First Baptist Church Huntsville is a well-known local landmark for its large mosaic of Jesus on the exterior and portrait of the cosmos designed into its stained-glass windows.
But Pastor Travis Collins said every Wednesday when he records videos for TV Church, he goes for the opposite look.
“I try not to use churchy language, stained-glass language,” he said.
That’s because the goal of TV Church is to reach people who might not walk into a church building, Collins said.
Into the community
The idea didn’t start that way initially. For 40 years, FBC Huntsville has broadcast its 10:30 a.m. traditional service live on local CBS affiliate WHNT.
But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, the focus began to change. As many churches halted in-person services for a time and shifted to livestream only, FBC Huntsville also moved to a video-only approach, and Collins found he didn’t love preaching to an empty room.
“So I started going with one camera guy to interesting places around town, and I’d do the message and break it up into segments, and then he would put it all together,” Collins said.
The response was good, he said, and as time went on, he and others on staff wondered if that format could have a future. Their long-standing broadcast had an audience for sure — about 18,000 were tuning in each week. Over the years, Collins had met many people who said they watched the service, and he assumed from those conversations that many of their viewers had a strong church background.
But he said he and the staff thought this different programming style — the sermon segments shot on location — might have a different reach. They started brainstorming about a new type of television program that could reach an audience who didn’t know church culture.
Community focus
The result was TV Church, which Collins said stands for “Tennessee Valley” but makes a nice play on words.
“We shoot at spots around north Alabama because we’re trying to expand our reach beyond Huntsville,” he said, noting that the program runs on local ABC affiliate WAAY 31. “The Nielson ratings say there are about 8,000 watching it now.”
During each episode, Collins gives a 17-minute, TED Talks-style biblical message from locations ranging from the children’s museum in Huntsville to the side of the Sea of Galilee in Israel. Under Micah Walley, the church’s minister of contemporary worship, they also contracted with a local production company to make music videos of their original worship music.
The program also includes an interview with a local person of influence on a topic related to the message, Collins said.
And in addition to broadcasting the show on TV and streaming it online, they post Facebook Reels from each episode that are less than a minute long.
Growing ministry
As TV Church has grown, it’s been an all-hands-on-deck ministry for church staff, especially Michael Kearney, media director, whom Collins calls a “master editor.”
All of it is to try to connect with their neighbors, Collins said, adding that they “believe we’re finding our part in the Great Commission.”
“The world of church is changing; we all know that,” he said. “There are fewer and fewer people attracted to a building, so we have to figure out how to take the church to people.”
Collins said he and others at FBC Huntsville don’t believe watching TV Church Online is a substitute for being involved in a church and engaging, but they hope it can be a bridge to help people get there. As a first point of entry, on TV Church’s website, there’s a link to get involved with a Facebook community.
Collins said another goal of theirs is that they would eventually “love to have groups meeting in homes watching and asking questions and making disciples.
“This will reach its potential only when people are using it as a tool of discipleship,” he said.
For now, he’s grateful for the connections they’ve already made.
“We have people who have come to the church because of watching it,” Collins said.
For more information, visit tvchurch.online.
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