President's Blog

For an institution known more for staying the same than making aggressive changes—local churches across Canada intentionally embraced innovation and technology in a brand-new way in early 2020.

COVID-19 arrived, government lockdowns were enacted, and our congregations were struggling to gather together. Most of our churches did not offer livestreamed worship services in March 2020. However, I was blown away by how quickly that changed. Our capacity for creative change to meet a felt need tore the stayed immovable image of our local churches to piece.

The debate, four years on among our churches, is whether to maintain livestreaming on our church websites. Pastor Paul Carter (Cornerstone, Orillia, ON) addressed this very question in our recent issue of Thrive, “The New Norm: A COVID-19 Postmortem”. In his article, “Is it time to shut down the livestream?” (p. 22), Paul addresses both sides of the discussion and offers some prudent counsel.

Tips for Livestreaming

For those churches continuing with livestreaming, you may be asking how you can improve your livestreaming experience. How can we improve the production value on a limited budget? Pierre Robidoux is a member of Ahuntsic Baptist Evangelical (a Fellowship church in Montréal) who worked for decades in broadcast production and engineering. I recently learned that he created a series of brief videos, available for free on YouTube, on how churches can improve their livestream media experience on a modest budget. Early videos explain the technology and later videos give good practical advice on steps to take. I’ve asked Pierre to introduce himself and tell you about his new video series:

I worked for a Canadian nationwide broadcaster in production, technical service, and engineering for more than 41 years. I am now retired. My prayer was and still is to be able to share my experience and expertise with churches of our Fellowship. In 2021 an unexpected opportunity presented itself to me: in response to requests for advice, I sensed an emergency, a need for streaming worship services on the Internet for our churches because of the COVID lockdown of houses of worship. Then, I quickly produced 15 videos on YouTube in English during the pandemic for the immediate benefit of churches, especially the smallest ones, with few resources. I now plan to update a few of those videos as well as translating them into French (soon).

My prayer is also that this would be only the first small step in faith-based productions for us and, more important, that this endeavour would not only be my project but a coast-to-coast collaborative journey for many. In my field, teamwork is not only a good idea, but also mandatory: it is the only professional way to achieve good quality content.

While no one is perfect and everyone is prone to make mistakes, here is a word of wisdom that I share with attendees when I give training: “Whoever is slack in his work is a brother to him who destroys.” (Proverbs 18:9, NIV) And I add: never forget that you’re recording, producing, and broadcasting the most important message there is.

You can connect directly with Pierre through his email: probidouxeng@gmail.com

I hope Pierre’s practical advice will help support our churches in offering the best livestreaming experience possible.