The Most Important Tech Hire Your Church Can Make Is Automated

Burnout is a real thing, and it hits media and production teams at churches particularly hard. But what if one hire could ease most of that friction and make your church media department  more productive and less stressed?

It’s okay if you don’t have the budget or time to train up a new employee or volunteer because this new hire costs far less than the average employee, and getting them up to speed will take a fraction of the time. Too good to be true? Well, read on to learn more about the important tech hire your church can make. 

Time Is Your Team’s Greatest Asset

Less than a couple of decades ago, the position of tech director or production manager at a church would’ve been considered a luxury. Now it’s a necessity — the need for a tech-savvy production team is only increasing. While “production” used to imply an emphasis on live theatrics—like sound and lighting—it now encompasses a whole host of operations, most notably related to pre- and post-productions. From church livestream stability to podcast uploads, the needs of “forward-thinking church” extend beyond the stage and into the online sphere. As a church leader, know that your job is to help deliver dynamic and immersive experiences that will keep people coming back—or tuning in—week after week. However, one key factor that often goes overlooked in this equation is time. While you can easily get caught up in the details of production, it is crucial to remember that time is your most valuable asset. Every minute you can save is one that can be used for ministry or other projects.

That’s why the most important hire your church can make isn’t a new hire at all. It’s investing in a tech solution that will help you and your team automate processes and streamline workflows so that you can focus on what really matters.

The Life-Giving Power of Automation for Churches

A century ago, it’d take a person all day to do one load of laundry. From hand-scrubbing the clothes to hanging them out to dry, laundry was an all-day ordeal that required your full attention and limited your ability to do much else. 

With the exception of folding, doing laundry today is mostly an automated process that runs in the background. Think about it: You toss a load into the washing machine and then transfer it to the dryer. And what are you doing during that time? Well, probably anything other than thinking about laundry, right?

Advances in automation technology can have the same effect on your church’s production processes and workflows. Of course, there’ll always be a need for a team “behind the scenes,” but most of the tasks that used to require hours of precision calibration and waiting can now hum along comfortably in the background as if by “automagic.”

Here are a few other benefits and advantages of automating your church’s pre- and post-productions processes:

• Automations Provide Consistency – With automated systems in place, the church’s production process becomes more organized and predictable. This technology ensures that the congregation experiences the same quality of service every time, especially if you have multiple services per week. Moreover, your team can focus on bringing more value to the service by improving worship or designing more engaging sermons.
• Automations Enhance Creativity – With tech automations handling the nitty-gritty of production, you can add more creativity to the service. Imagine exploring different video styles, developing new sermon series, or creating more interactive and visually-engaging presentations. By freeing up time from the manual production process, the team can focus on more creative and innovative projects.
• Automations Improve Quality of Life – Perhaps most importantly, implementing technology automations not only benefits your church’s efficiency but also enhances the quality of life for your team members. With less time spent on production, team members can have a better work-life balance, leading to less stress and burnout. This results in happier and more productive individuals, ultimately benefiting the church.

As you can see, you can enhance efficiency, consistency and creativity, save resources, and improve your team’s quality of life by automating tech processes that no longer require a hands-on approach. While implementing these systems requires an initial investment, the long-term benefits outweigh the expenses. In short, investing in a tech solution that can manage that is why it’s the most important hire you can make this year.

How Resi Can Help Automate Church Processes

Automations have slowly been creeping into our day-to-day life over the past few years. Remember having to download and print directions from the internet before setting out on a road trip? How about downloading and burning your personal mix CD on a physical disc? It’s amazing how quickly some of the technological hurdles we had to overcome when we were growing up are now just a part of the distant past that the current generation wouldn’t understand.

The same, ironically, is true of the church and technology. Not too long ago, “cassette ministries” (where pastors’ sermons were recorded on a cassette and mailed out) were a big part of the church’s outreach strategy. Now you livestream entire services and upload podcasts—no physical media required.

So, how can you automate all those digital processes and post-production workflows you’ve established over the years? Easy, you invest in a church tech solution like Resi. 

Resi has a number of products and features that can help your church save time, increase efficiency, and deliver top-tier online experience for your congregation and visitors. 

For example, recurring events—like weekly church services—can be scheduled to stream automatically each week for a robust online experience that requires no weekly maintenance. Essentially, just “set it and forget it” and refocus your attention on more pressing issues or creative experimentation. 

Plus, Resi On Demand is here to save you hours of post-production effort each week. With our Autosave to Library feature, your livestream gets automatically uploaded to your library while it’s streaming. So, when your livestream wraps up, your content is instantly ready to be shared or posted. That means no more wasting hours on a Sunday afternoon or Monday morning waiting for a livestream to process and upload. 

No more headaches from searching through saved playlists to find the right one for your church livestream. Our Autosave to Playlist feature takes care of that for you. It automatically saves your video to the selected playlist and updates your Media Site with the new video, so you don’t have to worry about updating your embed code.

Furthermore, Resi’s add-on feature, Automated Subtitles, is another time-saving hero. Our Automated Subtitles feature transcribes the spoken words from your stream into readable text, ensuring viewers can effortlessly follow along and never miss a single message—and does all of that effortlessly. 

All of these features—and more—are just a few of the ways that Resi can help your church shave off valuable hours from your pre- and post-production workflows, freeing up time, alleviating stress, and opening doors of opportunity for more creativity and innovation.

How to Introduce Automation into Your Church Production Processes

With all of that said, the most important hire your church can make isn’t what you expect.  It’s not a person you have to train or a volunteer team you’ll have to manage. For a fraction of the cost of hiring a part-time or full-time employee, you can automate a significant amount of your tech processes that bog down your team’s ability to reach their full potential. 

To learn more about Resi’s church livestreaming platform, give one of our tech experts a call and schedule a demo to see yourself.