Church Uses Publishing Solutions to Help Spread the Word

Speak The Word Church International (STWCI) is a 2,500-member Christian congregation and global ministry that reaches all 50 U.S. states and 52 foreign countries through television programming.

Each week, STWCI produces hundreds of CDs and DVDs for sale at their church bookstore, some of which are created and sold the same day. Once a year, at a major leadership conference, STWCI sells between 2,000 and 3,000 CDs and DVDs in a single week. Content includes audio and video from church services, music recordings and complete sermons from visiting ministers. With such high demand for recorded materials, it’s not wonder that STWCI depends on Rimage digital publishing solutions, www.rimage.com, to help generate additional revenue, allowing the church to keep spreading the “good news.”

The Challenge
Since its inception, STWCI has taken a multimedia approach to spreading the Gospel. Beginning with videotape and audiocassette versions of Pastor Randy Morrison’s sermons, the church has long sought to incorporate technology into its ministry. When parishioners and overseas congregations wanted greater access to recorded sermons in a topical series, STWCI began producing audio CD copies, packaging them together and selling them at the church bookstore and, eventually, through the Internet. Soon, STWCI began producing DVD copies of its services, and it wasn’t long before demand for the church’s multimedia products was making it difficult to produce enough discs.

“Except for third-party vendors and the occasional one-off disc copy, we didn’t have any digital publishing capabilities prior to implementing the Rimage system,” said Barbara Zimmer, technology director for STWCI. “As our CDs and DVDs became more popular with the congregation, we started wondering whether we might be able to record sermons live and have them available for purchase immediately following services.”

But it wasn’t just immediate turnaround that was important to STWCI. Their annual conference, during which thousands of worldwide church members clamored for church services on disc, was just two weeks away when the church purchased its first Rimage system.

The Solution
STWCI purchased its first Rimage system while attending the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention.

“We knew we needed top-quality, high-capacity machines to handle 2,000 to 3,000 discs for our week-long conference,” said Zimmer.

STWCI had a very tight timeframe—just three days—for getting the Rimage system up and running before the crushing demand of the annual conference. All it took was one afternoon for Zimmer to learn how to use the software and how to change the printer ribbon. By the next week, STWCI was running the Rimage machine nonstop at its annual conference.

“By the end of the week, we had produced around 3,000 separate discs,” said Zimmer. “Everything was so easy to learn and manage that we purchased a Rimage system that was DVD-compatible one year later.”

The Results
Creating high-quality, permanent labels for its media products is a significant priority for STWCI. The church sells CD and DVD sets of its own church services and also publishes a variety of Christian-centered “self help” sets focused on a particular topic, such as finance or marriage. These products compete with mass-produced titles from major Christian publishers, so it is extremely important that STWCI maintains a strong perception of value among its customers.

“The quality of the labels is second to none,” said Zimmer. “I haven’t seen anything comparable to it. Other labeling products can be vulnerable to scratching and peeling.”

STWCI recouped the cost of each Rimage system within a year of purchase by creating new revenue streams from selling CD and DVD products. Aside from using the Rimage solutions for same-day service and thematic series recordings, STWCI produces CDs and DVDs for guest speakers at the church. Also, the church operates a professional recording studio on site and produces music CDs in-house using the Rimage systems. Those CDs are shrink-wrapped and sold in the church bookstore.

“Our two Rimage units are such workhorses,” said Zimmer. “They are reliable and have paid for themselves over and over again.”