Youth Pastor Austin Powell of Tapestry Church is a decidedly modern man of the cloth. To spread his message, he utilizes every technological tool at his disposal — a sleek and modern web presence, a blog and even an e-commerce site and podcast. So, after hearing about Ustream from friends and checking it out for himself, Powell and his fellow Pastor have embraced this technology too. Besides broadcasting live, Tapestry Church also makes the most of Ustream's video on demand feature, posting recorded sermons, highlights of musical worship moments and visits from guest speakers for 24/7 viewing — on any device (including cell phones and tablets), anywhere in the world. “We broadcast every Sunday morning, and sometimes for mid week special services.”
Beginning in 2010 by exploring Ustream's free service, Powell quickly discovered the deep value streaming live video added to his outreach, and has since become a paid subscriber to Ustream's uber-reliable and dependable Pro Broadcasting platform, “Since we switched to Pro, we have experienced little to no problems.”
Pastor Powell believes in the power of streaming and encourages other congregations to consider it as well. “[Streaming] will help other churches reach far more people than they could with just a simple Sunday service. Ustream allows church members on vacation, shut-ins, and people who want to learn more about your church to come and watch everything that is going on.”
How have Pastor Powell's parishioners responded? “They love it, we have people from all over the world that watch out stream.”
For organizations with a message to spread, the greatest benefit of Ustreaming lies in the technology's global reach. Ustream is helping Pastor Powell to spread the word of Tapestry Church to a larger audience, one not limited to a church building, city or even a country.
“We are able to reach people and allow a greater level of access to our services than we ever though possible.”
“Ustream is enabling us to reach people without having them to be here: people who don't want to go to church, people who are too busy to go to church, people who physically can't go to church and that's the coolest part about Ustream.”
For small community congregations such as Tapestry Church, Ustream provides outreach solutions in the form of affordable “technology that's giving people a way to tune in when they don't have the ability to be here...People can “try out” the church without being in the building. How cool is it for people to be able to just jump on a website and be able to watch live?”
