ORLANDO, Fla./Christian Newswire – This Easter, hundreds of millions of people worldwide will go to church. But not everyone will come through the front doors. A growing number of believers will worship where they are using their laptops, tablets, smartphones and other streaming devices.
“More and more houses of worship are starting to explore the idea of live church streaming,” says Chris Gerrish, founder of Stream Monkey. “In fact, the fastest growing segment in many churches today are those who have never set foot in the building.”
Gerrish is something of a legend in church streaming. In 2009, he built one of the first Web apps for live streaming services on the iPhone. In 2010, he created the first-ever live church streaming channel for the Roku media player — which gave rise to the now-ubiquitous “religion-and-spirituality” category in Roku’s channel store. He even helped LifeChurch.TV launch their channel on Roku and has helped other churches do the same.
Over the last several years, he has traveled the world helping set up live streaming at churches in Ukraine, Brazil, China and Egypt.
He started Stream Monkey in 2011 while working at one of the largest churches in America. You might say he had a monkey on his back:
“Over and over again, our CDN kept failing. So we decided to create a backup system, and it worked! Eventually, we began to realize we’re spending a lot of money on a primary CDN that’s significantly less reliable than our much-cheaper backup system. So after repeated failures, we decided to flip the equation — make the backup the primary. Low and behold, it didn’t fail.”
Gerrish began hearing from other churches about their CDNs failing and having to constantly apologize to their online worshipers for technical difficulties. What initially began as a homegrown solution for his own congregation became a means to help other churches experience the same freedom from failure.
While other CDNs promise, Stream Monkey delivers ultra-reliable live streaming to PCs and across multiple platforms, including all major mobile and streaming devices — iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Roku and iPad. All for as little as $99 a month.
Along with live church streaming, Stream Monkey offers simple video on demand that will enable churches to deliver content throughout the week, along with the ability to track viewership and identify trends.
“Our focus is to provide stellar service to everyone, especially churches,” Gerrish adds. “We can only go by what our clients tell us … Stream Monkey answers the phone, replies to emails and most importantly, we keep their live streams streaming.”
Stream Monkey is an ideal choice for churches who are already streaming and are looking to upgrade their CDN service without breaking the bank. “We can work with any encoder, so almost as soon as a church signs up, they can start streaming,” Gerrish says. “And they will most likely end up reaching more viewers than before, because they’ll be able to stream to almost any device out there.”
For churches that have never streamed and are starting from scratch, Stream Monkey can put them on the right path: “They end up building their viewership on a service that is rock solid. So their viewers are happy, and their audience continues to grow because it’s so easy to use.”
The benefits of live church streaming are manifold, Gerrish explains. Live church streaming can be utilized by people who don’t currently have a church home. It’s a non-threatening way for newcomers to check out your church for the first time. It’s also a vital tool for members of the congregation — the member who is in the hospital, the elderly person who doesn’t have a ride to church, the family that has a sick child, the businessman who is traveling — who can engage in their church’s worship service through live streaming.
He concludes, “People today live on the Internet. The church absolutely has to be there. It can be on a school campuses, coffee shops, living rooms. It’s a means of evangelizing, fellowship, worship and ministry like no other.”
Try the service for free, no credit card required, at www.streammonkey.com.
Source: www.streammonkey.com