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Worship Video Podcast: Appropriate for my situation?

Joined: 12/02/2008

So I've been working with setting up an audio and video podcast for the church I belong to. My question is: should a video podcast include the entire worship service? It's a medium sized, traditional church so there are announcements and prayer requests spoken aloud.

I just don't know how appropriate it is to include the more sensitive content on the internet. Basically we have a 2-camera recording setup that burns to DVDs. We have a duplicator and send the copies out to shut-ins and others. I have just been ripping these DVDs, croping out the sermon audio to a podcast and then encoding and compressing the video and put it in a separate podcast feed. Any thoughts?

G&G Podcast Host
Matt Farina's picture
Joined: 06/01/2006
Copyright

Before you consider the videocasting the entire service make sure it's legal. What is the copyright on the songs sung in your services? Do you have permission to broadcast them? Most churches don't. They have a license to print the lyrics. Broadcasting those same songs legally different.

Matt Farina
Geeks and God Former Co-Host
www.mattfarina.com

Joined: 12/04/2008
Err on the safe side

I agree with Matt that you'd need to take in copyright considerations in terms of the worship music. You mentioned prayer requests are often mentioned in the worship service. Those prayer requests were submitted to be shared in the context of the worship service and your church family. I'm sure most people would not mind the requests being broadcast out there in the cloud, but you want to be sensitive to that as some may be uncomfortable knowing it's all online. Also you may want to use good judgment if there's anyone but the pastor on the video, like a soloist or testimony for the same reasons.

I'm not saying posting the full service is bad, just that you may want to set the right expectations at church of what will be online before broadcasting the whole service.

Jonathan

Joined: 06/27/2008
Our church offers both a

Our church offers both a audio and video version of our services. We just do a fade in right after the announcements and go right into the sermon. We don't include any the announcements or prayer requests just because of they are service goes. You could just do a fade right after worship and have everything else. But like Jonathan said, you just have to make sure people don't mind you putting that out on the web.

Ben Haan
Web Developer/Webmaster
Resurrection Life Church
www.benhaan.com

Joined: 09/25/2008
Our audio

We do audio CDs only for church members who want to hear the message again or were working in the nursery that day. We are also aware that sometimes these things get mailed to family members who "need to hear this". :)
We do not record the praise & worship part of the service. We also edit each message at the beginning and end because Pastor has a tendency to address "in-house" stuff at those times. He only allows the sermon, start to finish, and nothing else. I think there is wisdom in this because there are a few in this town, and I'm sure it's the same elsewhere, that would love to get ahold of the prayer request type information and spread it on what we call the coconut hotline.

In fact, our prayer request announcement line is closely guarded too. If someone develops a blatant rebellious attitude then I'm told to take them off the list because if they are not in agreement with the church then we probably don't want them to pray for our needs either. Prayer is about agreement and without that it is often just gossip.

As for your particular situation I would only say to remember that not everyone that comes to your site is like-minded. You are giving that information to friends as well as to the enemy's kids so use discernment.