Showing General Assembly Video in Your Sunday Service

Your congregation can live-stream the Sunday morning worship service into your sanctuary as part or all of your own Sunday worship. This is a great way to connect your congregation with General Assembly (GA).

Schedule

The Sunday Morning Worship will be held on June 25, 2023. This powerful, communal worship experience will stream at 8:00 Pacific / 9:00 Mountain / 10:00 Central / 11:00 Eastern. Members of the public are welcome to view the service. For technical reasons, the ability to pause and rewind won’t be available. We recommend starting your Zoom meeting 15 to 20 minutes before the stream begins to allow folks time to join, ask questions, and chat with each other. Soon after the stream begins, the Sunday Worship will be posted on UUA.org for on-demand viewing.

The worship will be shown on General Assembly 2023 Public Video (which will include both the video itself and a link to the video on YouTube), and the UUA's Facebook page.

Consider testing your setup in advance either by showing a YouTube video or by showing one of the General Session live streams on Friday or Saturday. This is highly recommended if you are planning on using the DVR functionality.

Technology

Here are general instructions for showing GA video at an event, with two specific approaches described below.

Option 1: Restream the Service in a Zoom Meeting

BenefitsThis method is easier for attendees (all they need to do is Join your Zoom meeting).

Challenges: Voice chat is not feasible during the stream and video quality will suffer a bit.

This takes advantage of the screensharing function in Zoom to broadcast the Sunday Service stream to everyone in the meeting. Once the Zoom meeting has been started, a Zoom Host or Co-host can screenshare with “Optimize Screen Sharing for Video Clip” and “Share computer sound”:

  1. Start your Zoom meeting before the Sunday Worship service is to begin.

  1. Open a web browser to Sunday Worship.

  1. Click the full-screen icon in the player to enlarge the video player.

  1. Switch back to the Zoom window. Use Alt-Tab (on Windows) or Command-Tab (on a Mac) to switch among your running applications while leaving the video player full-screen.

  1. Click the Share Screen button at the bottom of the screen.

  1. Check the “Optimize Screen Sharing for Video Clip” and “Share computer sound” buttons.

  1. Click the Share button. The congregation can now see your video player.

  2. Start the video player. The congregation can now see the video playing.

  1. When the stream is over click the “Stop Share” button in Zoom.

Tips: 

  • If you have two monitors, you can full-screen the GA Sunday Service stream on one display and have Zoom share that.

  • During the stream you may want to use the “Mute All” button to avoid folks having trouble hearing the stream over each other.

  • Encourage folks to use the chat for reactions during the service.

Option 2: Gather on Zoom but Watch the Stream Separately

BenefitsThis will result in a higher quality video stream to participants and voice chat during the stream may be possible. Depending on their technology some users may be able to watch the live stream on a large display like a TV while joining your Zoom meeting on another device.

Challenges: This requires more effort from attendees since they need to join a Zoom call and separately view a video in their browser.

The idea here is simple: everyone watches the stream “on their own, together”. To set this up:

  1. Start a Zoom call for your congregants to join. Start it before the Sunday Worship service is to begin.

  1. Direct attendees to open Sunday Morning Worship. The video stream will start about 10 minutes before service begins, but it will just be slide and music until the start time.

Tips: 

  • During the stream you may want to selectively mute participants if audio from the service is being picked up in Zoom via their microphone.

  • It may be helpful to prepare a slide with instructions for accessing the Sunday Service stream that can be displayed in the Zoom meeting for attendees.

Backup Plan

A backup plan is always a good idea. More than one is even better:

  • If our stream doesn't work, plan to show the 2019 Sunday Morning Worship: In This Delicate Turning.
  • For in-person services: If your projector stops working (perhaps the bulb burns out), plan to listen to the audio anyway, perhaps with slides your congregation took at previous GAs.
  • If nothing works, plan a discussion (for online services) or a hymn sing (for in-person services)!
Five worship leaders in colorful stoles and holding large black folders appear on stage during the worship

2019 Sunday Morning Worship Leaders

2019 Sunday Morning Worship

In This Delicate Turning