Salt and Light: Widening Your (Streaming) Circle

We need multiple participants during worship. We rely on lectors, intercessors, preachers, celebrants, and many more for a Sunday service to go ‘just right.’  During our current season of prevention, many of us are streaming services, some even twice a day, and our congregations have grown into global communities using Facebook Live, YouTube, Instagram Live, and many more. And we still need everyone to participate.

Last week I found a wonderful tool to widen our worship circle beyond our rector leading all of Morning Prayer all alone in his living room. StreamYard.com is a web-based production studio that allows multiple participants from remote locations; all controlled through a remarkably accessible interface. This means musicians here, lectors, there, preacher over there, and celebrant elsewhere, maybe even congregations partnering for combined online worship.  Many of the features that you’d expect from a news broadcast are here from multi-frame speaker views (a la Zoom), simple transitions, banners, private text between participants, Share Screen (allowing for song lyrics, prerecorded videos, etc.), and more. I felt anxious jumping into it then, after a few tests, I felt ready for our two services on Sunday and I’m very proud of what we offered. You can handle it too.  I invite you to see what we provided at facebook.com/dunstans. If this looks like something that you’d like to offer your congregation, I’m happy to explore it with you then discover how you can to widen your worship too.

Boldly proclaim friends!

Greg Tuttle, St. Dunstan’s

gtuttle@stdunstans.org