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Community of Faith Uses Streambox to Bring Missionary Work Alive
During Month-Long Trip, Pastor Streams Video of Weekly Message From African Mission to Houston Campus
SEATTLE — Nov. 19, 2008 — Streambox today announced that Community of Faith in Houston uses a Streambox® Software Encoder coupled with a Streambox® SBT3-5100 Decoder to stream video from Pastor Mark Shook's missionary work abroad. This past summer when Shook spent four weeks in Africa as part of a missionary trip, the congregation in Houston was able to share in the experience via streaming video.
With an average weekly attendance of 5,000, and a second campus in Cancún, Mexico, Community of Faith is one of Houston's largest houses of worship. Pastor Shook's missionary trip was part of the church's ongoing outreach to the Batwa people in the African nation of Burundi. With the Streambox® Software Encoder running on his laptop, the pastor captured live video and sent files over IP back to Houston, utilizing Streambox's File Transfer Tool. The video clips were then inserted into his weekly messages during services on four consecutive Sundays.
"We live in such a visual culture, and this is a great example of how video creates a much greater sense of immediacy," said Matthew Crook, Community of Faith's technical director. "With Streambox, we were able to bring our missionary work alive and show our congregation first hand how our church is making a difference. The video sermons have created a real buzz in our community, and our international outreach work has piqued interest in our church and generated excitement for upcoming missionary work in Africa."
According to Crook, the spotty Internet connectivity in Africa presented the only challenge for Pastor Shook. "The best transfer speed we ever had was 100 Kbps, at which it took several hours to transmit the entire message back to Houston. That, plus the 11-hour time difference, made Streambox's store-and-forward capabilities crucial," said Crook. "Even at these extremely low bit rates, we were very impressed with the quality of the Streambox video, especially when we projected it onto a 25-foot, theater-style screen at our facility."
In addition to incorporating the IP-based video into its Sunday services, Community of Faith has repurposed the African outreach footage for DVD. In the near future the church may also elect to use its Streambox® SBT3-5100 rack-mount video transport system to stream live video of weekly services from the Houston campus to Community of Faith's Cancún congregation.
"Community of Faith's success in getting high-quality, store-and-forward video back to its congregation over problematic IP networks is testimony to the ease-of-use and reliability of the ACT-L3™ Software Encoder," said Bob Hildeman, chairman and CEO at Streambox. "We are delighted that this has opened up new possibilities for incorporating video into the message that is delivered to the church's congregation."
More information about the ACT-L3™ Software Encoder and other Streambox solutions is available online at www.streambox.com
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