Why Facebook Live is not ideal for churches

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Live streaming is an incredibly effective tool for engaging your audience and expanding your reach beyond your church's walls. Some churches live stream their services using powerful, feature-rich live streaming platforms built with the needs of churches in mind, but others choose to use free options like Facebook Live that don't have as many features.

Facebook Live is appealing for many churches because it’s free to use and familiar to most people. However, Facebook Live should not be the only live streaming solution for your church because it is not built with churches in mind and is significantly limited when compared to dedicated live streaming solutions.

Instead, churches will get the most value out of partnering with a specialized live streaming provider that offers syndication to Facebook. This strategy will offer your church robust features that Facebook alone cannot provide, while giving you a simple way to share your message and expand your reach.  

Here are the top reasons why Facebook Live is not an ideal live streaming platform for churches: 

Copyright issues 

Many churches have licensing agreements to legally use copyrighted music during church services. However, when this copyrighted material is used during your church’s Facebook Live streams, it is automatically detected and may be deemed a violation of their terms. This often results in your video being muted or taken down without warning or explanation, causing frustration for you and your audience.  

Additionally, the algorithms used by Facebook to scan for copyrighted material don’t take into account any existing licenses your church may have acquired. Since this process is automated, Facebook may mistakenly mark your church’s live streamed content as violating copyright. This will make the process of unmuting or restoring your streams a tedious back-and-forth with Facebook—if you’re even able to get ahold of them. Facebook Live is more concerned about copyright violations than the needs of your church and your audience.  

Live streaming platforms like Subsplash Live do not have this issue because they are compatible with copyright licenses for churches. This allows your church to use music covered from your copyright license during live streaming in addition to your in-person services, website, and apps. The responsibility to comply with copyright laws primarily lies with your church rather than the live streaming platform.  

Lack of support

When something goes wrong with Facebook Live streams for church services, it’s up to your church to fix the problem. Facebook does not offer a support team to help you troubleshoot and also has limited and outdated support articles.  

The best live streaming solutions have dedicated support teams whose main job is to help you with your church’s live streams and equip you for success. In-depth phone support from product experts, live training webinars, and detailed, up-to-date articles are just a few things that Facebook Live doesn’t provide for churches but that churches can get with the top live streaming solutions.

No content ownership

Initially, using Facebook Live for church services seems appealing because it’s a “free” and familiar platform. However, a huge price churches pay to get those benefits is giving up control and ownership of your content.

As soon as you stream on Facebook Live, Facebook owns your church’s live streamed content and ultimately has the ability to edit, distribute, and even monetize it. Plus, they can take down or mute your content if portions are deemed to be against their guidelines. This gives your church little to no control over the gospel-centered content you worked so hard to create and share with your community.  

With live streaming providers like Subsplash Live you never have to worry about ownership disputes. Dedicated providers give you ownership over your own content while still allowing you to extend your reach on social platforms like Facebook.  

No website or app presence  

Your meaningful live streamed church content is meant to be seen and shared. Having a solution that ensures your audience can be engaged regardless of their device or location is crucial. 

Facebook’s main priority is monetizing content—including live streams of church services—and keeping users engaged with their social media platform in any way they can. Your content can quickly become buried and hard to find among advertisements, “related” videos, and other distractions.

Subsplash Live allows your content to be streamed on your church’s mobile app, TV app, and website giving you a clean, branded experience. Unlike with Facebook Live, the only content users see is your own.

No multi-channel syndication

If Facebook Live is the only live streaming solution your church uses, the reach of your live broadcasts is limited to people who remember to tune in to your Facebook page or respond to a notification alerting them that you’re broadcasting. This is not ideal because if you’re making the effort to live stream your services, your broadcasts should appear on every digital medium available to you.  

The best live streaming providers for churches simultaneously stream your content to your app and website, as well as YouTube and Facebook Live through syndication. This allows your church to extend your reach to social media platforms while still giving you the benefits of using a robust live streaming solution: access to customer support, in-depth analytics, ability to schedule live streams, web integrations, and more.

In addition to simultaneously streaming to your preferred devices and channels, it’s never been easier to keep your audience informed about your church’s live streams! Subsplash Live is fully integrated with the rest of the Subsplash Platform. This means that the same dashboard you use to manage your streams also allows you to schedule and send push notifications to inform your audience about upcoming live streams, available on-demand recordings, and more.        

Limited media management

Your church’s Facebook Live videos are replayable as on-demand media later, but editing and distributing this content can be tedious and difficult. Using Facebook Live is time-consuming for your church, as it requires you to manually download and upload recorded content across other platforms in order to share it anywhere beyond the Facebook platform.  

Dedicated live streaming platforms offer far better media management. With Subsplash Live, you are able to create and manage all of your media content from your dashboard and then easily distribute it to multiple channels.

For example, when your live streams have finished, you can have them automatically appear as on-demand content on your app and website—no download, editing, and reuploading required. This makes it far less time-consuming to provide your community with easy-to-access on-demand content. 

Using Facebook Live for church services is an option if you’re looking into live streaming, but it absolutely should not be your church’s only live streaming solution due to its many faults and limitations. Finding a robust live streaming solution built specifically for churches, while simultaneously offering syndication to Facebook Live, is the best way to support your media team and keep your audience engaged with your content.  

Ready to learn how your organization can better engage your audience anytime, anywhere with Subsplash Live? Check it out!

Already a Subsplash Client? Log in to your Subsplash Dashboard to instantly add Subsplash Live today, or schedule a call with your Client Success Manager!