Greg Atkinson

We’re chatting with Steve Lacy, founder and president of StreamingChurch.TV.

Q- Steve, what exactly is StreamingChurch.TV and how did it get started?

StreamingChurch.tv provides the ability for churches to broadcast their services live on the internet.  StreamingChurch.tv actually grew out of our original ministry product, MyFlock.com.  MyFlock.com began as a social networking tool within a church body created to connect church members with each other.  MyFlock.com was introduced 5 years before Facebook or MySpace, although with a slightly different purpose.  While Facebook was designed to keep you connected with friends you already have, MyFlock’s purpose is to foster new relationships within the church body by providing profile matching tools and other tools designed to connect you with other members within your church.  To accomplish this goal, we created several interactivity tools designed to get members interacting with each other.  When we launched StreamingChurch.tv, we leveraged some of these interactivity tools (chat room, private messaging, interactive maps, etc.) into the StreamingChurch.tv platform.

Q- What makes you guys different from other companies providing streaming services to churches?

Interactivity.  Rather than providing just a live video feed online, we try to replicate the interactive experience a guest would have when attending the service at your physical facility.  For example when visiting a new church in person, you’ll most likely be greeted by someone as you approach the service.  You’ll find a similar experience with an online greeter when attending a StreamingChurch.tv service online.

You’ll be logged into the chat room as you arrive and the system will automatically announce your arrival and there’s a good chance an online greeter from the church will give you a “virtual handshake” and welcome you to the service.  The system is designed to provide both the guest and the church volunteers/members the ability to connect while attending the service.  My church’s web pastor likes to point out that the online church service is a safe place where you can actually “talk in church” and have it add to the experience and ministry opportunities.  Obviously guests can interact as much or as little as they wish online.  Some arrive to the online service and just say “hi” and then retreat to just watch the service, while others actively engage.

We also provide tools that allow attenders to bring their identity and social network to the service.  For example, they can login using the Facebook Connect option and their Facebook profile pic appears in the chat and “who’s attending” area.  The online invitation tools also automatically provide the opportunity to invite their Facebook friends as well as “tweet” the service to their followers via an automated Twitter integration.

Another key distinction of our service is the ability for ministries and churches to seamlessly integrate their StreamingChurch.tv’s “online campus” into their existing church website so that it appears as a natural part (or extension) of their existing church web site.

Q- How long have you been helping churches?

We got started with MyFlock.com in 2001 and have been serving thousands of ministries for almost 10 years now.  In the summer of 2008, my home church (AliveChurch.com) launched a multi-site campus where we began broadcasting our services live to a remote facility.  As my church leadership looked at it, we saw that they could create an online web campus that everyone could attend with very little additional effort.  That was the beginning of StreamingChurch.tv.  Our developers were able to quickly leverage several of the interactivity tools into StreamingChurch.tv and we began offering the service to other ministries in late 2008.

Q- Do you believe every church should stream their services live?

Absolutely!  Many churches don’t realize how little additional effort is required to broadcast their services.  Most ministries already video tape or record their services now for viewing at a later time.  That means most ministries already have the infrastructure in place necessary to broadcast; cameras, computers and an internet connection.  To broadcast live, you just need to connect these parts together, connect with a streaming provider and you’re broadcasting online.

Another key reason to broadcast live is that it’s an integral ingredient to your church growth.  Attending services online is the easiest, lowest barrier way for new people to experience your church and determine if it’s a fit for them.  Also once you start broadcasting, you’ve now equipped your members with a great low intimidation tool to invite their friends to church.  Members can say “yeah, check out my church this weekend.  We broadcast our services online at mychurchwebsite.com”.

My home church has quadrupled our regular attendance (to over 1000 attenders a weekend) in less than 2 years since we began broadcasting live.

Q – What’s the biggest challenge for churches desiring to stream?

There really aren’t any big challenges to streaming your services live.  Although I believe there are challenges to effectively creating a vibrant online ministry that leads to church growth (both online and in-person).  Pastors and church leaders need to treat their online broadcast as another campus (rather than just a video presence online).  This means investing their vision, thoughts and energy into some of the same things they invest in their physical campus.  Do I have a skilled greeter at the front doors?  What about my online campus?  Does my church look inviting to a first time visitor?  What about my online campus?  Are there lay leaders in place to minister to attenders?  Who’s in place for those needing private prayer in the online campus?

Getting your members and lay leadership involved online with your web campus is essential for the care and feeding of those first time visitors checking out your church online.  If the experience isn’t good online, chances are they will not bother giving your ministry a chance in person.  We’ve found at my home church that the majority of those that become new members at our church (AliveChurch.com), first attended a service online.

Q- What the future look like for the “streaming” age and technology in general for churches?

Wow.  I believe that the future is really bright for streaming and technology in general for ministries.  The church has been leveraging technology in ministry dating back to the time when the Romans first built roads to connect their cities.  This equipped those of that day a technology that led to an explosion of spreading the gospel.  As time has progressed, so has the technology of the day.

Think of some of the technology over the ages and it’s incredible affect on evangelism; the Gutenberg press, television, the internet… Wow!  What’s next?  As you know, technology is accelerating and its capability for ministry is growing exponentially.  I believe the internet and broadcasting your services live is still in the early phases of it’s maturity.  As television viewing continues to wane and consuming your media via the internet continues to increase, I believe the church is in a unique position to reach the world for Christ using streaming technology.

Church on the Move did this funny video for Father’s Day. I thought it was worth you checking out. Did you do anything special for Father’s Day at your church?

Dad Life from Church on the Move on Vimeo.

“He must increase, but I must decrease.” – John 3:30 (NASB) Warren Wiersbe in his commentary on John 3 tells the story of a Presbyterian pastor in Melbourne, Australia who introduced J. Hudson Taylor by using many superlatives, especially the word great. Taylor stepped to the pulpit and quietly said, “Dear friends, I am the little servant of an illustrious Master.” If John the Baptist in heaven heard that statement, he must have shouted “Hallelujah!”

Wiersbe points out that the word must is used in three significant ways in this chapter. There is the “must” of the sinner (John 3:7), the “must” of the Savior (John 3:14), and the “must” of the servant (John 3:30). We, as servants, have our “must” – it’s the profound and passionate statement of John 3:30 – “He must increase. I must decrease.”

How do these words hit you? I struggle with them frequently. This is the cry of my heart. I want more of Jesus and less of me. When I serve, minister, share, write, speak, consult – I have nothing of myself to offer. What I can do is point people to Jesus and encourage them to be led by the Holy Spirit. This is my calling and my ministry and something I live to do. I hope you sense that I point you to Jesus and not man’s wisdom or answers. What Scripture verse rings your bell?

The following is from CNN’s Tech Blog and written by Pete Cashmore. Pete is founder and CEO of Mashable, a popular blog about social media. He is writing a weekly column about social networking and tech for CNN.com.

(CNN) — As 2009 draws to a close, the Web’s attention turns to the year ahead. What can we expect of the online realm in 2010?

While Web innovation is unpredictable, some clear trends are becoming apparent. Expect the following 10 themes to define the Web next year:

Real-time ramps up

Sparked by Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed, the real-time trend has been to the latter part of 2009 what “Web 2.0″ was to 2007. The term represents the growing demand for immediacy in our interactions. Immediacy is compelling, engaging, highly addictive … it’s a sense of living in the now.

But real-time is more than just a horde of new Twitter-like services hitting the Web in 2010 (although that’s inevitable — cargo cults abound). It’s a combination of factors, from the always-connected nature of modern smartphones to the instant gratification provided by a Google search.

Why wait until you get home to post a restaurant review, asks consumer trends tracker Trendwatching, when scores of iPhone apps let you post feedback as soon as you finish dessert? Why wonder about the name of that song, when humming into your phone handset will garner an instant answer from Midomi?

Look out, too, for real-time collaboration: Google Wave launched earlier this year, resulting in both excitement and confusion. A crossover between instant messaging, e-mail and a wiki, Wave is a platform for getting things done together. Web users, however, remain baffled. In 2010, Wave’s utility will become more apparent.

Location, location, location

Fueled by the ubiquity of GPS in modern smartphones, location-sharing services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite and Google Latitude are suddenly in vogue.

As I ruminated in this column two weeks ago, Foursquare and its ilk may become the breakout services of the year … provided they’re not crushed by the addition of location-based features to Twitter and Facebook.

What’s clear is that location is not about any singular service; rather, it’s a new layer of the Web. Soon, our whereabouts may optionally be appended to every Tweet, blog comment, photo or video we post.

Augmented reality

It’s yet to become part of the consumer consciousness, but augmented reality has attracted early-adopter buzz in the latter part of 2009.

Enabled by GPS, mapping data from the likes of Google and the accelerometer technology in modern phones, AR involves overlaying data on your environment; imagine walking around a city and seeing it come to life with reviews of the restaurants you walk past and Wikipedia entries about the sights you see.

When using Layar, for instance, the picture from your phone’s video camera is overlaid with bubbles of information from Yelp, Wikipedia, Google Search and Twitter. The challenge for such services is to prove their utility: They have the “cool factor,” but can they be truly useful?

Content ‘curation’

The Web’s biggest challenge of recent years is that content creation is outpacing our ability to consume it: “Information overload” has become an increasingly common complaint.

In the attention economy, with its millions of daily status updates and billions of Web pages vying for our time, how do we best allocate that scarce resource? One solution has been algorithmic: Sites like Google News source the best stuff by technical means, but fall short when it comes to personalization.

In 2008, the answer revealed itself: Your friends are your filter. With the launch of its Facebook Connect program, Facebook allowed sites to offer content personalization based on the preferences of your network.

Meanwhile, Google’s Social Search experiment is investigating whether Web searching is improved by using information gleaned from your friends on Twitter, Facebook, Digg and the rest. Increasingly, your friends are becoming the curators of your consumption, from Web links to movies, books and TV shows.

Professional “curation” has its place, too: Who better to direct our scarce attention than experts in their fields? I explored this possibility in a CNN article last month titled “Twitter lists and real-time journalism” .

Cloud computing

Cloud computing was very much a buzzword of 2009, but there’s no doubt this transition will continue. The trend, in which data and applications cease to reside on our desktops and instead exist on servers elsewhere (“the cloud”), makes our data accessible from anywhere and enables collaboration with distributed teams.

The cloud movement will see a major leap forward in the first half of 2010 with the launch of “Office Web Apps,” free online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote released in tandem with Microsoft Office 2010.

Next year will also see the launch of Google’s Chrome OS, a free, Web-centric operating system that forces us to ask: How many desktop applications do we really need?

Internet TV and movies

Is 2010 the year the majority of our television starts coming to us via the Internet? There’s certainly more activity here than at any other time: Among the early-adopter set, Hulu, Boxee, Apple TV and Netflix’s Roku box lead the field.

Hulu in particular has sustained remarkable growth this year, while the movie studios are getting on board with the launch of Epix, a Hulu for films.

Convergence conundrum

The outlook for devices in 2010 appears somewhat contradictory: While the convergence trend continues apace and many of our gadgets are folded into the smartphones we carry around every day, we’re seeing a converse trend in which task-specific devices gain popularity.

GPS device maker TomTom recently introduced a $100 iPhone app that removes the need to buy a TomTom hardware device. Google then one-upped the company by releasing free turn-by-turn directions on devices running its Android operating system. Garmin and TomTom beware: Standalone GPS devices may meet their demise in 2010.

Also on the endangered gadgets list: Flip video cameras, which PC World declared dead upon the launch of the iPhone 3G S. Meanwhile, Apple executives say the iPhone is cannibalizing the iPod: Why carry two devices when you only need one?

Paradoxically, the e-book reader is seeing traction as a single-use device. With hard-to-read, power-hungry laptop screens proving impractical for reading, and smartphone screens proving too small, the Kindle and its competitors are gaining buzz.

However, I’d argue that the e-book reader is a fad: Carrying an extra device is never desirable, and the major factor preventing convergence is the lack of superior screen technology. Flexible, expanding low-power screens on cell phones might tip the balance.

The real power of Amazon’s Kindle is its ease of use: a virtual bookstore so simple that it does for books what Apple’s iTunes did for music. The devices will converge, but the “app store” model for books will persist across all devices. The technology won’t be with us in 2010, however.

Social gaming

There’s little risk of social gaming proving a bad bet in 2010 — Zynga’s FarmVille game on Facebook now counts more active users than Twitter, claims a Facebook executive. Meanwhile, rival Playfish was recently acquired by Electronic Arts in a deal valued at up to $400 million.

Of growing interest in 2010, however, will be the virtual currencies these games have spawned: In the allegedly unmonetizable world of social media, virtual buying and selling may be the route to riches for some social media sites — a concept I outlined in this column under the title “Is Facebook the future of micropayments?”

Mobile payments

I’d wager that 2010 will be the breakthrough year of the much-anticipated mobile payments market. While much of Asia has embraced the technology, the U.S., in particular, has lagged. There’s reason for optimism in 2010, however: From PayPalX to Amazon’s mobile payments platform for developers, the big players are seizing the mobile payments opportunity.

Meanwhile, newcomer Square, founded by the creator of Twitter, began its rollout this week to much early-adopter excitement: The company enables merchants to accept payments via Apple’s iPhone.

Fame abundance, privacy scarcity

Warhol was right: Fame is now abundant. Social media has birthed a galaxy of stars in thousands of niches: We’re all reality stars now, on Facebook, Twitter and all the myriad online outlets where we hone our personal brands.

We’re seeing the ongoing voluntary erosion of privacy through public sharing on Facebook and Twitter, the rise of location-based services and the inclusion of video cameras in a growing array of devices.

The incredible efficiency of Web-based communication and our Google-fueled appetite to know everything about everything (or everyone) right now are combining to make Tiger Woods the canary in the privacy coal mine. Expect personal privacy — or rather its continued erosion — to be a hot media topic of 2010.

It’s Labor Day. Take it easy. Be with your family. Have fun and get some rest. God is good.

I mentioned last week that I’m beginning a new project with ARC. This is something I’m pretty excited about and hopefully will lead to me meeting you and your team.

ARC now offers a very informative, encouraging and fruitful experience for your church: the Secret Shopper (mystery worshipper). Beginning August 2009, ARC will be lining up visits to churches across the country by one of the ARC’s staff – me.

Here’s the info that we’re sending ARC churches:

The Secret Shopper has produced worship services for a mega-church for the last 6 years and has served on a Worship & Arts staff for the last 15 years. The Secret Shopper also produced several large conferences including Leadership Network’s Innovation3 Conference, Catalyst OneDay and the Rebecca St. James’s SHE Conference.

This service to your church will include an eye on everything from your church’s parking lot, lobby, nursery, facilities, signage, restrooms, overall feel and a main focus on the worship experience including music, technology/media and preaching.

For a small, one-time investment of $750 (plus travel expenses) for a church of 300 or less OR $1000 (plus travel) for churches of 300 or more, your church can have a trained professional with a heart for ARC DNA churches come into your church and critique, encourage and challenge your team. Feedback will be given in a meeting after the last morning worship service.

I’m blogging about this here because this is a service that I’d like to do for any and all churches interested, not just ARC churches. For more information and to book me as a Secret Shopper for your church, email me at greg@gregatkinson.com.

I’m on vacation this week. I’ll be taking a break from the blog. I wish you well.

God will do whatever it takes to get your eyes on Him – to get your focus, desire, trust and hope in Him; in that way, He is relentless and can go to extremes (as Scripture, myself and countless others can attest to) to get our attention.

In light of our recent economic situation, it occurred to me that God may be at work all around. I travel the country speaking on innovation. One of the ways that I teach innovation is birthed is by desperation, but I go on to say that “it’s a desperation that leads to a dependence upon the Holy Spirit.”

When you hit the bottom in your own way: maybe lose your job, your retirement, your house, your savings, your stock portfolio, your (you fill in the blank)… Could it be that it’s by design by our Creator to bring us back to trusting in Him alone?

To quote two spiritual giants and long distance mentors: “God is most satisfied in us, when we are most satisfied in Him.” – John Piper. In The Problem of Pain, CS Lewis says, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

Deaf world are we listening? Because I believe God is shouting. Please understand I’m not a gloom and doom person. I don’t believe this is the end of the world and I don’t believe this is like the Great Depression. I got to hear Dave Ramsey live at his Town Hall for Hope and appreciate his sound wisdom and advice. I appreciate his perspective and the truth that he spoke that night.

However, though it may have been worse in times past, this is rough on our generation and this is a reality that we have to deal with. On my blog a while back, I spoke of God’s “pruning”. I talked about a situation that was extremely difficult, humiliating, humbling and really put me in my place. At the same time, it was wonderful, Spirit-filled, God-ordained and edifying. Our God takes the tough times and makes something beautiful out of it. Scripture is full of exhortations like this.

Now please know I’m writing this after having lost my job due to the economy; so I don’t write from theory, but from my heart. I sincerely believe that it’s in these hard times that God wants us to run to Him and run to Him first. Not to our banker, our broker, our real estate agent or even friends. First and foremost, He wants His children to call on His name and fall to their knees in worship. The Bible teaches us to “seek Him first. (Matt. 6:33)”

Also from personal experience, I know that God pursues us. He is very jealous of our idols and He, as I said before, will be relentless in getting our focus on Him. He’s constantly molding, shaping, pruning and refining us. The good news is that He has promised to draw close to us when we draw close to Him (James 4:8).

So in these days of trials, allow God to complete His work IN you. Seek Him first, draw close to Him and place your hope squarely on Him. These are days for us to truly be men and women of faith, trusting in the One who is sovereign and unshaken. God, if you let Him, will make something beautiful of the mess you’re going through. Trust Him. Listen to Him. Worship Him.

I’ve blogged about this before, but the time-sensitive huge discount for Q runs out Dec. 31st!!!! You have 1 week to act on this opportunity. You can register later, but it will cost over $150 more. 

I’ll be hosting a Church 2.0 Tribe this year at Q. Q was held in New York last year and I couldn’t make it – I really wanted to . This April 27-29 it will be in Austin, TX. I and many other friends will be there. I’d love for you to join us. 

Q is a unique conference for leaders that “get it” and are interested in highly relevant and missional things. Q does cost more than a lot of conferences, but if you register with my coupon code (Church20) – you can register for $525 until 12/31.

More about Q: Q is a gathering where church leaders and cultural influencers from the fields of business, politics, media, education, entertainment and the arts are exposed to the future of culture and the church’s responsibility to advance the common good in society.

Q TALKS are 18 minute presentations given annually at the Q gathering by thought leaders and practitioners on the topics of the future, the church, the culture and the gospel. Be inspired by their big ideas and find ways to discuss and process them with your closest friends and inner circle (the Church 2.0 tribe).

I hope to see some of you in the wonderful city of Austin!

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MERRY CHRISTMAS to all you!!!

My church (Bent Tree) is hosting this conference! All these folks you see listed above will be at our church. You need to be there, too. There is no better excuse to come to Dallas, hang with me, hear some great speakers and visit Bent Tree.