Thank you to everyone who has attended live worship services online and in the sanctuary! A special thank you to everyone who has shared feedback with the Worship Team. The number one issue reported has been sound levels. We continue to learn new ways to improve this for everyone, and many have found headphones or earbuds to be a helpful way to listen to the service online.
We recently moved online worship services to Youtube for a trial period. Youtube is a great platform for worship on the technical side of things. Youtube is stable and does not receive a lot of updates, especially compared to Zoom which updates on Saturday nights, sometimes resulting in a lot of stress for our tech team on Sunday mornings! Youtube is compatible with our new software and is more secure, compared to Zoom where others in the Zoom meeting can affect the streaming video. Also video and audio quality are generally better in Youtube than Zoom.
Youtube contains a comment section that is public while the video is posted on Youtube. After the service we remove the video from our streaming Youtube channel @dentonuufellowship and remove the comments and move it to our original Youtube channel @dentonunitarianuniversalistfellowship as an unlisted video. Then we place a link to the video on our website here (embed this link please: https://dentonuuf.org/our-faith/sermons-2/ ) Why would we do all of that?! We discovered that our Youtube channel was too old for streaming and so we had to create another one. And we love having full worship services on our website so that the service is not interrupted by ads.
One perk of Zoom is the ability to see the participants’ names and faces. Unfortunately, Youtube does not have that option. Other church worship teams who use Youtube have told us that when everyone posts a note in the comment section on Youtube, it helps create a sense of community, like the Zoom chat. Some ways to comment in the comment section: type “The chalice is lit in my home!” when the chalice is lit in the sanctuary; type “good morning” to the chat moderators when they share information; say hello when a friend shares a comment; and share when something in the service is meaningful to you. The Youtube chat is public, but because the video is removed from Youtube, the comments will not remain visible.
If you do not use Youtube or have an older Google/Gmail account, you may be asked to “Create a Channel” when you first click to share a comment. For many folks, one click creates your channel and lets you begin commenting. If you do not have a Google/Gmail account, there may be a few more steps involved. Check out https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/69961?hl=en for tips, or email us at [email protected] so we can help.
We know that worship services are a complicated mix of technology, performance, belief, community, and heart. We will continue to evaluate how Youtube is working in all those areas, and we value your comments. You can reach us at [email protected].
We will continue to post select content on our original Youtube channel here (embed link: https://www.youtube.com/user/dentonuuf/featured), and share the full service on our website here (https://dentonuuf.org/our-faith/sermons-2/ ). And you can join worship live on Youtube on Sundays at 9:30 am here (embed https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_gXLdkfJuEGWf8IBkFL1xQ )