Marcus has run media at a 180-person Southern Baptist church in Cleveland, Tennessee for six years — cameras, slides, audio, livestream, the works. In this conversation he gets honest about the eleven-minute announcement block, flat viewership, and the Sunday afternoons he lost trying to clip sermons by hand.
Why he raised his hand for the soundboard in 2020 — and is still holding it six years later
The eleven-minute pre-sermon announcement block and the livestream chat that bails before the message starts
Flat viewership: 40-50 live viewers a week, two years without growth, and the post-Easter gut punch
Asking the pastor to move the message ahead of announcements — and the "you want to move the pulpit?" reaction
Three months of after-church sermon clipping: four to five hours every Sunday on OBS, captions, thumbnails, and scheduling
Clips at 200-300 views proved the idea worked — but the math on his time didn't
The October he skipped a week, then a month, then the pastor asking "what happened to those little videos?"
The gap between what a pastor sees (a 30-second clip) and what a volunteer media director actually doesSubscribe: sermon-clips.com
Marcus Webb: ...eleven minutes. Eleven. Of announcements.
Marcus Tillerson: Eleven minutes, Marcus. And that's a good week.
Marcus Webb: Before the message even starts.
Marcus Tillerson: Before anybody says the word "scripture," yeah. By the time we get to the sermon, half the livestream chat has dropped off, and then the pastor walks past me Monday morning and goes, "Marcus, why aren't the young folks watching?"
Marcus Webb: And that lands on you.
Marcus Tillerson: That lands on me. Somehow the lighting, the lobby announcements, the choir mics, the fact that we don't reach anybody under thirty-five... all of that is a Marcus problem.
Marcus Webb: How long you been running media for the church?
Marcus Tillerson: Going on six years now. I started because nobody else would touch the soundboard. You know how it goes. Somebody asks for a volunteer, everybody looks at their shoes, and I just... raised my hand.
Marcus Webb: The classic Baptist hand-raise.
Marcus Tillerson: The one you regret for six years.
Marcus Webb: How big is the congregation?
Marcus Tillerson: We're about a hundred and eighty on a Sunday. Cleveland, Tennessee. Southern Baptist. Sweet folks. I mean it, sweet folks. But we are not a megachurch and we are not pretending to be.
Marcus Webb: And you're doing cameras, slides, audio...
Marcus Tillerson: Cameras, slides, audio, livestream, and whatever the pastor decides on Saturday night he wants on the screen Sunday morning. Which is its own ministry.
Marcus Webb: Walk me through a Sunday for you.
Marcus Tillerson: Sure. I get there at seven. Power up the board, check the wireless packs because somebody ALWAYS leaves one on, the batteries are dead, you know the drill. I run a sound check with whoever shows up. The livestream goes live at ten fifty-five.
Marcus Webb: And then?
Marcus Tillerson: And then I sit in the back, in that little media closet we built out of a coat room, and I watch the numbers. I watch the live viewers. Forty, fifty people on a good week. And it never grows.
Marcus Webb: Never?
Marcus Tillerson: I mean, it goes up two, down two. It's flat. Has been flat for two years.
Marcus Webb: When did you first realize it was flat? Like, when did it click?
Marcus Tillerson: Probably... it was after Easter last year. Easter we get a bump, right, we always get a bump. And the bump was smaller than the year before. And I sat there Monday morning with my coffee looking at the analytics page and I thought, "We're not reaching anybody new. We are reaching the same forty people."
Marcus Webb: That's a gut punch.
Marcus Tillerson: It was. Because I've been pouring into this for six years. New camera, better mics, I learned OBS, I learned the streaming software, I learned color correction on YouTube videos at midnight. And the needle... did not move.
Marcus Webb: So what'd you do?
Marcus Tillerson: First thing I did, I went to the pastor. I said, "I think the issue is the front end. People click on a Sunday service, they get eleven minutes of announcements, and they bounce. They never hear the message."
Marcus Webb: What'd he say?
Marcus Tillerson: He said the announcements were important to the congregation. Which... they ARE. I'm not knocking him. The widow's lunch matters. The youth car wash matters.
Marcus Webb: Sure.
Marcus Tillerson: But somebody scrolling on their phone Sunday afternoon does not care about the youth car wash. They want to know if there's something for them in the message.
Marcus Webb: Right.
Marcus Tillerson: So I asked, could we put the message first on the livestream and the announcements after, and he looked at me like I'd asked to rearrange the pews.
Marcus Tillerson: I'm serious. Like I had suggested we move the pulpit.
Marcus Webb: Okay so the front end was a no-go. What was next?
Marcus Tillerson: I tried the back end. I thought, alright, if I can't fix the live experience, I'll take the message after the fact and chop it up. Put highlights on Facebook, on the church YouTube, maybe TikTok if I got brave.
Marcus Webb: Did you?
Marcus Tillerson: I did. For about three months. I'd come home Sunday afternoon, eat lunch, and then I'd sit in front of my laptop for four, five hours pulling clips out of an hour-long service.
Marcus Webb: Four or five hours.
Marcus Tillerson: Every Sunday. After leading worship tech all morning. My wife was THRILLED.
Marcus Webb: I bet.
Marcus Tillerson: She was not. She was patient, she's a saint, but you could feel it. Sunday was gone. Just gone.
Marcus Webb: And were the clips working?
Marcus Tillerson: That's the worst part. They were doing okay. Better than the full service. A clip would get two hundred views, three hundred, sometimes more if the pastor said something that hit. So I knew the idea was right.
Marcus Webb: The idea was right but the math was wrong.
Marcus Tillerson: The math was wrong. I cannot give up my Sundays for the rest of my life. I have two kids. I have a job. I am not a full-time media producer, I'm a guy who said yes to a soundboard in 2020.
Marcus Webb: So where did it break for you?
Marcus Tillerson: It broke in October. I had a week where work was heavy, my daughter had a recital, and I just... didn't do the clips. Skipped a week. And then I skipped the next week. And then I felt SO guilty about skipping that I avoided the whole thing for a month.
Marcus Webb: Mm.
Marcus Tillerson: And during that month, the pastor pulled me aside after service and said, "Hey Marcus, what happened to those little videos? Those were good. We need to be reaching younger people."
Marcus Webb: Oof.
