Seize the Snow Day: Boosting Church Media Production

Join John Ondo on the Media Download this week as he walks through how Oasis City Church navigated a massive snowstorm that forced the cancellation of in-person services. Learn essential hacks and tips for pivoting to an online live-streamed service during emergencies. Discover the importance of pre-production communication, effective planning, and collaboration between media teams and church leadership to ensure a successful and engaging live stream. Whether you're part of a church's media team or a pastor looking to improve weekend services, this episode provides valuable insights and actionable advice.

00:00 Massive Snowstorm Disrupts Midwest Churches
00:29 Introduction to Media Download
01:32 The Importance of Pre-Production Communication
03:52 Crafting an Engaging Online Service
04:54 Executing the Plan: Production Day
07:37 The Power of Good Production
09:12 Final Thoughts and Call to Action  #mediainfluencer #columbusohio

Watch all of the video format of this podcast on my YouTube Channel.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMqz-XMZ8v2VLfSXSCrEtDmfKum5g5ZEb

Transcript

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John 0:00

This past weekend, almost every church in the Midwest canceled their services due to a massive snowstorm. This created an incredible opportunity we haven't seen since the COVID crisis. Many churches well equipped with the latest streaming technology and their creative teams produced amazing programs while others struggled and kind of dropped the ball. So today I want to give you some hacks and tips, so the next time your church has to pivot in an emergency, you can make your live stream a winner. I'm John Ondo and this is the Media Download. Welcome to this week's media download. This podcast is designed where we throw amazing tools into your media toolbox to help you work smarter. Not harder. I have over four decades of experience in television and documentary filmmaking, and I've learned a few hacks and shortcuts to help my clients on small budgets. Look big time. Make sure you subscribe to this channel on YouTube and our audio podcast as well. And remember, we're always a presentation of on media. This isn't the topic I have planned to talk about today, but in broadcasting like life, it has a way of nudging you in a different direction. When the moment changes, the message often has to change with it. Our responsibility as communicators is to meet people where they are. So let me walk you through what happened last week with a couple of my church clients and how they approach this problem. Now, one of my longtime clients is Oasis City Church in Columbus, Ohio. My relationship with them began during the COVID crisis when we had to produce online only services. They have a strong media savvy leadership team, modern television facilities, with a five camera sanctuary. Now, this story kind of began last Wednesday when we were hearing there was a massive snowstorm due to drop eight inches of snow on Sunday morning. This began the first element. Pre-production communication, service planning for Sunday had already been underway. When I sent an email to leadership, the message was simple and direct. Major snowstorm is coming this weekend. It could shut everything down. We'll know more by Thursday night, but we need to prepare now. Now this is a pre-production communication. It matters. In that email, I further went on to lay out a couple of options. One, we could stream live on Sunday with a very limited crew or two pre-AP the entire service on Friday or Saturday and air it on Sunday. We were gonna need to select a prerecorded worship service from our library, and everything would have to be taped and edited by Saturday afternoon. We also needed to begin notifying the congregation via social media that we were actively monitoring the weather situation. As a media director, your job isn't to just point out problems. You're paid to find solutions. That email made it clear, we have a problem. Here are the options, here are the deadlines, and there was one other factor. Baptisms were scheduled for Sunday and that's a big deal with this church baptism, weekends draw many visitors. They had planned this well in advance, including stage modifications for the baptismal, and they needed to begin that construction on Friday. By Thursday afternoon, things began to lock in. The decision was made to postpone the baptism service. While services were not yet canceled, we crafted clear social media language explaining that we were monitoring the situation and the conditions, and that we were prepared to move to online only services on Sunday, and we would let everybody know on Saturday. This was again on Thursday afternoon. Then came an important conversation with the campus pastor, my friend Adam Stewart. This is a conversation that media directors and pastors must have. They listen and trust each other and ask this question. What does this online service, what's it gonna look like for the church? A 40 minute sermon pre-taped with no audience can feel flat, and Adam understood that he and his wife Tara, who's also a pastor, had already discussed postponing the planned sermon and instead recording a conversation with them together, having a discussion in a podcast style format. That decision was key. I loved it. And Adam just didn't wanna preach to an empty room, which I didn't blame in one bit. A conversational format would be far more engaging to an online audience. Another factor was the total runtime. An average service at Oasis City Church can be over 90 minutes, but watching online, there's no way people would watch that long. So we agreed to try to keep this service to just 60 minutes. So by Friday the plan was set and we were now 72 hours away from Sunday with a game plan that gave leadership time to select the worship, music, and shape a strong program for Saturday morning. Saturday became the production and post-production day. The plan was simple. We needed two segments, an opening segment explaining why this would be a different than normal in-person service, followed by announcements and an offering about four minutes in length, roughly. Then the teaching segment we were gonna shoot for 25 to 30 minutes of runtime. I arrived about an hour early. I set up some chairs and a table for the interview, podcast microphones, and then I repositioned the cameras in kind of a normal television studio configuration to make it better suited. For a conversational format by 10 30, we were rolling. We taped the three minute opening. Then we recorded a 35 minute conversational sermon that was outstanding. But then we did the most important part of this entire project. This is the piece that often gets forgotten and it is absolutely mission critical. We recorded a short social media promo,

Video 6:07

and you know, maybe you're sitting at home and you're bothered by the snow, you're bothered by the inconvenience. But I believe we've got a message for you this Sunday. 9:00 AM we'll there. Yes. Tune in.

John 6:18

How would anyone know that this special program was running tomorrow? We had canceled everything. Nobody was gonna be at the church, so why would they expect there to be an online program? We also needed to let them know what made this program special, that they had cooked up some very special content that was meant for people to watch on Sunday. So by noon, Saturday. Everything was captured. I headed back to the edit suite and began editing, adding graphics, and mastering the program. It took about two and a half hours, and then the program was uploaded to our streaming provider, which we use resi. We scheduled it, double, checked it, made sure everything was proper, so it ran properly at 9:00 AM on Sunday. But one thing remains. Throughout this project, the pastors, Tara and Adam made several call to actions. Now, in the commercial world, we use that term call to action, but in ministry, we often will use terms like alter call or ministry moments. That meant someone had to be moderating our chat room. We didn't wanna miss that option because again, nobody was gonna be at the church. So I reminded the Church of Leadership to make sure that the teams were ready again. That's the producer's role. Make sure every base is covered, no assuming, but ensure that the entire experience for the audience is executed properly. We didn't get hit with eight inches of snow. But 18 inches of snow when the program ran on Sunday morning, I monitored the stream from home, and here were the results. For all of this hard work, the highest viewed service this church has ever had, much larger than any COVID online service nearly. Eight times the normal viewership. Now, that's kind of given, expected, the circumstances, people staying at home, nobody going into the church, but this was the key because it was well produced and thoughtfully planned, not rush people shared it. That's the power of good production. If you're a pastor who has a media team, please understand this. You need a producer for both your in-person services and your online experience. There are two different audiences, and the producers are the ones who make sure your message is delivered clearly and effectively to those. Two different audiences, media creatives, listen to me. You need to listen to your pastors. Take time to understand their goals so that you can help carry their message further. And pastors, one more thing. Lean on your media teams. Media teams require specialists just like your worship team does. So when both teams listen to this, trust each other and work in unity. The results are incredible, stronger content, relevant ministry, and in a message that truly does stand out and more importantly. It sends a message to the viewers that we're paying attention. We're prepared, and we're looking out for you. I hope this has been helpful, and if you're part of a media team at a church or a pastor wishing you could have a little bit better production on the weekends, why don't you contact me at On Media onto media.com? Consulting and training media teams with houses of worship is what I do, and please like and subscribe to this channel. I appreciate it so much. My name is John Ondo, and your download is complete.