What is a Virtual Meeting on Altar Live?

We know that the church world, much like the rest of the world, has been turning into a digital-first world for some time. The global pandemic of 2020 only sped up a process that was already happening. Zoom meetings, teleconferences, and even family gatherings became so common that we developed a term for it: "Zoom Fatigue." 

Churches during this pandemic were forced into remote situations, broadcasting their services, with many struggling to keep up with the needs of people that didn't want to engage with Zoom any longer.

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Enter: Altar Live

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What is Altar Live?

Altar Live is an online church platform designed for faith communities to stream and host interactive and engaging events and services. Our simple, intuitive platform gathers your people together online where they can worship together in watch parties, freely socialize at virtual tables together, and find private places to pray with each other.

Altar Live was developed and implemented to really help your church engage with each other. Events, tables, and video conferencing features that leaders, hosts, greeters, and speakers were able to do ministry online. 

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What is an Altar Live Meeting? 

A virtual meeting in Altar Live is effortless and comes with all features you'd expect, plus a few extras. They are perfect for all your virtual meeting needs. 

Creating a virtual meeting takes just a few clicks, and just like that, you're able to have multiple events happening at the same time...with NO time limits...all with ONE subscription!

Here’s what you need to know about an Altar Live virtual meeting:

• Each meeting can hold up to 500 people
• You are able to assign multiple hosts to your meeting
• Breakout groups are easy to administer and assign. No more breakout room roulette, hoping that you're going to go to the correct group!
• You're now able to move quickly and effortlessly between tables or breakout groups
• You have full camera and mute controls for all of your participants, along with screen sharing capabilities.
  
  

A Zoom Replacement  

How many times have you been using your shared Zoom account and been in the middle of a meeting only to be kicked off of it because someone else has your login and needed to start a meeting at the same time? Altar Live has solved that problem!

You only need one subscription for as many meetings, events, and rooms you want. You won’t have to worry about  embarrassing log-out screens when someone starts a new virtual meeting with your shared login!

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A Space For Any Gathering

A virtual meeting in Altar Live allows you to host video-conferencing sessions with up to 500 participants. It's great for small groups, Bible studies, prayer meetings, councils, staff meetings, and even a classroom study! The possibilities are endless. 

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A Smoother Way to Meet Online 

 With Altar Live you can give your entire team access to schedule synchronous video-conference meetings with multiple hosts. When you aren’t using Altar Live for your church live stream, you can use the platform in other ways to serve your faith community.  Altar is a one-stop destination not only for your services, but your small-groups, Bible studies, prayer meetings, staff meetings, and more! 

Why do we think Altar Meetings is the best video conferencing experience for faith communities?

• 500+ person capacity
• People can freely move on their own between breakout tables and rooms
• One account, multiple hosts
• One account, synchronous & concurrent events
• Everything is browser based & fully supported on mobile
• Participants can share their screen
• Hosts have controls over all participant mics & cameras
• Video and Audio Share
• Seamless integration into a Sunday service or a mid-week church gathering

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How To Create A Virtual Meeting 

Step 1. Log into your Community Dashboard and click create a meeting. 

Step 2. enter a name and a brief description.

If you'd like, you can also select a thumbnail, which will be visible on the main screen of your meeting when your participants log in. You can also make this event a recurring event on a daily, weekly, or custom schedule.

Step 3.  Choose the maximum number of people that can join your meeting.

For convenience, you can also choose to have your participants start with their cameras and their microphones either on or off by default. Participants can still turn their own cameras and microphones on or off during the meeting, so choosing this option just makes entrance to a meeting less confusing.

Step 4. Click next to assign hosts. Hosts have the ability to end meetings, as well as remove participants from the meeting.

• Hosts also have controls over all participant mics & cameras
• AND they can move all participants back and forth from Meetings to the Lobby for breakout groups

If you forget to assign someone as a host in this step, don’t worry! You can do so once the meeting has started.

Clicking next will give you options to set permissions on who can join your event. 

Selecting Anyone allows anyone with a link to join the service. Selecting All Members makes your event private and only allows those who have created an account with your community in Altar Live. Choosing Selected Members only allows those which you have selected beforehand to be in the meeting. 

This is useful for small group gatherings, Bible studies, and any general meetings.

Now that your event is ready to go, you can either save it as a draft to come back to later, or publish the event.

Your event has been successfully created, and you can come back to edit whenever you need to! 

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Final Thoughts 

Finding the perfect virtual meeting platform can be hard. However, using Altar Live for all your online gatherings is the answer. Altar Live completely replaces Zoom and is changing the way we create community online. 

Want to learn more? Check this out 

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