Should Your Church Livestream?

Short answer: If your church is under 500 people, no. Record the message as a podcast and spend the energy on people. Over 500, stream one service a week to YouTube. Streaming does not empty your building. Fear does. Stream because your mission calls for it, not because everyone else is doing it.

I have been hosting online worship services since 2011, back when I did it in sandals. I work at one of the largest churches in the world, but I came to faith at a church under five hundred people, and most of the pastors who ask me this question lead churches like that one. So this page is written for the church you actually lead, not the church you see on YouTube.

Does livestreaming hurt in-person attendance?

No. I can tell story after story of people who watched online and then attended locally. Their testimony sounds like this: "I never knew this was near me. I landed on your website because of a friend and got to see what happens in that building every week." An online service will grow your local church if it is positioned correctly.

The fear that a stream steals people from the seats is a scarcity mindset. It treats every online interaction as one stolen from Sunday, as if in-person and online are fighting over the same pool. They are not. A strong online presence is not a leak in the bucket. It is the front door. It reaches people you would never touch otherwise, and a good chunk of them eventually walk through the physical doors because of it.

Let me say this plainly. Your in-person offering should be dramatically better than your online experience. It should not even be close. I do not watch a concert on YouTube and decide it beats being there. Nobody does. If the room needs protection from a recording, the room is the problem.

Should a small church livestream at all?

Under 150 people: no live streaming of any kind. Record the audio of the message only and publish it as a weekly podcast for your church family. Put your energy into a WhatsApp thread for your volunteer teams and a weekly email from you, the pastor.

Between 150 and 750: lean toward the podcast, and consider a live YouTube stream once you pass 500 people. Do not pay for a streaming provider yet. Use YouTube. Stream only one of your services, not all of them, and only if you can execute it well.

Here is why I hold the line at 500. A brick-and-mortar church can only offer a handful of services on a weekend. That leaves roughly four hours a week when a new person can experience your church and 164 hours when they cannot. A stream or a podcast lets someone check you out on-demand, anytime. But that only works if it is done well, and a small church usually cannot do a live stream well every week without pulling volunteers off things that matter more.

What should we stream, and where?

Stream the full worship service, but only one service each week. Start on YouTube. It is the second-largest search engine in the world, it is free, and it is where people already are. Expand to Facebook Live after YouTube is dialed in. Once you pass 750 people, look at a provider like Resi or BoxCast for reliability, and consider Church Online Platform only above 1,000. Even then, try to keep everything on YouTube.

One YouTube problem worth knowing: you cannot always turn off ads because of song rights, which is one reason larger churches add a provider and their own watch page.

And the biggest miss I see on YouTube: churches upload tens of thousands of hours of messages that generate no next step. Someone watches a message from eight weeks ago, God starts to move, and there is no connection card in front of them. The fix is simple. Add an outro clip to the end of every message about taking a next step, and put the links in the description.

Do we need a license to stream worship music?

Yes, if you stream music. A standard CCLI license covers songs performed in the room, not songs broadcast online. CCLI sells a Streaming License as an add-on, and in the United States it starts at roughly $84 a year for churches already licensed. Message-only podcasts sidestep the issue entirely, which is one more reason small churches should start there.

Should someone talk to the people watching online?

Not until you have around 1,500 people in the room. Hosting for those online is a compelling experience, but it is not for every church and honestly not for most churches. When you are ready, there are five ways to do it, and we have tried all of them at Saddleback:

1. Talk to the room and online at the same time. Easiest to start. Focus 80 percent on the room, 20 percent on the camera. Central Church in Las Vegas does this best.
2. Pre-record host moments. Capture intros and outros during the week. You control the quality and need no extra Sunday team, but you cannot react to what happens live.
3. Simple live hosting from the room. A few minutes before and after. High energy, but it needs gear and a second team.
4. Robust hosted experience for online. Custom programming for those online, with a real shepherd of the community. COTR, Southeast Christian, and Elevation are the best in the business here.
5. Full custom worship service for online. Built from the ground up for those online. This is what Saddleback does: we record hosting elements after our first Saturday service and publish that night. Life.Church and Mariners take their own versions of this approach.

What about churches that stopped streaming?

When Bridgetown Church cancelled their live stream, their lead pastor tied the decision to their mission, and I gave them credit for it. Here is the deal: you do things digitally, not because everyone is doing them, but because of your mission and objectives. Bridgetown is liturgical, minimalist, and intentional. Their larger goal is to return to ancient ways. Killing the stream fit that.

The question for your church is not "should we copy Bridgetown." It is "where should friction live in our strategy?" Draw your church's assimilation and discipleship path on a whiteboard. With a red marker, draw the line where friction should be for the sake of your larger mission. Maybe it is not your live stream. Maybe you keep the stream and hold the special Bibles for people who show up in person. That is strategic friction. Pulling the ladder up out of fear is something else.

How do we measure whether it is working?

Track weekly views, audience retention, and the trend over time. Ignore three-second views. Count one-minute views if you want an honest attendance number. But do not stop at the front door. You could have a huge front door and lose everybody through the back door. The numbers I care about are how many watchers took a class, joined a group, filled out a response card, or showed up in person. At Saddleback, roughly forty people a month move from watching to a class from about fifty thousand weekly viewers. That forty is the number.

Where do I go deeper?

• 5 Ways to Host Online Church Worship Services
• Tech and Digital Strategy Recommendations for Small, Medium, and Large Churches
• The Digital Pullback Is a Fear Response
• Bridgetown Church Cancels Their Live Stream
• Streaming Your Church Service: Why, What, How, and Hacks
• The Big Miss for Churches on YouTube and the Fix
• Finding Strengths in the Fears of Church Online
• How a Small Church Can Leverage Church Online