The Queen of England started her speech with an interesting history lesson. It was recorded in Hampton Court in Londen. In this building King James (1566-1625) ordered a new bible translation, which was completed in 1611, now known as the King James translation.

 

"Sometimes organ playing is a disaster. I hear the wrong tempo, thick, fat chords, slow and dragging playing, heavy slurring, use of the wrong stops, and so on. At times there is not enough preparation and you can hear too many mistakes. That really upsets me. As pastor you need to prepare yourself, but as organist too."

Rev. G. J. Baan in the "GezinsGids", December 9, 2010

 

---

Note: Rev. Baan is pastor in the Netherlands Reformed Church of Kapelle (the Netherlands).

 

 

MONDAY @ 7:30 PM

Admission 15/adults, 10/seniors and children are FREE!

Selections from the Messiah, the Nutcracker, Canadian Brass arrangements, and much more...
Children from the audience will also be involved with some of the pieces!

The organist will perform Carillon de Westminster by Vierne and other works...

The Brass with Organ will also accompany our singing of "O come all ye faithful",
"O little town of Bethlehem", "Hark! the herald angels sing",
and we close with the "Halleluia" from the Messiah
(music will be provided to all)!

 

In the Canadian Reformed Church at Langley we are broadcasting the church services through the Internet since summer 2010. Several questions have been asked about this project and therefore I would like to explain this briefly.

THE REASON

The reason for live broadcasting of the church services was primarily the Manoah Manor home for the elderly. They watched the church services on a DVD of one week old. One week old DVD recordings resulted in inaccurate information, for example in the congregational prayers, but also prayers for other actual concerns in the world we live in. And the church services around Christmas, Good Friday and Easter made Manoah Manor use DVDs from the previous year. Real time viewing of the church services would be preferred, but the challenge was the distance between church and Manoah Manor.

Also other church members would benefit from this:

• Our congregation is blessed with many young families. Not all infants can go to the nursery two times and sometime children are sick, so that one of the parents stays home.
• Other people that have to stay home are the elderly that are only able to come to church in the morning.
• Sick people also stay home, not able to join the congregation for worship, and getting a DVD on short notice is a hassle.
• There are also members of our congregation that are travelling for a longer period, sometimes down south, sometimes to other parts of the world. They are not always able to attend a local church. Sometimes they miss congregational life for several months.
• We also have members that are working on Sundays in the healthcare or other necessary jobs. Sometimes they could watch (part of) a worship service, but on a DVD that is not always easy to arrange.

All of these people would benefit from a direct link on the Internet that brings them real-time, live into the church service.

ADDITIONAL BENEFITS

Other benefits of having this technology available would be that other meetings and events in our church can be "attended" (watched). We have family and relatives follow funeral services live, even from oversees. The graduation ceremony of our Credo Christian Elementary School 2010 was watched by grandparents from Ontario. The Evangelism Course of pastor Ryan deJonge was attended by a group of people from our and other congregations and an on-line discussion room was available for interaction from the online participants. A congregational meeting was attended online by many members that were interested in the meeting and they could also follow the interaction of the members present through the wireless microphone that was used by the various speakers. When Joyce De Haan spoke about "coping", it was valued by many people that it was available live through the Internet.

TECHNOLOGY EVALUATION

Several evangelical and Baptist churches in the US do use broadcasting regularly. We have researched these churches and evaluated their technology. Often their equipment and services are on professional levels, and they have dedicated, trained staff that takes care of the audio and video. Our church does not want to go into that direction (although if leveraging of web technology would become a focus of the home mission committee, this may change). Our sister churches in the Netherlands also use live broadcasting over the Internet. We found out that there are companies that specialize in providing live online audio and video as a package. These packages could be used here in Canada, but the cost was significant. Therefore we searched further...

We found several web services for streaming video. There are different service levels, costs, quality, and 'terms and conditions' for each provider. We have tested several services and we found that it is not easy to get a good quality signal in the Internet that works uninterrupted through the church services. Even the more expensive solutions do not always guarantee good quality. Paid services does not always guarantee no advertising. All free services we experiences insufficient quality or advertising that is contrary to God's Word. 

What we have decided and found the best working solution for our church in Langley is the following setup.

ADSL connection

We have a basic ADSL connection with Telus. This could be upgraded to monitored, and more bandwidth. At this time we have a regular account that is used by the church office during the week and for the streaming video on Sunday.

Computer

Our computer is a new, entry level, DELL desktop computer. (Dual Core E6500 w/ VT, 293 Ghz, 4 GB Dual Channel RAM, and 1GB NVDIA GT220 video card, 320 GB HD, and an EEE 1394 card.) Video can be connected through the LAN, USB or Fire-wire. We are using Fire-wire.

Camera

The camera we have is the camera that we use for DVD recording. It is a Sony Camcorder. For streaming video this is much more then we need, but it is convenient because the camera is already operational.

Broadcasting

We have an account with the commercial division of Ustream called Watershed. This service provides a web components that we integrated with the church website for both viewing and broadcasting (the latter is a hidden, secure page, and can only be accessed from within the church website). It is possible to integrate Ustream with desktop applications to manage and control the camera. We decided that broadcasting should be easy, simple, non intrusive, and allow the operator to participate in worship as well. Therefore we used the Ustream web applications. 

Ustream offers pay-as-you-go, or packages. We first signed up for pay-as-you-go, until we were sure this was a good service. After that we purchase a package of 49 dollars per month (USD). This gives us 500 viewer hours and 500 GB storage space. One viewer that watches one hour is one viewer hour - watching two hours is two viewer hours. Two people watching two hours makes four viewer hours, etc. We have between 25 and 60 unique viewers on a Sunday. They watch between 30 and 50 hour in total, making our total hours for a month around 200. That means we have 300 minutes left for other events and activities.

Our viewers are located for 85% in Canada, 5% in the USA, 8% in Europe, 1% in Asia, and 1% in Australia. A few church members went to Hawai and to Mexico - these are one-time hits. (This is based on the past 5 months of history that Ustream provides.) The majority of the viewers are in British Columbia and that is the main purpose of this service is for our own church members.

We have the services automatically stored on Ustream. Through a link on the church website visitors can not only listen to previous services, but also watch the recorded video of the church services.

TESTING

We tested the streaming video with several people that were staying home from the church services regularly. We also knew what their Internet connection was and their computer. We found that most people with a newer computer and a non-wireless (wired) Internet connection have the best results, mostly un-interrupted.  People with a wireless connection experience regularly buffering issues and lose a few seconds because of the live streaming. Older computers also result in connection issues.

Once we had reports back from our testing viewers for two months, we had a good idea about what we were doing. What needed adjustment was the sound and it took some time to get that under control.

The video also was adjusted. The camera is now switched on 5 minutes before the service so that people at home have a chance to test their connection and make adjustments if necessary before the service starts. During the collection the camera slowly moves around so that the people at home can see that the church is filled with people, which gives a greater sense of belonging together. After the service the camera is not switched off but shows people leaving the sanctuary. This gives the viewers a closure to the service as the people leave rather than a sudden black screen.

At this time there are moments that the technology fails, and we are trying to address every issue when it comes up, in an attempt to perfect the signal.

CONCERNS

There are also other sides of streaming video of a church service.

• Although it is a public worship service, with the streaming video you reach a larger group of people. Mentioning personal circumstances and concerns in prayer could be broadcasted to thousands of anonymous people. Mentioning members and their personal circumstances reach potentially world-wide. There could be privacy concerns, when there are situations of imprisonment or personal security concerns.
• If the sermon would deal with controversial issues in this society, such as homosexuality, what is said from the pulpit is broadcasted world-wide. It is also recorded and can be copied and passed around quickly over the Internet. In case something is specifically addressed to and prepared for the local congregation, one needs to be aware that the message will be broadcasted to a much larger audience.
• There is a chance that some members may choose to "attend" the worship services from home, where they can sit comfortably and enjoy a cup of coffee at the same time.
• I know of one organist who told me that he would be against having his playing live broadcasted into the world, and then available as recorded video which could be multiplied and offered on countless websites. He had no specific reasons but he was uncomfortable with the idea.

Practical example 1: At our bible study a comment was made about "the boys of family X" who were "beating each other up" before the service. Seated on the chairs in front of the pulpit, these boys were without parents for a few minutes, entertaining the online viewers with what boys often do...

Practical example 2: When we had three babies baptized the church was full. After parking away from the church, three younger members arrived seven minutes before the service started. When they found out that they had to sit in the overflow, they turned around and made it home in time to hear the announcements by the elder (the service started a bit later due to the large crowd). They watched the entire service through the Internet and their dad verified that they heard the sermon and understood it.

AWARENESS

In our churches not everyone realizes the consequences of the live video streaming. If you would attend the services in the Crystal Cathedral in California, you would be aware of the public nature of the service and the broadcasting worldwide. There are no personal aspects in their services pertaining to individual situations. In our services the broadcasting happens in the background. We are not prepared to change our services to make them "broadcast friendly", by adjusting what is being mentioned. How online broadcasting can serve the Canadian Reformed churches best will be discovered over time as more churches will start using this service.