How Elevation Church Uses Livestreaming to Reach an International Audience

Elevation Church reaches over 40 thousand people a week through their livestreaming broadcasts. With over 15 different locations, Autumn English, the Digital Director of Elevation Church, had a unique challenge of sharing their recorded services.  

A New Experience

In just under a year, English has seen incredible results from switching to livestreaming. She uses the terminology “worship experiences” to describe their services. Audiences experience everything they would experience at a physical location and more. The Ballantyne North Carolina campus broadcasts to several different platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, and a website solely dedicated to live services on the weekends.

“Once we started livestreaming, viewers wanted to know the name of our worship songs, so we started putting information about the artist, the name of the song, and where viewers could download their music,” she said. “Paying attention to details like these made it a holistic experience that people wanted to be connected to.”

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Online Devotionals

Elevation recently broadcasted a live devotional series called “7@7” in conjunction with a sermon series given by Pastor Steven Furtick called the “Seven Mile Miracle.” Over the course of seven weeks, the church had seven different staff members participate in morning devotionals.

As Autumn noted, “This was a good opportunity for our efam to get to know more of our staff than just the faces they see on the weekend.”

How to Connect

There are all sorts of ways for people to be involved with Elevation church online, but they get the most traffic on their Facebook page and their website. Each experience is unique. Through the website, people are able to connect with a volunteer and pray together or have normal church conversations that they would at a physical location.
They have livestreaming over the weekend and an ‘on demand’ version as well. They pick one of our many worship experiences and put it in its entirety on the site and whoever is on there can watch it, fast forward, and rewind.

Best Practices

Elevation Church did not always have livestreaming content. When they made the switch last year, they had to come up with a strategy.

“Although you don’t have full control over the worship experience or what sermon is being preached, you have control over the host’s talking points,” English said.

Livestreaming hosts have various talking points and tips for audiences on how to be more involved with the church. Autumn explained this was a great way to get their staff to participate. Each week they ask different staff members to host an online broadcast.

In addition, she and her team ask audiences to share their stories and how they were impacted by a sermon or worship video. They send out a weekly recap email along with the link to the broadcast. They also get a quote from someone who watched their videos online.

Cameras and Equipment

“You don’t need a special camera to broadcast,” English said. “You just have to work with what you’ve got.” At Elevation, they use the same exact feed pushed to the monitors in their physical locations for the livestreaming, and they also push the feeds to Facebook and YouTube.
If you’re looking for a great camera for livestreaming, you can check out our article here.

Start Livestreaming Now

Autumn believes that the number one reason churches should start livestreaming is because of who they are able to reach.

“As churches we are called to reach as many churches as we can, and that’s not always going to happen within four walls,” English said. “Livestreaming helps get the message of the gospel out to people who don’t have the opportunity to experience church at a physical location.”

Recently, a girl from Puerto Rico came all the way to the United States to attend a student camp at Elevation. She had been watching the church’s streaming online and asked her parents if she could travel to the US. Her parents agreed, and while she was at the camp she was baptized.

“We consider ourselves an international church because we have people from various continents all over the world tuning in,” she said. “We would never have been able to reach those people if we didn’t start livestreaming.”

What could livestreaming do for your church?