5 Things We Learned From Streaming Worship
Streaming our gatherings and times of worship at Gas Street was something we had planned to do over the next year but much like the rest of the world, we had to make it happen overnight!
We knew lockdown was fast approaching, so we gathered a bunch of our musicians and team to record a few sets of worship that we could use for online gatherings over the upcoming weeks. We chatted with our team to ensure what we captured reflected our values and was authentic to who we are.
Since this is a time for growing and adapting to a new normal, we thought it would be helpful to share a few things we've valued and learned from our experience!
Keep It Simple —
We decided to come off the stage and set up in a room that allowed us to keep our distance but also bridge the distance people might felt sitting at home. We wanted to limit as many options as possible for people to disengage and simply watch!
To help this we went with an acoustic setup with vocals, guitar, keys and cajon, avoiding long hours in post-production and kept our physical setup super simple. This vibe also lent itself naturally to keeping camera shots uncomplicated as we only had a few people to capture. We set up one main camera on a tripod for the worship leader and then had two roaming cameras that provided some movement and close-ups.Keep It You —
Now's not the time to adopt the latest trends. Use your songs, your sounds and your style. This is a great moment to capture what God is doing in your community. He's given you creative characteristics that you need to use in this season!
The room we used and lighting was a typical 'Gas Street' Sunday gathering setup and made it feel really familiar to our church family. We took a bunch of LEDs from our stage and used it as simple blacklight, helping create some depth to our shots, mixed with LED panels and softboxes to illuminate the musicians. We also made sure that all of our sets included 'homegrown' songs that we had come from writers in our church. Find out what God is breathing on in this season and bring it to your community.Keep It Real —
Embrace the imperfections! Often some of the best times of worship come off the back of the unpolished moments.
While our guys had a few false starts and took a couple of minutes to adjust to leading an empty room, we treated these sessions 'as live'. There are a few wrong chords and forgotten lyrics, but we ultimately trust that God was doing something in those moments. Resist the temptation to over-edit! We spent a lot of time setting up beforehand so we wouldn't have to do any overdubs or add to our mix.Keep It Sharp —
Most weekends we will have 30-35 minutes of worship but we wanted to keep our whole online gathering to 1 hour. We arranged our sets to have 3 songs to begin with and 1 song to finish. Normally we would spend a lot of time waiting or on a particular song but we really wanted these sets to be accessible and engaging to new people and guests who were watching for the first time!
We also wanted it to look sharp! YouTube, Facebook and streaming sites typically compress all the content depending on how good your connection is. We found it’s best to export everything at the best quality you can. The higher quality you can provide, usually the higher it will be delivered. Practically, all of these videos were shot in 4K but exported at 1080p and streamed at 8000kbps video, 320kbps audio.Keep It About Jesus —
We know that His presence isn't a feeling in the room, it's a reality that can't be confined or contained. This opportunity isn't a moment to show the world how great your new gear is. It's about using songs, gear and gifts to bring hope, honour and healing. Your community doesn't just need another worship set, it needs a set that is saturated with the presence of God.
Hope this helps! Check out a snippet from our of our sets below.
We’re also going to be doing a Q&A session on Instagram this Friday which is a perfect opportunity to find out more about the technical details!
