Lightcast.com sponsors 100 churches with a custom Roku Channel

Nov. 7, 2012 - PRLog -- The online media hosting provider Lightcast.com has made 100 sponsorship packages available to churches in North America. Any denominational or non-denominational church is welcome to apply. The sponsorship includes the development of a custom Roku Channel App and an AppleTV/iTunes Video Podcast at a value of $5,000. Lightcast seeks to support Christian ministries to utilize cutting edge media distribution technologies in order to reach more listeners and viewers with the Christian message.

"Making your worship experience available through live-streams and video-on-demand (VOD) distribution is like offering a "free trial" of your product. It enables potential church visitors to "view your product" in the "safe environment" of their homes, being introduced to your church and ministered to by your message, music and creative arts", says Andreas Kisslinger, founder of Lightcast.com and CROSS.TV. "It may sound too technical and corporate to some, but the reality is that we are all selling something and that includes churches, whether we admit it or not. People have options: a variety of different styles of worship, bible interpretations and dogmatics, and the option to not go to church at all, but to stay at home, sleep in and enjoy a long breakfast. Whether we like it or not: we have to face reality and if we want to reach those who have gotten tired of going to church buildings, then we have to bring the church to them and become audible, visible and accessible, which automatically means to utilize online media distribution in our days."

With the 100 sponsorship grants Lightcast seeks to stir up interest within the church communities and to provide for an easy start with new media distribution opportunities. "It is quite interesting how much we spend on developing and perfecting our "product" but how little we invest into marketing and distributing it to new prospects", so Kisslinger. "If the worship experience is our primary "product", then utilizing online media distribution services are the distribution channels by which we take the product to new prospects and allow them to try it out free of charge, before making a commitment to visit, attend, commit and submit. We enjoy taking what's expensive and making it affordable and taking what is complicated and making it simple."

Introduced at the Catalyst 2012 conference in Duluth, Georgia, the initiative became increasingly popular among church leaderships and media staff. "It really became a game changer for us when Lightcast built and launched our custom Roku Channel. Our viewership instantly doubled over night and is growing continuously ever since", says Pastor Barry Burns with Cornerstone and ReigningInLife.TV, Johnson City, TN. "It has helped our congregation to consider our media ministry as a much-needed outreach to the nations and the unchurched, rather than an improvement of our own worship experience."

With Lightcast's 2013 proceeds going into a designated missions fund, more projects of this kind are to be expected in the future. The Lightcast missions fund is managed by company principals and welcomes funding ideas from clients. The primary goal of the fund is to support media missions projects in direct connection with world evangelism and primarily focuses on new media technologies. A second grant to sponsor 100 Christian organizations with a custom Roku Channel and other SmartTV broadcast tools is expected to be released during the first quarter of 2013, starting with Lightcast's presence at NRB 2013 in Nashville, TN.

For more information about the custom Roku Channel and AppleTV/iTunes Video Podcast sponsorships, please visit http://www.lightcast.com/freeroku .

More information about Lightcast.com: http://www.lightcast.com

For interviews with founders and principals, high-rez images and other press inquiries, please email to: press@lightcast.com