I'm glad you mentioned the iPhone as a recording device. I've been using mine to record my sermons for over a year and it works great, clear sound with no problems. Just remember to put it in airplane mode. At first I didn't, but after losing the second half of a sermon because of a text message interrupting I have ever since.

Our church just overhauled our media center on our website. We're using a video hosting service called Vimeo that we are using to embed our videos onto our website.

Check it out!

http://www.prairielakeschurch.org/media-center/default.aspx

Yes, my fellowship is ridiculously in need of getting this going. It's just been plain laziness on my part for not setting it up for them. Thank you for the encouragement and links to some of the resources to get started.

It's staggering to consider how many sermons have been preached over the years that have only lasted that short time on Sunday morning. I'm sure God has used them in specific ways in the moment, but the Internet is certainly offering a way to easily get it out there now.

-Marshall Jones Jr.

Good info.

Another site to look into for podcast hosting is Sermon.net. We've been using them for quite a while and the tools they offer are very user friendly.

For most churches, I believe that using free applications such as Audacity to edit the file somewhat and clean up the audio a little is a must. While content is key, low quality can be off-putting. I teach classes on this and stress that the content also has to be pleasing to listen to. Degraded quality can be distracting.

Another option, which we utilize: If you have enough space from your web hosting provider, and if you use Wordpress as a backend, you could use the SermonBrowser plugin. With some template tweaks, it looks and works very nicely out of the box. Also allows you to integrate various media types, and with the AudioPlayer plugin, allows you to stream MP3s directly.

We've been using a digital voice recorder hooked directly to the sound system, as you mentioned, and even downsampling the MP3 to 64bit, audio is quite good.

Our pastor preaches from a transcript so, in addition to the audio, you can read the whole thing. The benefits are great - many people learn better through reading, it creates a searchable archive, it's easier to jump to a particular point ... in addition, although I haven't done this yet, you could link to resources throughout the text of the sermon. Oh, plus it makes it available to the hearing impaired (and perhaps even translatable if the need arose?). It's a service I've been excited to offer.
Back to audio - http://www.sermoncloud.com/ is another great resource for podcasting.

One thing to keep in mind... If you are doing this, then remember that everything you say is out there for public record.
Last year we had a former attendee launched into the national spotlight (her name starts with an S, ends with a n, and has arahPali in between). Our 7 years on sermons that were online were harvested by news outlets, bloggers from the left and right, and the opposing political party. (At one point there was 100,000 attempts at downloading...)
So, if you are going to put it out there, make sure they you are aware of what you are saying, and be prepared for people to judge, take it out of context, and to misinterpret it.

The pastor of my church went online a while ago. I have heard him say that before they went online they had a large TV ministry. Now, for a fraction of the cost, they have more people listening and a larger scope, being a world-wide reach. Great post, thank you.

My pastor went online before I started attending the church. Before they went online they had a large local television ministry. But, they made a decision to go online. I have heard him say they have more people listening now, and the reach is global. There are times when the sermon is not recorded or posted due to sensitive nature of the subject or the speaker.
Good post, thank you.

When I started attending my past church they had a radio ministry where they would have an hour long program of music and the sermon. When I left we had switched from tape to cd for the radio and we would typically have the sermon online within 30 minutes after the service ended.

We used a computer connected to one of the outputs on the mixer. Everything was recorded, edited, and exported as mp3 in Audacity. We then made a lower bitrate version in Switch Sound File Converter, and uploaded the lower quality file to a podcasting system called Loudblog on the website server. All the software was free and hosting only cost $9/month for all the storage we need (we have back to 2005 so far). Right now things have stalled because the computer died, but the new one should be running later this week.

As for the new church, they have a CD ministry, but currently have no plans to put anything online. I working on changing that.

I have fairly extensive experience in audio, and quality is more important that you would think. You'd be suprised how distracting a bad recording can be.

I am right there with you and have helped many a ministry over the years get their messages recorded and distributed. My only problem is with the fact that many ministries don't really look at providing their messages as a part of their outreach and service to their communities, but rather see it as another avenue for revenue.

Sermon CDs can cost you from 5 to even 15 bucks and a series can easily run you 50 - 100 bucks or more for 4 or 5 CDs. I understand the concept of "overhead" but it can get ridiculous.

Pardon the pitch here, but if you're looking for a simple way to put your sermons online, you should check out City Gates. The podcasting function is designed just for churches, so sermon audio and video are dead simple to upload - and it comes pre-integrated with iTunes and RSS. Contact me if you're interested! :)

This makes me wonder: what other technologies should churches be making use of?

As audio engineer, specialized in acoustics, I can only agree with Greg. The audio quality needs to be sufficient to warrant good intelligibility. It's not enough to get the message out, it also needs to be understood, don't you think? And the most commonly overlooked thing in churches is the impact of the room acoustics on the recording!
But thanks Kevin for this post and for Buzzsprout that I'm using.

This was a great topic and couldn't come at a better time. Whats the feeling on having your sermons podcast/archived vs. a full 'Online Campus'
The costs are certainly higher, but there seems to be SO much more functionality of a campus. In any capacity, having your message online is a great thing. Good to see people being so innovative!

Good article.

I would agree that you can improve quality later, but I caution that you shouldn't wait too long.

Churches spend thousands on sound systems just so the people in attendance can hear the message. Don't be afraid to spend some time in trimming, cleaning, and amplifying your audio as needed before posting it to the world.

I spend 1-1.5 hours a week tweaking sound files before putting them up on the web. That might seem a bit much, but think about the time that the pastor put into study and composition, and think about the eternal value of the message, and it just makes sense to me.

I pay attention to the places where the pastor moves away (or turns his head away) from the mike, and I give them a boost.

Result: I've actually had people who were part of the live congregation go to the web to listen to the message again and they've left comments that they were able to catch things they missed (or couldn't quite hear) during the live sermon.

"Faith comes from hearing the message" (Rom 10:17)

I did like the article, and I would like to thank the churches that have made posting their messages a priority. I regularly scour the net looking for sermons to listen to throughout the week and have been very blessed by pastors I have never met. Thanks to all of you sisters and brothers who are not hiding your light (or sermons) under a bushel.