Written by: Robert Andrescik, Northland's PR Guy in Local Sites, Simples Churches, Media and Technology, News and Inspiration on October 7, 2010

It’s Sunday morning at Harbour Village, an upscale golfing community in Ponce Inlet. The sky is overcast and the threat of rain is keeping some residents off the links, but it hasn’t discouraged 13 people from gathering at the community’s rec center to worship with Northland via live webstream.

Chris Gerrish, one of Northland’s staffers, has traveled from Longwood with a gift. He hands a small black box about the size of a club sandwich to the group’s leader, Joe Leonardo.

“It’s a Roku. You can use it to connect to church services without a computer,” Gerrish explains.

Leonardo is holding an oatmeal-raisin cookie in one hand and the box in the other. He takes a bite of the cookie as he chews on the possibilities of this new tool. “Here, let me show you,” Gerrish says. He takes the box and in seconds, connects it to the projector at the front of the room. A few seconds more, and the group is connected to Northland’s Roku channel, which offers easy access to live worship services, along with past sermons and classes. Now, the rest of the group has turned its attention from the spread of bagels, juice and coffee to the little black box ...

Northland’s resident “tech whisperer,” Gerrish not only helped bring Northland’s worship to Roku, but also to mobile phones—including iPhone, Blackberry and Android devices. He recently traveled to China to help one of Northland’s partner churches begin streaming live worship to remote sites.

Word is spreading quickly about Northland’s Roku channel, and Gerrish is now helping other churches who want to use the technology. He says that Roku is ideally suited for the distributed church “because it is so easy to use and setup. I think people will feel comfortable using it and not be intimidated.”

Roku has big potential as a community builder and makes it easier to gather people together for worship as we’re challenged to do in Hebrews 10:25: “And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near” (NLT).

Removing the computer from the mix provides a way to worship with others that doesn’t require huddling around a computer screen or complicated PC-to-TV hookups. Starting at $59, it’s also one of the least expensive ways to bring the church into just about any room.

Gerrish and Marty Taylor, who leads Northland’s media design team, recently delivered set-top boxes to Northland house churches throughout Florida at the Suncoast Mobile Home Park in Crystal River, as well as Venice and Ponce Inlet. The reaction?

Ron and Marcy Burth worship online at their home in Venice with 20 people each weekend. Marcy raves: “The Roku box is fantastic! It has really simplified our connection to Northland.”

It was only this summer when the Burths established their house church, located nearly three hours from Longwood—already, they’ve seen four people give their lives to Christ. They just added a Bible discussion group on Tuesday nights, and they’re now considering adding a second service on Sunday mornings.

It all started one Sunday evening when, just for fun, Ron and Marcy hooked up their new 60-inch TV to their computer and fired up Northland’s live worship service. The other couples who’d joined them for dinner that night couldn’t believe what they were seeing.

“They didn’t want to eat, they wanted to watch the service!” Ron remembers. “We’ve been meeting ever since, and God just keeps adding to our group. We’ve become a family, really.”

Jeremy Langston is an online congregant from Benton, La., who has worshiped with Northland along with his wife and five children for about a year now. When he’s not traveling for his job, he uses his Roku to connect to Northland’s live worship. When he’s on the road, he worships via Northland’s Facebook app ... well, he’s not technically “on the road,” he’s a paramedic on an offshore oil platform in the Gulf.

“The bandwidth is just enough for the Facebook app to stream,” he explains. “When I am home, I enjoy being able to see a large, high-quality picture instead of the little stream on the Internet, and the sound is much better.”

So far, more than 2,100 people have installed Northland’s Roku channel. Roku recently struck a deal with Hulu, the popular online service that offers streaming of TV shows and movies. Channel additions such as this will almost certainly have more people buying the device, which means more people potentially finding Northland’s channel.

Langston concludes, “I believe the Northland channel will get so much exposure that it may just win many people to Christ who were not looking for Him.”

You can add this channel by visiting the Channel Store on your Roku, or by clicking here.