Seacoast Internet Campus
There is a new virtual venue at Seacoast Church. A couple of staff members from Seacoast have posted plugs for this beta campus. Shawn Wood is the Creative Pastor and my friend Trace Pupke is the IT Director for Seacoast. I have not seen the new service in action, but I plan to check it out in the next few weeks. You can check out the Internet Campus for yourself at Seacoast.org. Pastor Shawn gives credit to LifeChurch.tv for inspiring this project at Seacoast.
This new Internet Campus is not the only place where Seacoast is making move regarding technology. Our Seacoast Summerville Campus will be getting a behind the scenes technical upgrade this weekend. I also found an article on Light Cast Media featuring an interview with Pastor Shawn where he talked about how Seacoast has moved to outsourcing the streaming video for the church instead of doing it all in house.
These upgrades may not sound like that big of a deal, but you would have to see a Seacoast satellite campus in production mode to appreciate these changes. I have been a part of some very fragile and nerve racking moments as a Seacoast Summerville tech team volunteer. The delivery process of a Sunday morning message at Seacoast Summerville has some single points of failure which have been tested a time or two. I remember one Sunday morning when the equipment trailer was MIA. This particular trailer held the sound board (affectionately named “The Ark”), the video switching gear, the lighting system, along with most of the items used to stock the information and small group tables. The Ark and everything else was finally delivered and the service was went on without a hitch. I remember a conversation I had with Pastor Phil after that service where I asked him what the back up plan was if our technical team was unable to deliver the recorded message using the overhead projectors and the sound system. As I expected, there was a good plan. He said that he would deliver a live message. He did say that having to deliver a complete message was nowhere near his greatest concern when it comes to equipment failure. Pastor Phil said that it would be way more difficult to pick up in the middle of a message that had already begun playing from a recording of another pastor.
I have to say that Seacoast has come a long way in technology, and it still amazes me how so many people can be reached in a rented space with a week old video taped message. I have heard our senior pastor say that we have more people attending Seacoast via satellite campuses than we have attending the original Mount Pleasant campus where many of the sermons are still delivered live. I think we are averaging somewhere around 600 people between two services at Summerville and we are nowhere near the largest satellite campus. I am pretty sure that the West Ashley Campus tips the four digit mark on their attendance numbers on a regular basis. The big difference between the Summerville Campus and most of the other large campuses is that we are in a rented space that we can only occupy between on Sunday mornings. We walk into an empty room at 7am to set up and deliver two services at 9:30 and 11:15. Then we tear it all down and load it into trailers. Tomorrow is a big day for Seacoast Summerville because we will be coming together as a church to pray for God’s direction and provision for a more permanent building to have worship services.
One place where technology is being implemented is at the heart of the leadership and personal spiritual growth training for the church. A web site called MyNextSteps plays a key role in providing tools and lessons to disciple small group leaders and help all Seacoast members become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.
I expect the new Internet Campus to be a huge success. This new venue and the technical upgrades to Summerville and other areas of Seacoast are testimonies to the commitment of the Seacoast staff to deliver the highest quality worship experience to every single person who attends a Seacoast service.