Businesses have long known they can save time, travel, and money by training employees via satellite. Now churches are making the same connection.

The advent of the church teleconference is enabling congregations in a variety of sizes and locations to offer seminars with big-name speakers at a fraction of what it would cost their members and staffs to travel to major cities for such events.

St. John Mennonite Church in the rural northwestern Ohio community of Pandora, for example, is one of three area churches that will offer “Thrive! Becoming a Woman of Influence” from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Nov. 9 featuring evangelist Joyce Meyer, authors Kay Arthur and Becky Tirabassi, radio host Janet Parshall, vocalist Alicia Williamson, and Lisa Beamer, widow of Sept. 11 hero Todd Beamer.

The conference is being broadcast live from Trinity Chapel of God in Powder Springs, Ga., and also will be seen via satellite in this area at StoneBridge Church of God in Findlay and Stewart Road Church of God in Monroe.

“A lot of people see this as kind of the wave of the future,” said the Rev. Warren Davis, associate pastor of Stewart Road Church. “You don't have to fly somewhere to see six speakers that are pretty much leaders in the Christian community. You save on flights, hotel bills, and what not.”

Mr. Davis said his church bought equipment through a satellite network and then pointed its dish toward the Sky Angel satellite to pick up the program, which was purchased from Injoy, the conference organizer. Injoy charges each church a site-licensing fee and also sells tickets for the event and provides materials that can be sold at the site, such as books and tapes.

Some churches, like St. John's in Pandora, will provide a lunch and refreshments for the conference, while others invite participants to have lunch at a local restaurant.

Expenses for churches that serve as host sites for such conferences vary with the conference provider. Church Communication Network, based in Mountain View, Calif., for example, offers churches 30 programs a year for about $99 a month. Equipment is extra. Injoy charges a licensing fee to churches, which then sell tickets for the conference. The cost of tickets for the Thrive! conferences ranges from $39 to $69. Churches using Injoy also must buy their own equipment and subscribe to a satellite service.

The conferences can be shown to small groups on TV sets, but many churches broadcast them on video screens that are already in place for contemporary worship services.

New Creation Lutheran Church in Ottawa, Ohio, got interested in serving as a teleconference site when the Rev. Ken Pollitz, pastor, received a mailing about a women's ministry conference.

“A lot of times you have to go somewhere to a city or urban area with a stadium or arena and here it was available via satellite.”

Mr. Pollitz said he likes the quality and variety of the CCN seminars. The network has some seminars designed for pastors, church staff members, and lay leaders and others for congregation and community members. Presenters include such luminaries as Lee Strobel, George Barna, and H.B. London.

On Friday from 9:30 to 11 p.m., New Creation will offer the CCN satellite conference, “Marriage and Ministry: Surviving as a Kingdom Couple,” with Steve and Valerie Bell and Ginger Kolbaba.

Besides the conference hookup, CCN also provides publicity materials and seminar outlines that can be duplicated and distributed. And, it offers the added feature of allowing participants to ask questions of the speakers via fax, phone, or e-mail.

Churches can choose to offer the seminars free of charge to participants or they can charge for tickets and keep the money.

Bill Dallas, president of CCN, said the service is not intended to replace conferences. “We don't recommend that people don't attend conferences, but the value in this is allowing churches to supplement their training. Most churches and staffs can only get to one or two conferences a year because of time, travel, and money issues. Our service is able to get many conferences brought to you a year.”

The company grew out of video production work that was being done for some of California's Silcon Valley corporations, Mr. Dallas said. “They would come into the studio and would train their people in branch offices around the country. It dawned on us you could take the same platform satellite and use that to train churches.”

To assess the needs of churches for such services, the company started a series of focus groups in 1998, and from that produced several pilot broadcasts before CCN was born.

Mr. Dallas said the business has taken off in the last year. “It's really picked up because I think the word's out there more about satellite training.”

He said reluctance to travel in the wake of Sept. 11 also has been a factor. “Our strongest quarter was October, November, and December of 2001. I would say that's because of travel.”

- JUDY TARJANYI

First Published November 2, 2002, 11:45 a.m.