Recording and sharing sermons on the church website is not a new concept, but for many of us in smaller churches the concept and process can seem daunting. Today, I want to show you an extremely easy way to record and share your sermon this week with this simple process.
First, you are going to need an adequate video camera. The great thing about today’s smartphones is most of us have one built right into something we use every day. If you have an iPhone or a recent Android phone, most likely you are going to have something that records video well. The drawback to smartphone recording is your audio is going to suffer. For many congregations they take care of this issue by having a dedicated camera or cameras that plug directly into the soundboard for optimum audio, but this might not be an option for you.
This is where the Zoom Q4n Handy Video Recorder can come in for you. My church currently uses one for sermon recording and many other uses. Here is a quick example of the camera’s quality with a member of our ministry staff:
As you can see the Zoom produces nice video for $250, but what I have been blown away by so far is the audio quality. Check out this sample of the Q4n handling a full orchestra:
Along with the camera, invest in a quality tripod and SD card and recruit someone to hit “record” when you go up to preach. You can then just upload the raw file to your website or Facebook page or even do some light editing in iMovie or Windows Movie Maker.
Here is the simple process in a nutshell if you use the Zoom Q4n:
First you will install the SD card, then mount the camera on a tripod, find the best distance to get a good view of the preacher, recruit someone to push record when you start preaching, push record again when you are done, take the SD card out and put it into your computer or hook up the camera to your computer with the included USB cable, upload the file to your website, Facebook page or video site such as Youtube or Vimeo.
There you go! You could start this this week and have a quality video of every sermon for people checking out your church to watch and those who want to rewatch or might have missed service.
What’s Your Process Like?
This article originally appeared here.
