How to Broadcast Your Church Services Online?

To broadcast your church services online, you create a DCAST account, check which plan fits the size of your online congregation and optionally connect an AI assistant to your library. Then you create a live stream, go live from a browser camera, embed the player on your church website, send the service on to other platforms, add language tracks if you need them and keep each service as a recording.

Step 1: Create your DCAST account

Open the sign-up page and fill in the form. Your email, a password and the same password typed a second time are all required, and the form will not send until all three are filled in. The two passwords must match, and the password has to be at least eight characters long.

Use a shared church address rather than one person's private mailbox if you can, so the account does not depend on a single volunteer.

Step 2: Check your plan

Click your avatar in the top right corner and choose Billing. In the Available Plans row you see FREE, STAR, PRO and VIP side by side, and the card whose button reads Current Plan is the one your account is on. If you never bought a plan, you are on FREE.

Two things depend on the plan. Camera mode, the way to go live from a phone or computer without an encoder, is available on every plan. Language tracks belong to PRO and VIP only, so if your congregation needs live interpretation, check that your card is one of those two. How many restream destinations can run at the same time also depends on your plan, so read that line on your card too.

Step 3: Connect an AI assistant to your library

This step is optional. The DCAST connector is an MCP server for video that connects an assistant such as Claude to your account, which can help a small media team that wants support with its video library. What matters on day one is how to take that access back, because a volunteer may leave or an assistant may be forgotten.

When you remove the connector in your DCAST API keys, it leaves your list of keys. A token it received before the removal is refused from that moment, even if it had not expired yet, and a newer token cannot reopen the connection. To connect again you approve the access in DCAST once more.

Ask your assistant to tell you what it is about to change before it changes it. After a session, look over what it changed in your library, the same way you would check the work of a new colleague, and remove any connection you no longer use.

Step 4: Create the live stream

Open the dashboard, click Streams in the top navigation and click Create Stream. Type a clear title, because viewers will see it, and add an optional description so they know what to expect. Choose Public, Link Only, Subscribers Only or Private to decide who can watch, then click Save. Your new stream card appears in the list, and clicking it opens the stream details page.

Look closely at the protocol list. It starts on CAMERA, which broadcasts straight from a browser or phone. If you plan to use OBS or a hardware encoder, change it to RTMP, SRT, WHIP, HLS or FILE before you save, then copy the server address and stream key from the stream details page into the encoder.

If your church website has its own developers, the same is done through the partner API with these operations: create a stream, list streams, get one stream, update a stream, delete a stream, start it, stop it, end it, read its status, read its viewers, get its preview address, get its preview feed and get its thumbnail. The answer to a new broadcast carries an RTMP address, an SRT address and, where it is available, an HTTPS address for WHIP, together with the embed address of the broadcast.

The API creates the broadcast, but the picture itself comes from your encoder, so give the publish address to an encoder such as OBS. A title or description that is not plain text is refused with the name of the wrong field and no broadcast is created, so read that field first when a request fails. Keep the API key on your server and never place it in a page your visitors load.

Step 5: Go live from a browser camera

For a small congregation or a quick update from a phone, you do not need an encoder. Create a stream, leave Protocol on CAMERA, click Create Stream, then click the gear icon on the new card to open the stream page. The camera preview opens by itself, and you allow the camera and the microphone when the browser asks.

In the Capture card in the right column, choose the Orientation, Landscape or Portrait, and the Quality. Click Start Stream. While it connects the button says Connecting, and once you are on air a red Live badge appears on the preview. When the service ends, click Stop Stream, which ends the broadcast itself and not only the camera, so viewers are not left waiting on a dead stream.

If the connection drops, the browser keeps trying to publish again with the same camera picture. Before you go live from a phone, connect to a stable network and plug in the charger if you can. Phones may pause the camera of a browser in the background, so keep the browser in front for the whole service. A camera stream has no Connection panel, no backup stream and no language tracks, so choose RTMP, SRT or WHIP if you need those.

Step 6: Embed the player on your church website

You can place the player of your videos and broadcasts on your own website with a short embed code. For a recorded video, open it in your library, click Share, then click Embed, copy the code and paste it into the HTML of your page. Open the page as a visitor to confirm playback works. Through the partner API the same is done with two operations: get the embed details of a stream and get the embed details of a video.

By default the embedded player works on any website. If you want control, list the domains where your player may appear and every other website is refused. An entry can cover every subdomain of a site with a wildcard, and clearing the list opens the player to every website again.

Decide by your goal. Restrict the list when you want the player to appear only on your own site. Leave it empty when your goal is reach, because every copy of the embed code then works for whoever pastes it, including members who share your service with relatives abroad.

Step 7: Restream to other platforms

Restreaming sends one broadcast to several platforms at once, so members who already spend their time on YouTube or Facebook can watch there. Open your restream flow, where the panel is called Channels, and click Add Channel. Select the platform type, paste the stream key from the platform, give the destination a recognizable name and click Save. Repeat for every platform you want to reach.

For a custom destination, paste both the server address and the stream key. A destination without a key, or a custom destination without its address, cannot be switched on until the missing field is filled in, and the settings tell you which field is missing. A destination you switched off stays off, even when every field is filled in.

Keep stream keys private, because anyone who holds a key can broadcast to that channel. Before an important service, test each destination with a short private broadcast, because every platform has its own rules for new streams.

Step 8: Add language tracks

If your congregation speaks more than one language, a PRO or VIP account lets one live broadcast carry several declared audio languages. On other plans the Languages tab shows an Upgrade to PRO button instead of the tracks. The stream must receive video over RTMP, SRT or WHIP, because camera, HLS and file streams have no Languages tab.

Click STREAMS in the tab row, click the gear icon on the card of your stream and open the Languages tab in the right column. Click Add language, then type the name viewers will see in the player, for example English or Español. Give each interpreter the connection details on the track card: a key for RTMP, an address for SRT or an address for WHIP.

Interpreters send only sound, so the guide asks for stereo audio at a fixed sample rate, and audio in any other format is replaced with silence. The dot beside a track lights up when its signal arrives, and No signal means nothing is reaching it. Through the partner API the language tracks are read and replaced with two operations: get the audio tracks of a stream and put the audio tracks of a stream.

Step 9: Keep every service as a recording

Once the broadcast has ended, go to the Streams tab of the dashboard and click the download icon on the card of the finished broadcast. The window Choose a quality opens. Pick a quality and click Download, or click Copy link to download it on another device. The file is named after the title of the broadcast and ends with the MP4 extension. A stream switched to 24/7, which means no recording, in its Settings is not recorded at all.

Through the partner API, your code chooses whether a broadcast is recorded in the same request that creates it. If you leave the choice out, the default is recording on, and a null value counts as not sending it. The choice accepts only a true or false value, so a word such as no or a number such as zero is refused without creating a broadcast.

The same API has operations to start and stop a recording and to read its status for streams, restreams and rooms, and operations to read the recording qualities and the recording download for streams, restreams, rooms and bridges. Store the file name you receive next to your own record of the event, so your team finds the right recording later.

Decide who runs the broadcast and what you may stream

Give one volunteer the broadcast as a fixed duty, because a service that starts on time every week builds the habit of watching. Write down who creates the stream, who watches the preview and who presses Stop, so the job does not depend on whoever happens to be in the room.

Ask permission before you stream music you did not write, because a license for singing in the building often does not cover the internet. Check this with whoever holds your church music license before the first broadcast, and decide whether hymns that are not covered should be skipped or replaced during the stream.

Rehearse before the first live service

Run a full rehearsal before the first real service. Open the watch link on another device, check the picture and the sound as your viewers get them, and confirm that the embedded player works on your church page.

When something fails, check the simplest cause first. A wrong stream key, a camera that is turned off or a destination missing a field explains many failed starts. If your congregation cannot see the stream, review its visibility setting before you share the link, because it may still be Private.