[Satellite News 04-29-10] Faith-based organizations deploying satellite technology to reach out to new audiences are seeing positive results, which could help some churches survive, David Schatzman, technical director of McLean Bible Church, told Satellite News.
    Schatzman has developed two regional campuses and auditoriums on rented or leased property as well as an Internet campus, all connected via satellite. He also is developing an additional leased campus in Prince William County, Va., featuring a 750-seat auditorium with three assembly rooms and live satellite programming from the main campus. He manages the day-to-day operation of a 27-member staff team with a $1.5 million annual budget at four locations and credits satellite for helping the church secure its future.
    “The satellite system has enabled us to triple our attendance in four years,” he said. “We reached a point that there were more people outside our main auditorium. That was a huge strategic inflection point. We need to support professional broadcasting. The limiting factor is not the technology. We broadcast via satellite to all our campuses. We webcast all of our services to get to certain places. We have 3,000 registered users on the Internet.”
    The congregation’s move to satellite technology was initiated because McLean Bible Church’s main campus was out of capacity, meaning the church was unable to grow. The church looked into fiber connectivity and even DVD mailers but came to a decision that it needed a more manageable solution, Schatzman said.
    “We realized that we needed to go out the boundaries out of our current property. We were struggling to get sermons to remote campuses, so about four years ago, we looked at the best ways of delivering our sermons,” he said. “There were several driving factors. Fiber was not the best option. In one case, it would have cost $130,000 to dig a trench where the fiber was to one of the properties we wanted to open. … We also to use DVDs, but people thought it was awful. That really lit a fire for us to move to satellite. We reached out to a couple of a key people. We started out with a vision where we were going to buy two to three hours a week, now we are running 25 hours a week (ad-hoc basis), so we had a lot more content than we planned,” he said.
    Religious broadcasting has interesting dynamics in the United States. Rob Branch, broadcast technical consultant for Calvary Technical Management, said that individual churches like McLean Bible are not the only ones turning to satellite, which presents operators and capacity dealers with a wider-than-expected market. “We have religious educational institutions, para-church organizations, denominations and church movements such as Assembly of God, Southern Baptist Convention, Seventh-day Adventist Church and the Calvary Chapel movement and publicly-traded organizations such as Salem Radio Networks.”
    Salem Radio Networks even hosts a trade show for churches that focused on delivering content over satellite. “It is not a case of build-it-and-they-will-come. The most aggressive religious broadcasters are driven by demand. They have the resources to put into satellite. Looking at the size of the individual participants, there are a lot of different demominations. They have a need for satellite,” Branch said.
    Kamy Merithew, vice president of marketing for Wegener, said religious broadcasting has been a lucrative market for the company. “File-based broadcasting allows people to get in with less investment, so they can send files to multiple locations, and they can create unique experiences and create localization. We have seen interest in the main church facility getting information back from all the sites, testimonials or finding ways for people at remote sites to become more connected.”
    Greg Hurt, vice president of sales and marketing, for Microspace, said while religious broadcasting is not a major part of its business, the technology seems to be a perfect fit for the customer. “Store-and -orward technology allows churches to send one file to be edited and sent to a series of churches. It is an important part of our business, and one that we will continue to support.”
    According to Schatzman, religious organizations that fail to embrace technology could be in for a rude awakening. “We jumped onto a satellite, and then two other organizations jumped on board. Other churches have also now taken the plunge. We have realized that we have to expand to survive and not just by putting chairs in an auditorium. Chuches that have not adapted to changes in technology have shut down. It can be a downward spiral if we do not embrace this tool.”