Equipped with affordable, professional audio, video and lighting solutions, Terry's studio features a PTZOptics’ PT20X-SDI 20x-SDI SDS Gen2 Live Streaming Camera (center).
PTZOptics is a manufacturer of robotic pan, tilt, zoom camera solutions for a variety of broadcast applications, including both video production and live streaming.
Worship leader Greg Terry’s work for the past 20 years has involved reaching people around the globe with the message of Christ. Physically reaching them. But then 2020 arrived—and his busy travel schedule stalled to a standstill.
“I used to minister in 20 nations globally, speaking throughout the U.S. at conferences and crusades, leading worship and training other leaders,” Terry describes of his pre-pandemic outreach ministry. “I started working in Russia in 1994 when I was 21 years old. That's the main place I worked, and then throughout Europe. Now my major focus is in Africa, specifically Tanzania”
But after COVID hit, Terry found himself conducting his life’s work in a whole new way. “Technology is the reality of today,” Terry states. “The church world must be an influential sphere of media and technology.”
"We were off for 32 weeks last year. But our church grew through all of it. Even our finances were stronger, and this virtual thing just took off.” - Greg Terry, worship leader, Bethel Life Worship Center, a multi-campus church in Greenville and Hermitage, Pennsylvania
As such, Terry has traded in his once impressive acquisition of frequent flyer miles for a broadcast studio setup that allows him to stream his message and continually amass an expanding online audience. They flock to his biweekly news program that's focused on addressing contemporary issues from a Biblical worldview, and also follow Terry in what he describes as being a combination of weekly worship and an online gaming channel that's produced out of the studio which is supported by the church where he also is one of the staff pastors, Bethel Life Worship Center, a multi-campus church in Greenville and Hermitage, Pennsylvania, modest sized towns centrally located between Pittsburgh and Cleveland.
He also utilizes a personal studio for his travel ministry. “In my personal studio here, I’m using PTZOptics’ 20x-SDI SDS (Gen2 Live Streaming Camera),” he shares. And at Bethel Life, the same camera model is employed as part of a seven-camera system.
Active on Facebook Live and YouTube, the ministry recently signed a new agreement to take the program live on the ROKU Channel’s Integrity Television.
His work at both studios has helped Terry make up for the loss of face-time the pandemic brought on, and has also allowed him to build new opportunities through streaming ministry. And even though the world is opening back up again, he’s slowed down now from the traveling he once did—35 weeks out of each year for 20 years. He’s also cultivated a relationship with a technology partner, Paul Richards at PTZOptics and HuddleCamHD, that’s helped him build out a new process for reaching people in other states and countries—one that doesn’t involve jumping on an airplane at every turn.
With Richards’ help, Terry has chosen some of the “diamonds” out of what he was originally doing in-person, and converted them to an online format, including his news program, online worship, and online teaching. And he has also partnered with Bethel Life to build the initial platform necessary for cultivating and hosting an intense online presence.
“We did that by building a virtual coffee shop through Facebook and other social media outlets, and it began to grow and explode,” Terry describes. “We built this coffee shop to encourage people during COVID lockdowns, which were so tight here in Pennsylvania. We were off for 32 weeks last year. But our church grew through all of it. Even our finances were stronger, and this virtual thing just took off.”
Of the coffee shop concept, Terry explains, “Bethel’s online coffee shop is basically a hangout. So we use the term ‘coffee shop’ because that’s what people do. When they went to a physical coffee shop, they’d get their coffee, sit down, and hang out. We created that virtually.”
The online hangout started small, but then, “John Doe invites Jen and so on, and the next thing you know it just started growing and growing with people coming,” Terry says. “They were discussing everything—job stuff, ‘hey, my sister’s having surgery next week, and can we all pray for her’ to ‘my kid just got a trophy in school.’”
The coffee shop conversation that started out at ground zero grew to thousands of people who did not previously know one another.
“The church world must be an influential sphere of media and technology. Technology is the reality of today.”
Greg Terry, Worship Leader, Evangelist, Bethel Life Worship Center
“That’s the beauty of this thing,” Terry states. “This isn’t just people north of Pittsburgh. This is not local at all. It has become national and international.”
As Bethel’s online presence and virtual coffee shop grew, its pastors each took different timeslots to host and monitor the program, with Terry, a self-described night owl, taking the late-evening stints. “At 8:30 p.m. I came online to do the one-hour news program, looking at things from a Biblical perspective,” he notes.
By fall of 2020, though, Terry had contracted COVID. After a rough personal three-month ordeal with the virus, he used what he learned to broach the subject with those engaging at the virtual coffee shop. “I could not even get out of bed. I was under my doctor’s care. So we weren’t a ministry out there going, ‘It’s all junk,’ or ‘Run for the hills,’” he states. “We respected it. And we knew that people needed community, and so we did the best we could.”
After getting sick in the fall, Terry was released to resume normal activity by early January. “At that point, I moved my program to two nights a week—Tuesday and Friday nights from 8:30-9:30—and it was the best thing that ever happened.”
Looking back, he adds, “I do a full-blown news program now that I was able to envision while I was on my back for those three months.”
Today, Terry’s news program is “very active and quickly growing,” he says, with Facebook Live, YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/gregterryexperience), and a newly signed agreement to take the program live on the ROKU Channel’s Integrity Television.
A large part of the planning and prep for the streaming program was done in conjunction with PTZOptics’ Stephen Heywood, an experienced broadcast engineer and a good friend of Terry’s. “He’s in my ear going, ‘Greg, you’ve got the skills to do this. Let’s make it happen. I’m getting PTZOptics on board.’ And next thing you know I’m talking to Paul (Richards).”
Terry continues, “Stephen also hooked me up with VMix (live streaming video software), a Christian company, and like I said, PTZOptics, a Christian company, and Stephen himself, he’s a Christian brother with all the engineering and broadcast background. He had resources for my studio. And today the program has really evolved. It’s running full-bore.”
His online ministry and the technology behind it, both at the church and in his personal studio, exist for the same end game: building online community. In his news program, Terry describes: “We take a look at everything that’s going on in the world, how it affects the church, how it affects believers. And then at the end, I recap in 10 minutes what we’ve just discussed and put it into Biblical perspective. It’s been a format that’s worked.”
In terms of the technology that’s helping Terry and the ministry at Bethel Life Church thrive and keep moving forward, it too is evolving as the world returns to some semblance of normal. At Bethel, for instance, he notes, “Those guys in that media room that we developed … it’s their ministry. And they know they’re touching a lot of people around the world, literally, with our streaming. So they take it seriously, and we’re always looking for ways to improve. We’re always working to get better.”
As an example, Terry points to Bethel’s technology ministry and its workings. “We switched to the HuddleCamHD SimplTrack2 (Auto Tracking Camera) for our main camera at the church. Now it takes five people to run our media every Sunday. We’ve got two audio engineers, a camera operator and vMix monitor, a lighting engineer, and an in-house engineer running ProPresenter. They’re all on headsets during the service, talking to each other.”
The stage at Bethel Life is set into zones where the speaker can move around instead of standing stagnant behind the pulpit. Terry is frequently one of those speakers on stage, walking his path with the “PTZ camera following me like a monster.” The end result though, as he notes, is gorgeous.
The camera operator at Bethel is no longer locked onto the joystick, and he has time to think ahead about the camera shots he wants to get. “He’s basically just watching the HuddleCam work,” Terry quips. “At the end of the day, I would say the technology frees us up to be better and more efficient for the Kingdom of God.”
