Today I’m going over my last installment of the Ultimate Guide to Worship Tech!

So far, we’ve gone over:

Now we’ll be rounding off this series with automation and broadcasting.

We’ll cover:

Benefits of automation
Concerns about automation
How to build your automated service
Intro to Broadcasting
Recording Tools and Recommendations

Before we jump into the tech, don’t forget to visit the Worship Ministry Toolkit for our complete list of recommended gear!

Benefits of automation in church worship production

We’ve all experienced missed slides or lighting cues, but what if you could get rid of all those errors?

In short, automation helps you eliminate those distracting and annoying mistakes.

Automation is the perfect solution for creating an intentional, worshipful service.

Along with that, automation increases your creative capability without needing a large production team. Complex lighting cues, slides and media can all be set up beforehand and then run, without mistake, on Sunday.

Concerns about Automation

A lot of times, I get asked: “when you automate lyrics and lighting, don’t you eliminate a way for someone to serve on your team?”

We get it, that’s a really important question to ask. At Churchfront, we want to lead both a tech-savvy worship and create a gospel-centered ministry. So here are two answers for you.

1. We don’t actually eliminate an opportunity to serve.

Every week, we always have a volunteer sitting behind the computer, ready to handle slides and lights. This volunteer oversees two things:

ProPresenter during songs in case the worship team wants to repeat a chorus for more impact.
Plus, we can’t automate our pastor’s slides, so that role is still important.

2. Keep your volunteers in mind

Like most churches, our church doesn’t have a line of volunteers just waiting to be a part of the tech team. We have a small, dedicated team that put their heart and soul into each service. It’s important, in any ministry, to not burn out volunteers. We find that automation is a great way to leverage their abilities and willingness to serve, without putting too much work on their plate.

Building out your service is important and utilizing your servants is key–automation gives us the tools to create smooth services, without mistakes, while providing opportunities for our members to serve.

How to Build Your Automated Service

Now we come to actually building your automation, and you guessed it, we’re using Ableton Live.

Ableton is used industry-wide and works in tandem with both ProPresenter and Lightkey; that means that you can use MIDI cues to trigger changes in slides and lighting. Once you’ve developed your core songs, automated slides and lighting become super easy.

When you run Ableton with click tracks, your worship team will be able to maintain a consistent tempo and follow the right transitions.

And don’t worry, Ableton will never jump to the next section, always finishing out the current measure. You don’t have to worry about choppy transitions since Ableton is so flexible. All it takes is a volunteer setting up the cues for that Sunday and then you have a fully automated service.

Now when you’re setting Ableton up with ProPresenter or Lightkey, you’ll need to keep a couple things in mind:

If you’re using all of the software on the same computer, you’ll need to link them with the IAC driver on your Mac’s system preferences.
If you’re running them on separate computers, you can link them together via a Local Area Network using a network session app on your Mac.

While both of those are great options, our number one recommended way to link software is by using iConnectivity MIDI interfaces.

With these devices, you’ll get a reliable, zero-latency MIDI connection. After setting it up, all you have to do is plug your computer(s) in and you’re good to go!

With a strong foundation for automation, our church is able to give volunteers the ability to trigger multiple cues--lighting, slides, and backgrounds--with just one simple click. That means no more missed lyric slides, lighting cues, or other distracting mistakes.

Intro to Broadcasting

First off, it’s important to note that broadcasting, or live streaming, your services is probably lower on the priority list.

Building up your audio, lights, and automation are usually going to be most important, but if you have a strong foundation, you might be ready to start reaching your members outside of just your church walls.

It’s good to keep in mind your own strategy, an idea of what you want to achieve with broadcasting. Knowing the production quality you’re aiming for will determine your gear.

If all you need is a simple camera for recording sermons–perfect. If you need to get more complex, you’ll need the budget to match.

Recording Tools and Recommendations

We’ve covered broadcasting before in a beginner’s guide to live streaming for churches and live streaming for small churches and have it perfected to meet our worship needs.

Setup #1

While we can’t recommend one specific setup, but we’ll give you two recommendations to get you started and you can tweak along the way.

Our simplest setup and reccomendation is below:

Single, PTZ Optics camera
Simple video software such as OBS studio
Link video to church’s Facebook or YouTube
Bring in separate audio mix from the console

This is a very basic setup that allows you to capture and record video and audio without breaking the bank.

Setup #2

This recommendation is a little more advanced.

The PTZ Optics Producer Kit comes with everything you’ll need for a dedicated streaming rig:

Multiple cameras
Intel Nuk computer for dedicated processing
External PCIE slot for video processing and translation to streaming platform

This setup gives you all the tools to create a more in-depth, multiple camera streaming and recording setup. Of course, you’ll need to develop a team that can manage it, but this is the way to go if you want a dynamic streaming and a reasonable budget.

Interested in more?

Building a robust, advanced system doesn’t happen overnight and needs to start with a strong foundation.

If you need help knowing where to start, feel free to connect with my team.

We specialize in coming alongside worship ministries and help them find how they can lead gospel-centered and tech-savvy worship.

If you’d like to see if working together will be a good match, just reach out and we’ll set something up!