our audiences away. We can see skin tones, details we hadn't even known were there," he adds. "Our congregants are more fully engaged in a bright, vibrant, uplifting worship experience."
This immersive experience has encouraged a broader audience for the church's sermons. Three-quarters of its new worshipers are millennials or younger, up from 15% five years ago.
Long Hollow Church also recognized the importance of high-quality video for an immersive experience. It invested in UC4000 cameras to help cover its 43,000-square-foot, 2,600-capacity main sanctuary in Hendersonville, TN.
Two of these cameras, which upgraded the church from standard-definition video, sit on tripods in the sanctuary, while another two are used handheld on the stage to get dynamic close-up shots of performances. One sits on a jib for sweeping high-up shots, while a roaming UC4000 also gathers footage for 'bump' footage that connects different segments of an event.
The UC4000 units complement an AW-UE150 PTZ camera that provides constant coverage of the church's pastor, freeing him to move around the stage fully confident that he will appear to both local audiences on 21' x 12' IMAG screens via PT-RQ22KU 4K large-venue church projectors, and via live streaming video to remote viewers.
High-quality video delivers dramatic effects, which is important when creating an immersive house of worship experience. The UC4000 delivers this using Dynamic Range Stretch, a feature that probes deep into the dark spots in the sanctuary's concert-like environment while mitigating the extreme brightness of the 21 x 12-foot LED church displays.
3. Build Community Beyond Your House of Worship
"Our new system needed to be robust and flexible enough to support the many conferences and events we host in our worship center," he explains.
Community was also a central theme in Cottonwood Creek Church's AV investment. "For the last 30 years, we have had this vision to be able to reach out into the community and let the community know that we are here for them, explains technical director David Franks, speaking from its Allen, TX location.
"We want people to be able to come in and use our facility, whether it's somebody like a Boy Scout Troop, or a school, or even a national touring group," he adds.
Cottonwood Creek Church invested in a complete Panasonic ecosystem to support its mission, including PTZ camera devices and accompanying controllers. These provide flexible coverage for any kind of event as the building expands its services for different community groups.
The KAIROS live event production switcher was a key element in this ecosystem, with flexible inputs and outputs to cope with any production requirements including the LED church video wall. It offers a range of production graphics, along with macros and scenes that make it easy to set up different productions.
KAIROS contributes to the sense of community in the church not only by facilitating productions for multiple groups but by empowering volunteers in the church. Panasonic designed the KAIROS user interface with ease of use in mind. A volunteer can execute tens of steps flawlessly with a single button click thanks to pre-programmed macros, reducing the risk of operational error and giving community helpers a sense of achievement.
Church AV Tech Creates Seamless Worship Experiences
Inspiring their congregations has been a key focus for houses of worship since they began spreading the word. Building community helps to cement churches in their hometown, drawing people to hear an expertly delivered message. Sophisticated church AV helps to achieve these goals while also empowering pastors to spread the word still further through live streaming services.
Your house of worship can boost its own message using these church AV solutions. Contact Panasonic Connect today to find out how.
