The Pulse: Behind the Scenes

One year ago TODAY we had our very first online service stream from GFC’s campus. In response to our decision at that time to go online-only for a few weeks (or so we thought), our tech team put together a streaming solution with little to no notice and the meeting place of Grace Fellowship became homes all throughout the Tri-Cities.

Our Technical Director, Jamie Ivey, made a comment that sums up this transition and the season that followed: “It’s been one year since we cobbled together the first GFC broadcast system in just over 24 hours. Over the next few months, it evolved nearly a dozen times into a labyrinth of daisy-chained components as feature after feature was requested to support ministry operations.”

We now have a much more stable, strategic, and user-friendly streaming solution due in large part to the incredibly hard work of staff like Jamie Ivey and Jordan Ray behind the scenes. I’m so grateful for their flexibility, diligence, and eager hearts to serve our church.

The reason our online streaming strategy has been important over the past year is because our mission is important… building a community to reach a community. We remind our staff often that while our mission does not change, our methods do. And if we are not willing to adapt our methods as our context and the needs of people change, then our mission’s impact will suffer.

At the end of the day, technology is a means to an end. GFC has been and will always be about people. But as we’ve learned this past year, online ministry is an effective tool to help us reach people with God’s grace. Just as one small glimpse into that, take a look at the various streaming locations for yesterday’s worship service!

It’s great to be gathering again onsite, and I can’t wait for more of us to gather together in person as things open up and folks start to feel comfortable. But I’m grateful that we can connect online also, and that by God’s grace, people can grow and participate in what God is doing through that medium.

“All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.” 2 Cor. 4:15

Matt

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