Most churches run their whole Sunday off one computer. Slides, the stream, the recording, sometimes the audio too, all on one machine.
When that setup fails, it fails the same way every time. The stream chokes first. Then the slides stutter. Then the whole thing locks up, mid-sermon, in front of everyone. One machine was doing five jobs, so when it gave out, all five went with it.
That's a setup problem, and you can fix it by giving each piece of gear one job.
I've seen this play out in a lot of churches, including my own.
The first way is money. Money gets tight, so you buy the cheapest thing that'll work and piece it together. It holds up one Sunday and dies the next, and now you're fixing the same problem every week.
The second way is chasing what the big churches are doing. More cameras, more lights, more everything. It looks great right up until something goes wrong, and then it only runs when the one person who understands it shows up.
Both end in the same Sunday morning headache. What works is a simple, reliable system that anyone on your team can run without years of training. That means the right dedicated piece that shows up and does its job every week, even when it costs a little more, built up slowly over time.
Most people think fewer machines means simpler. In practice it means more risk, because every job depends on the one computer holding up.
So we flipped it. On paper it looks like more gear:
Each piece does one job. If the encoder has a rough morning, the slides keep running and the room never knows. No single piece is holding everything else hostage.
Splitting things up removes risk more than it adds complexity. Five simple pieces each doing one job beat one machine trying to do all five.
A lot of churches save up for one powerful computer, then ask it to run everything. I'd rather have three cheap ones that each do one thing.
It's the same thinking behind our cameras, which is what the video above covers: why we run four cheap cameras instead of one nice one. Buy cheaper units and buy more of them, instead of betting everything on one expensive one. With cameras, the same money gets you more angles.
With computers, splitting the jobs up means no machine has to be a workhorse anymore. If one spazzes out on us on Sunday, we're not dead in the water. And a computer with one job doesn't need to be expensive.
When I wrote about this in August 2026, it wasn't a great time to buy computers. Prices were all over the place, and even used and refurbished machines had crept up. If you can wait, great. If you can't, be picky.
For anything light, like monitoring, a browser, or a multitrack recording, the stuff that isn't mission critical, I'd look at a used or refurbished M1 Mac mini from 2020. That's an affiliate link, so I get a small kickback at no extra cost to you. They used to be a steal. They had gone up like everything else, but at the time you could still find certified refurbished ones around $300 to $400 if you were patient. They still ran the current macOS, so they weren't about to go obsolete.
For anything mission critical, like ProPresenter or anything doing real work on a Sunday, the M4 Mac mini is the best bang for your buck.
Check around before you buy. In August 2026, Amazon had the M4 over $1,000 while Apple sold it direct for $799. Same machine, a few hundred dollars apart.
Two of those M1s and one M4 still cost less than a single high-end machine. Instead of one computer that can take down your whole Sunday, you've got three that each do one thing well. The goal is spending money in the right places, so no single thing can break your Sunday.
We don't do it. ProPresenter runs slides and nothing else, and a dedicated encoder handles the stream, so if the encoder has a rough morning the slides keep running.
Not for us. Two used M1 Mac minis and one M4 Mac mini still cost less than a single high-end machine, and no one computer can take down the whole Sunday.
For ProPresenter or anything mission critical, the M4 Mac mini is the best bang for your buck. Save the used or refurbished M1 Mac minis for lighter jobs like monitoring, a browser, or a multitrack recording.
We put out free templates, checklists, and training for church media teams. Grab the free resources here.
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