What the Broadcast Ministry Upgrades Mean to Me

Published February 23, 2019 by SMBC

In October, 2019, South Main Baptist Church will celebrate 60 years of having a television/broadcast ministry. South Main was the first church to be on television in Houston, and we were on Channel 2, KPRC until 1995. The broadcast ministry has evolved over the years to our present day, state-of-the-art facility, as a result of our recent capital campaign.

I remember joining the broadcast team 37 years ago in February, when the broadcast equipment was located in the room beside the balcony of the sanctuary. We used a remote controlled camera back then, too! Having many times felt like the broadcast ministry was the ?invisible ministry? of the church, I can remember the furor we caused when the ministry took over the bride's room behind Fellowship Hall and turned it into the broadcast room in about 1985. We added three cameras and had live personnel standing in the aisles with cameras during the service. This distraction became the norm and now is just a part of the worship experience at South Main. In the late 1990s we purchased used cameras from Walt Disney World and had four cameras in the sanctuary. Again in the early 2000s we replaced the ?Disney? cameras with three newer cameras and we began to join the digital age with the help of Ebay.

Fast forward to 2015 and the Capital Campaign. I was fortunate enough to be asked to be a part of the Building Committee for the renovation, so I was able to help contribute to the decision to upgrade the broadcast ministry, complete with a new location, state-of-the-art facilities and equipment, and a new mission to use social media and the internet to help spread the Gospel to the world. The upgrades have allowed us to record services live and stream the events worldwide in real time. This has afforded viewers the opportunity to watch memorial services in Japan, weddings in Scotland, Sunday morning worship services in China and Africa, and we have regular viewers who watch every Sunday from all over the world. We can record services in the Chapel, in Fellowship Hall, and in the Sanctuary, all from the broadcast suite. Our cameras have gone from three to the current five that we use in the Sanctuary, allowing us to cover every part of the worship experience from trumpeters in the balcony to handbell players on the back row of the choir loft. The upgrades mean that the broadcast ministry is now seen as a vital part of the worship experience at South Main. I have tremendous pride in the broadcast ministry and I believe it is a direct result of the capital campaign and the commitment of South Mainers that has allowed us to flourish and be a major impact for spreading the Good News about what's happening at South Main Baptist Church to the rest of the world.