Summit Church Streaming Study

When Summit Church started a full overhaul site upgrade with Lambda AV they knew streaming would be an important piece, but never realized how essential it would become these last few months.  

​At the beginning of the year, Summit Church did a complete tech overhaul and redesign with Lambda. We will have upcoming articles highlighting more of it, but for now we wanted to bring forward the streaming part right away. Several years ago, Summit Church brought in Lambda to add a professional touch and direction and bring tech up to a starting point for future growth. Summit church wanted to feed quality, great content to a growing online audience and be ready for satellite campuses in the future. They wanted to be flexible and able to stream or share anything that was going on in the church.

We started with one of our favorite partners Boxcast. Boxcast has incredible quality and easy to use streaming products built for resilience and ease of use. Andrew Serr, the tech director of Summit, is always interested in what the “next trend” in tech will be and is always wanting to dream with us about how the church can grow or start into it. With Boxcast, we chose to use their Pro Encoder, a box capable of 4k streaming and H.265 high quality encoding, knowing that it would encompass the abilities needed in the future direction of the church. Summit also chose two encoders one for portable use and one for their main campus.  ​

In the new build for Summit, we added in new camera positions, a 4k switching setup and a full broadcast room for directing and mixing a separate full quality stream mix or coloring cameras. It was truly a groundbreaking setup build for future growth with the idea of a growing online community and future campuses. It’s always a great idea to plan for the future, to build backbone and future ability, but little did Summit Church know how ready they would be for the COVID-19 situation. 
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Days before lockdown of the Denver area, and knowing what was coming, the Summit Church team grabbed their portable encoder and a few of their cameras to set up at the Pastor’s house. This way they could continue to support and feed their congregation no matter what the restrictions would be in the coming weeks. 

They spent one day on site recording every service they had planned on doing between that day and Easter. This was quite the event, but with great new technology and hardworking staff, they pulled it off. When lockdown started they transitioned to using a feature called “Simulated Live” to broadcast pre-recorded services at their normal service times. Pastors and staff started watch parties from their homes and interacted with their now entirely online church audience. They were able to continue reaching out to help and pray for people and still build small group community.  Their lead pastor Rob even held daily teachings rather than weekly to provide further assistance to the community from his home with the portable setup.  ​

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Being prepared with technology pays off no matter what because it allows issues to settle back. Summit Church did not need to spend time waiting for gear to arrive. Instead, having the capability to grow and problem solve let the church do what it does best and reach the community around it in a difficult time! The Lambda Team loves to be able to dream with you so you can be prepared now and two years down the road!
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