StoneWater Church was founded in 2005 by two brothers in a private home. It grew through a bigger house, an old movie theater and part of an empty Walmart building, and finally bought the whole 80,000 sq ft building, now its Granbury campus. Today the church has about 1,500 active members and campuses in several Texas towns. Its slogan says it all: “No perfect people allowed.”
The challenge: a lean budget and many locations
Churches spend carefully on technology, because most of the budget goes to work outside the church. StoneWater had TVs with Chromecasts that showed static images. With several campuses, it needed a better way to keep members and visitors informed.
Jackie Solomon, the church’s technical expert, has worked with digital signage since 2007. He found Play in 2017, when he was close to giving up: other systems were too expensive, missed features he needed, or were too complex even for someone with his experience.
Getting approval wasn’t easy. The church leaders took a “wait and see” approach until Jackie showed them what Play could do.
The solution: one system for everything
StoneWater needed three things: scheduling, different roles with different access levels, and live services broadcast to every location. With Play, the church now runs:
- Live broadcasts of services and speeches to the other campuses
- Two video walls, including an LED wall in the coffee area
- Room signage in every room, an idea born once the leaders saw what was possible
- Touch screens, being added as well
- A multi-channel system built with six Amazon Fire TV Sticks and coax cables
Jackie hands work to other team members with roles and permissions, and schedules content so screens change by themselves. Royalty-free pictures and GIFs from Pixabay, Unsplash and Giphy are built into the editor, so nobody has to worry about where an image came from.
“I love Play, the whole church loves Play! It has changed our lives here forever.” – Jackie Solomon
The result
What started as a few TVs with static pictures is now a network of up-to-date information, interactive touch screens, live broadcasts and photos from church events, used in every part of the church’s communication. Jackie set it all up himself with the live chat, the help articles and video tutorials, and he values that the articles are short and to the point.
What other churches can take from this
- Show leaders a working example; it wins approval faster than a proposal.
- Use roles so volunteers can update content without access to everything.
- Use affordable players, such as Fire TV Sticks, to stay within budget.
Read the full StoneWater Church case story, or see how Play works for churches.
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