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For Life Church in Allentown, PA

Live broadcast · Allentown, PA · March 27, 2024

Inside the Life Church Transition Service broadcast

The night Life Church's founding pastors handed the church to its new lead pastors, our seven-person crew broadcast the whole service to six Life Church sites and anyone watching on YouTube.

By Tony Ellis Martinez · TM Productions

A packed sanctuary seen from high at the back, with pews full, two screens on either side of a lit arch and the band on stage
The high wide from the back of the sanctuary, 0:43:00 into the stream.

Pastors Randy and Maribel Landis started Life Church on January 7, 1990, with 14 people at the George Washington Motor Lodge, and on Wednesday, March 27, 2024, after 34 years of leading it, they handed the church over to Pastors Jon and Andrea Schwartz at a service the church called the Transition Service. It happened at Life Church Allentown, but by then the church had sold its building and gone multi-site, with six locations in and around the Lehigh Valley and more than 5,000 people in the congregation, so a night like that had to reach every one of those buildings live.

We've streamed services for Life Church a number of times, and this was one of the biggest ones we've done for them. The program ran a little over two hours and fifteen minutes, from the first worship set through a history video, recorded tributes, the speakers, the handoff itself and a stage packed with people praying near the end, and six Life Church sites were watching it live while everybody else watched on YouTube.

6SITES WATCHING LIVE
7PEOPLE ON THE CREW
3CAMERA OPERATORS
2+ hrsLIVE PROGRAM

Streaming to six sites

Every Life Church campus was taking the same feed that night, and when the campus pastor opened the service he thanked the thousands of people watching online, so whatever we cut in the room was the service for most of the people who saw it. The room itself was packed too, and one of the speakers said it was great to see a traffic jam on a Wednesday night for church. If the audio had dropped or the stream had stuttered, it would've happened in six buildings at once with a whole congregation in each one staring at a frozen frame, which is honestly a different job than sticking one camera in the back for the folks at home.

The crew

We ran it with seven people, two more than the five we put on every live stream at minimum, and each of them had one job for the whole night.

  • Broadcast directorCalled the shots and cut the program live for the whole service.
  • Camera operators (3)Three operators, and between them the program had a high wide from the back of the room, tight shots on the podium and angles from the floor and from up on the stage.
  • GraphicsRan the on-screen graphics for the stream.
  • AudioMixed the stream audio, which is what six sites and everybody at home were actually hearing.
  • StreamRan the stream itself and kept an eye on it from the first minute to the last.

Frames from the program feed

These nine frames come straight off the program feed, pulled from the YouTube recording with the stream timecode on each one, so this is the same picture all six sites were looking at.

A worship leader with an acoustic guitar under warm stage light, shot over the heads of the crowd
0:35:30Worship
Black and white photos from the early years of Life Church in the history video
0:53:00History video
A recorded video tribute with a name lower third on screen
1:13:00Recorded tribute
A worship leader with a guitar under purple light, with lyrics on the screen behind him
1:20:30Worship
A speaker in a gray jacket at the clear podium
1:28:00Podium
A speaker on stage seen over the heads of the congregation
1:45:30Over the crowd
Two speakers at the podium seen from the side of the stage, with the congregation beyond them
2:10:30Side angle
A handheld shot from the stage behind a speaker, looking out at the front rows
2:23:00Stage handheld
The high wide from the back of the sanctuary under blue light during the closing worship
2:38:00High wide

The handoff to Jon and Andrea Schwartz

In the last hour the founding pastors and the new lead pastors were up on stage together for the handoff, and then the stage filled with people praying, and our cameras had to stay with all of it without anybody up there having to think about where we were.

The view from the stage looking back at the congregation, the balcony and the rose window
The reverse angle from the stage, looking back at the balcony and the rose window, 2:00:30.
Two couples standing at the clear podium on stage, one woman speaking into a microphone
Two couples at the podium during the handoff, 2:25:30.
People on stage with their hands on the shoulders of a couple, praying over them
Prayer on stage near the end of the service, 2:35:30.
The high wide from the back of the sanctuary with the stage full of people and the congregation standing
The high wide as people filled the stage, 2:30:30.

Watch the stream

Life Church kept the full broadcast up on its YouTube channel. The program starts 35 minutes into the recording, so the player below jumps straight there.

Two pastors at the podium with the Transition Service slide on the screen behind them

The full stream on Life Church's YouTube channel, cued to 35:00 where the program starts. Open on YouTube

Thanks to Pastors Randy, Maribel, Jon and Andrea and the whole Life Church team for having us back for this one, and congratulations to Jon and Andrea on leading the church.

Service details via lifechurchusa.org and the Life Church YouTube stream. Every image on this page is a frame from the program feed of the live stream.