Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Pro AV today. I'm your host, Ben Thomas. If you know my story at all, my story is heavily involved in church technology, especially when it comes to things like live streaming and production and AV setups, things like that. When you look at technology, it's actually informing our houses of worship really in a lot of different places. Right? Whether that's facilities management, volunteer scheduling, things like tithing, all of these ecosystems now have been brought together. And historically, when you look at the the world of churches and house of worship, it's been a little bit slower and a little bit more reluctant at times to adopt these technologies. So wanted to have a conversation today with someone who really has not only an incredible voice for the industry, but someone who has an incredible vision for the industry. And that's Colin Jones over at Pushpay. Colin, thanks so much for coming on the show today. Yeah, thank you, Ben, and it's been fun getting to know you in the process, and I don't know if people know, but Lake Point is a great church. Fun to have that connection too. Absolutely. Yeah. That was that was one of the churches that I I'd spent some time at previously and had the opportunity initially back I think probably ten, fifteen years ago to to get a a chance to meet you. But for those folks who don't know, Colin, you you helped launch the Resi brand. Right? One of the most prolific still, one of the most prolific brands in church live streaming. If you would just give us a little bit of background about how you got into the industry and maybe how you landed where you're at now. Yeah. So we were at Chase Oaks Church, which is a few miles away from Lake Point in North Dallas, and we had we had a campus And two guys, one named Paul, and then the other Brad. So Paul Martel and Brad Wright Meyer. One of them was working at Cisco. The other one was at Hewlett Packard. We didn't have anything that could stream well over the public Internet, so we had two lines of, you know, gigabit fiber. But and I think it was even in in PLS type connection like dedicated network to the other campus, but we would saw blips and then the video would stop and, you know, there'd be two hundred people in the room looking at a frozen man on the screen. And, you know, people didn't like, you know, people did, but a lot of people didn't like the idea of the video campus. At first, they liked the idea of it being close to their home and their community and neighboring well. But video is one of the obstacles that we had to get over right. And so that didn't that didn't help us at all launching campuses. So they built a solution that uses, like, a short delay and makes it statistically perfect on the other side, so nobody knows that it's delayed. But, you know, and it's this is what's called resilient streaming protocol. It's patented, and it resends and corrects video. And then a few years later, that made a lot of sense as everybody started streaming on to, you know, devices like phones and all the social medias and your own platforms and your own apps and TV apps, etcetera. To do over the, you know, use the same resiliency online because seventy percent of people are gone by the second buffering wheel. And so we had that product that was growing pretty good and then COVID happened, and then fifty the fifty percent of churches that had that, you know, immediately went two hundred. So they had to they had to get it going in, you know, five days. That was a crazy time for us. And now, you know, I think streaming and video and media is becoming a bigger deal in churches, so now, you know, certainly video and on demand video live streaming all of the above, churches are realizing kind of the power of content and both training their existing members and helping them with growth, and also, you know, bringing in new people. Oh, I I love that that your roots really are in that live streaming and broadcast world. Right? Because we actually both share very, very similar stories. And what was cool about being on staff in a church is is it's easy to be centrally focused on whether it's the video production, whether it's the streaming, the online campus, things like that. But what happens is when you're embedded there, you start to become privy to some of the other things that happen. Right? Whether it's the tithing tools or the facilities management, the room scheduling, things like that. And and that's one of the the things too that I wanted to to ask about. Right? Obviously, Pushpay, which now is is kind of the parent company of of resi, offers a lot of those things, and it's really interesting from from a a production standpoint, those are often things we didn't think about. But how are some of the ways or really what are some of the ways that you're seeing folks, whether it's getting in through the the live streaming gateway But what are some of the ways that you're seeing folks really adopt these these larger use cases of technologies and churches? Yeah. That's a great question. I think you know, zoom out. We did a two two thousand twenty two state of the church technology where we surveyed a bunch of different churches and technologies they use, what they're gonna use in the future. And there are some interesting data points in that that kind of help. I think I think right now what we learned one of the things that we learned from there, is that people are really interested in the integration and consolidation of those tools to get a data story for a person. Right? And so to know that, you know, at scale, but to know that hey, we can move people into next steps. So these people that maybe haven't attended yet, we can hopefully get into a campus or who haven't been in a group yet, we can to get them involved or volunteering, whatever. And, you know, so I think, like, you know, ten fifteen, the last ten fifteen, twenty years, you had a lot of people buying technology to kind of solve problems from efficiencies like, hey, I want to you know, be able to manage my my members easier and email them easier, so we're gonna get a people management solution. And then now, probably most people have solutions, and they're worried about the strategic growth part of it more, which is fun. So, like, how can I, you know, know and grow my my members better? And so the at at Pushpay, we have a solution called search stack, which is basically like our all in one, one ecosystem, one data, that carries forward that has, you know, tons of different features like an app and people management and giving and, you know, streaming you know, all of a part of that. And they all integrate different layers. We're we're investing a lot integration right now because, you know, they're all different solutions that we're bringing in together. But things like features like call to action buttons on the stream that then take you to pages that are relevant for what that user's watching, there's different we're we're, you know, working a lot on our analytics right now to where you can tell, you know, what's really going on in your church? I think that COVID created a lot of confusion and change for churches, and we're all just trying to figure it out right now, so we had online attendants go crazy, like some people during Easter that would normally have five thousand people watching at a hundred thousand. Right? All of a sudden, and then after COVID, not as many people are in the room as for most churches, as they were before. They're coming back and it's steadily growing, and some churches are are higher than before COVID, but most aren't, you know, most don't have that story. An online attendance is still going pretty strong, not as not as high as it was, but still pretty strong. And so we you know, our whole church really you know, or maybe twenty to fifty percent of our church turned over. Right? And so you have some some engagement challenges there that technology can help solve Well, I wanna talk about a little bit more about the physical manifestation of the technology too. We've spent some time obviously talking about platforms and back end providers. One of the biggest conversations really that we've been having for, you know, twenty plus years is technology on stage or technology in the actual worship experience itself. You know, on a high level, talk about some of the ways maybe that that live streaming technology, whether it's through lighting or Cenic design has actually been elevated. Right? So whether it's it's I need to buy more appropriate lighting for my staging or I need to make sure that there's actual the field. What are some of the ways that those platforms have actually continued to inform the physical manifestation of that worship experience? Yeah. For people not in the church AVL audio video lighting world, it blows people's minds when they come into, you know, most of these churches experiences. In stages. And so, you know, like like, now there's a big trend towards cinema cameras. Right? So, like, a typical modern church would have, you know, some some broadcast or cinema cameras like Chase Oaks and just moved red, which which look pretty great. And, you know, the NVIDIA switchers, and lighting, and movers, and sometimes even some moving camera systems that are pretty complex. And then, you know, all the things, right, audio boards, etcetera. PA is now immersive audio is even a thing. Some people are doing some immersive audio strategies, which are pretty cool. And, you know, you can use ResY Helps with that because you can send you can send different audio channels to different campuses. So, yeah, I think things are in COVID really exploded. From an ABL experience in churches, and now, you know, I think most people know, like, there's not much patience for audio and video quality to be bad, not because people aren't just because the world progressed so fast, and when you're watching videos online, you know, the things that we're used to watching have really great audio video quality, and so it took churches a while to come up to that, and COVID I think is the bump that they probably needed. For the for the average church to actually invest in that, you know, and I think it paid off probably now they now people can actually listen to their to their message is. Right? In room and out of it. So Well, one thing I always love too about churches, and this is this is typically where you start drawing some hard differentiations between like traditional AV verticals and the House of worship and even some of the non profit stuff as well is so much of what happens in churches and even Technical Theater and non profits and things like that is so heavily volunteer driven that the the the ABL world has had to adapt dramatically to make the user experience simplified. Right? Whether that's through live streaming. Right? Now, I've got I've got gooeys and interfaces literally on laptop where I can run all my switching, I can run all my lower thirds. Shout out pro presenter, by the way, because pro presenter saved me a million times renewed vision. You you guys are the best. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that. You guys didn't pay for this though, so I I guess I'm allowed to to plug another product. But No. They're actually a big partner, so you can stream to Resi from Prober's center. See, there you go. See So and pro presenter is awesome. Yeah. I always tell people that, like so this, by the way, is not a paid segment. By any stretch of the imagination. People don't pay to be on this show, so we can have good conversations. But I it's just so funny to look at that technology. Right? Because I I grew up in traditional broadcast settings and live event settings where it was almost a crime to run things off of a laptop. Right? And everything was I had to have my my massive consoles, and I've gotta have, you know, I've gotta have all my SDI and my fiber and my triacs run directly to my cameras and don't even mess with Ethernet. And we literally have simplified all of these things because it it's Well, now technically, it can be done, but we have so many people in our in our communities, whether it's the volunteers or or whatever, operating these systems that have been historically so technologically advanced. Like, how how have you seen some of that? And even from the resi side, how are some of the ways that you guys have been able to adapt to that? Yeah. I mean, I think if you, you know, if you take Lake Point, my understanding, they used to be on satellite. Right? Which is nice. All all sat campuses. Yeah. Which if you think of, you know, that's a crazy amount of infrastructure. You know, you have to have encoders and decoders and dishes and adjustments to the dishes whether they're automatic or not. And you have to pay for satellite time and it's it's a pretty massive undertaking. Right? And you know, there's no There's no ease to to to installing infrastructure like that. You know, the volunteer can't can't do that unless they work for you know, a broadcast company or something on the side, which is also the benefit that churches have since everybody wants to help for free, which is awesome. But the Yeah. And your point about technology getting so much easier because of volunteers, you're right, and it's also a cost thing, you know, like churches can't pay as much for either the staff or the actual technology, right, as some of these other budgets. And so it's forced innovation and, like, you know, you take propresenter, like, you can, you know even three years ago, you couldn't do as much on propresenters you can do today, you know, just with You can run multiple screens, LED walls, you know, you can stream all from one device. Right? And it's always a resource thing you gotta be careful and test it, but pretty crazy how many different devices you, you know, had to have even three to five years ago for something that you could do with one she know. Well, it's so interesting too, and I'll stick on that for a second because I remember there was a studio that I was I was building for a cable news contributor probably five or six years ago. And I suspect in pro presenter. Right? Because they needed to be able to change their TV backgrounds. In some cases, they were running their own show, running their own lower thirds. And, you know, software and technology. Resi very much included in this, by the way, was kind of shoe horned and pigeonholed into the oh, this is a church Right? This is only good for this. And the reality is is as we've evolved, you're exactly right whether it's from a cost standpoint or use usability standpoint. A lot of those technologies have been assimilated into the the larger ecosystem of business. Right? And and even from a push based standpoint too, talk about some of the ways that that you've seen that technology evolve in in people even outside a traditional house of worship and volunteer nonprofit. Spaces, adapt, and use that tech? Yeah. And resi has a lot of corporate customers. We have a lot of schools, a lot of different random corporate use cases like things like Spotify and camping world and, you know, a bunch of concert and music venues some really cool, like, you know, orchestras around the world that need good quality production. And then, you know, things like we we are less common in sports because of the delay, but we do a lot of, like, you know, we have, like, the pickleball and, you know, things that People aren't getting the SPN notifications on their phone. You know, Rezy can do well, so like Spartan races used to be a big one that they're going out to all these crazy places and streaming stuff and And so, yeah, there's a lot of fun use cases. And as you know in the ABL world, you get into a lot of funny and cool situations. So, like, I remember in the beginning of COVID Tech nine is a big resy customer, and he he do all these concerts, you know. And I would have never listened to Tech nine, but, you know, it's pretty cool. And there's a lot of just random things like that. And on push pay, like they have quite a bit of the, like, in the in the military kind of applications like the chaplains and or the chaplains and different things like that. And so those are cool use cases. And yeah, I think, obviously, like, technology just spans so widely. Right? Like, if you're you're talking about, like, financial services, you know, you have different things specific for them. But with with kind of audio video lighting technology, you know, there's no real difference between a church setup and, you know, a theater setup or a concert venue setup. And a lot of the venues rent them out too. So, you know, I don't know if you guys did that at a lake point, but it's more and more common now for churches to wanna use their building throughout the week. And so they'll they'll build them, you know, not only from like a architecture standpoint, to be used throughout the week by different conferences or concerts or whatever corporate meetings. But also, they'll build out their tech stacks where people can come in and, you know, use the existing tech stack. I'd I did more convocations and graduations and concerts and all kinds of stuff, maybe then I did actual services itself because you're you're right. Right? I mean, the the demand for these technologies Yeah. The the it's it's hilarious because the demand for these technologies and obviously space is so high. And and that's one of the the things too, especially in the post COVID world, if you go to the n a b's and and shows like that, you know, t a b's, so many different great organizations, especially on the broadcast side. You see that there's been this focus towards usability and ease of use and just simplicity. Right? We've we've moved largely away from the okay. I need seventeen engineers to install this and then they've gotta be there just in case everything needs troubleshooting. Now it's you plug in don't shoot me for saying this, but you plug in an HDMI cable, and in most cases, you're good to go. Like, So it's it's insane. But, you know, last question here, and then we'll wrap, you know, my my motto for technology is that we leverage technology to empower human experience. Right? And and that may not be more true than in church or house of worship, or even nonprofit settings. Right? Talk about some of the ways that that not only through live streaming, but also maybe some of that ABL as well as just know, even some of those human resources technologies help really serve the the attendance, the audience community, things like that. Yeah. I think about our app. So we have we have a really cool app. You know, in churches, I think right now seventy from our data, sixty eight percent of churches have apps, which, you know, that's a lot higher than five years ago. I don't know the exact number five years ago, but I remember thinking five years ago like, why would a church have an app? Like, you know, I only use five apps on my phone. Like, churches just won't have the resources to make it a good experience, you know, like, it probably won't work that well, and these the numbers of churches that, like, have apps, plus Like like, I forget, I I probably shouldn't say the church name, but there's this one church. It's not that big. They've had a million app downloads, and they they use, you know, a lot of people use their app. And it's because they they focus on the content side, and I think, you know, market scale does a great job of this, where you work, is, you know, and empowering companies to do this is like, now, from a marketing standpoint, like almost every company that wants to reach people or get their brand out, has to become a media company, to an extent, or at least have a big media content arm or invest in that in some other way. Like hiring a company to do that, doing it themselves, you know, there's lots of ways to do that, and, you know, platforms and technologies that make that easier are, you know, greatly increasing. And so I think, like, we're really focused on that as a company of how can we do the data in the back end to try to drive people to churches. So if the church wants to reach more people, how do we help them get their vision mission out? How do we help them a difference in their community, and then how do they help know their congregation. So at scale, target can do some really interesting things. They can they're really good at making me buy more stuff. But what if churches get to use that for good? So they're really good at helping people volunteer, connect with a purpose, or whatever, and so we're trying to build technology solutions that can do that, and different integrations are really key to that. Right? Like with Target, I can buy stuff from in person online, I can go pick something up, and they don't care what kind of channel I go. They just want the in act of the dollar coming in their pockets. In churches, we don't care what kind of channel or we do to an extent, but we just wanna help impact your life for good. Right? And so the the ways to do that across the app, you know, the actual live stream, which is deployed on social medias and your website, and, you know, depending your strategy, and then also like the giving and the volunteering and the, you know, the check-in, child check-in, all of that stuff can be used together to make more people come back, to make more people get into educational content, you know, to help people get connected in different ways, and so the technology journey I think is really key to that and and push pays trying really hard, you know, that's where we're spending all of our time. Almost, and, you know, of course, security and things like that are big right now too and taking up a lot of time. But but to make that journey for for the person coming into the church, you know, way easier than ten years ago with technology for churches. We'll call on look. We appreciate you coming on the show today. We've gotta have you back on. I mean, this is a conversation that that we get questions about all the time, especially just with both of our networks being so heavily rooted in houses of worship. These are conversations that we have all the time. Also, wanna shout out. There's a show here in Dallas that happens, I believe in in October called CFX. Great opportunity for for folks to learn a little bit more, follow along with them. But, Colin, we appreciate you coming on Joe today and sharing some of your insight. Yeah. Thanks so much, Ben. It's great to have the time together. And we appreciate you all for tuning in and watching our Conversation with Colin today. Be sure to subscribe, like, and follow along for the next episode of ProAV today.
