Does Your Church Really Need to Live Stream? A Conversation with Carey Nieuwhof
A few months back, Brady Shearer stirred up some conversation in the church world by suggesting that maybe not every church needs to live stream. As a fellow Canadian, Carey Nieuwhof had some thoughts on this, and his perspective might challenge how you’re thinking about your church’s online presence.
The School Play Problem
Carey opens with an analogy that hits uncomfortably close to home for many churches. You know why you sit through your kid’s third-grade school play? Not because the production is stellar or the acting is Oscar-worthy. You’re there because your daughter is on stage, and as soon as she’s done, you’re whispering to your spouse asking if you can leave yet.
Here’s the hard truth: if your church doesn’t have the production talent or the musical ability, your live stream sounds like a school play. It’s entertaining to the people who are already invested, but it’s not putting your best foot forward to the world. And while your congregation will sit through mediocre production because they love their church, strangers stumbling across your stream won’t be so forgiving.
The Talent Threshold
So when does a church actually have enough talent to pull off a quality stream? Carey suggests that around 400 to 500 in attendance, you start to have the talent base where you can do good production with good musicians and singers that actually sound good. But here’s where it gets tricky: you also need someone who can mix it properly, because your in-house sound mix is completely different from what works online.
If you’re not at that level where strangers are discovering your stream and thinking “This is amazing, I’m going to watch the whole thing,” then maybe you shouldn’t be streaming everything. Consider streaming just the message, which doesn’t need as much production complexity. Or record your service and mix it in post before uploading it later.
Making Quality Achievable
At Churchfront, we spend a significant portion of our time trying to bring down that 400-500 person threshold. We genuinely believe churches of 150 or 200 can get their quality to a point where they’re not embarrassed by it, but it requires good coaching.
For preaching, you can probably get there with a church of 50 if you know what you’re doing. Music is harder because you can’t fake good singing. But here’s what you actually need: good singing (not phenomenal, just good), decent live drums, and a pretty good mix. Everything else you can help with the technology we work with regularly.
The key principle? Your stream needs to be good enough to make someone want to see it in person. It needs to not repel. The opposite of attractional church is repulsive church.
The Minimum Viable Band
When Carey’s church was starting out, they only had guitar and keys. No drummer, no bass player. And his advice is refreshingly practical: if you just have a decent guitarist and a decent vocalist, you’re 100% good to go.
The temptation is thinking you need a full band. But if you have a mediocre bass player, a drummer who can’t keep time, and a keyboard player hitting wrong notes, you’re better off with just your great guitarist. As you grow, you’ll find that great keyboard player and drummer, or you’ll have the budget to recruit them. Don’t let the pursuit of a full band sabotage the quality of what you’re actually capable of.
And if your video production isn’t very good? Just do audio only. Carey points out that some very well-known authors have given him audio-only interviews for his podcast, and when uploaded to YouTube, they still got thousands of views.
Defining Your Goals
Before diving deeper into production decisions, Jake raises the critical question: why do we even need a live stream? What are the actual goals we’re trying to achieve?
There are practical purposes. People who are homebound in your community who physically can’t make it to church. People traveling who want to stay plugged in. For these folks, the production quality bar is probably much lower because they’re already invested in your community.
But there’s another purpose entirely: discovery. And this is where things get interesting.
The New Foyer
Carey makes a compelling case that online is the new foyer for your church. When Jake moved to Melbourne, Florida, the first thing he did was search for churches. He looked at websites, checked out staff, and yes, watched live streams. But here’s the twist: as a Christian and church leader, Jake was looking for different things than an unchurched person would be. He was evaluating doctrine, preaching style, and whether it felt like a community his family would fit into. Production quality? Not really a priority.
But unchurched people are different. Carey’s church launched their online campus in 2016, and since then, he can’t remember a single time where someone who was truly unchurched hadn’t watched them online for weeks, months, or even up to a year before trying them in person.
Think about that. All of non-Christian America, all the nones and dones, all the atheists and agnostics, they’re on the internet. They’re not just going to walk into your building on Sunday morning. That feels like crashing a wedding. If you’re having trouble understanding this, imagine trying to walk into a mosque or synagogue without knowing anyone. You’d probably want to do some investigation first, right?
The Modern Church Journey
Your online presence gives unchurched people that safe space to investigate. They can watch, see that you welcome new people every week, understand that they’d be welcomed too, and then show up ready to engage. Fifteen years ago, your physical foyer was where people made their first impression. Now that’s all happening online before they ever set foot in your building.
Here’s what’s fascinating about this shift: when people finally show up in person, they’re ready to go further, faster. They’ve already done their investigating. They’ve already asked their questions. They’ve heard multiple messages. They’re not coming in tentative and skeptical. They’re showing up saying “Show me Jesus. Show me God. I want to go deeper.”
It’s like the difference between walking into a restaurant you’ve never heard of versus showing up at a place where you’ve already tried the appetizers at a party. You know what you’re ordering. You’re ready to dive in.
The Bottom Line
So does your church need to live stream? It depends. If you can do it passably, get it online because that’s where discovery happens. Christians will put up with bad production and bad websites, but non-Christians won’t. If you can’t do the full service well, stream the message. If video isn’t working, try audio only. If you’re working with limited talent, embrace your great guitarist and vocalist instead of forcing a mediocre full band.
But understand this: if your church isn’t streaming, lots of other churches are, and unchurched people in your community are discovering them instead of you. The question isn’t really whether you can afford to stream. It’s whether you can afford not to, given that the entire front door of your church has moved online.
The foyer has moved. The question is whether you’re going to meet people where they actually are.
