You might have heard over the last few weeks about changes coming to Facebook Live. 

Is this the end of using Facebook for online church? Does everyone need to switch to YouTube? Are your old sermon videos now lost media? 

Take a deep breath—we’ve laid it all out for you here. 

If your church uses Facebook Live to stream your Sunday sermons (or any other content), here’s what you need to know. 

Changes to Facebook Live in February 2025

In mid-February, Facebook announced the following changes to their Live videos: 

1. Any new Live videos can only be viewed, downloaded, or shared for 30 days after the initial posting. After 30 days, the videos will be deleted. 
2. Live videos older than 30 days will be removed from Facebook. Facebook will notify you via email before deleting your videos, and then you will have 90 days to download or transfer your files. 

These changes went into effect starting February 19, 2025. 

What These Changes Mean for Churches

If you’re running your livestreams through YouTube (or any platform besides Facebook Live), you don’t have much to worry about! Those videos already reside outside of Facebook Live, even if you share the streaming links to Facebook. 

But if you, like a lot of churches, use Facebook Live to host your Sunday livestreams, you need to think about making some changes. 

• Download your sermon videos. You don’t want your sermons to be permanently deleted by Facebook after 30 days. 
• Host past sermon videos on another platform such as YouTube. You can post your entire back catalogue of sermons there with no fear of them being deleted. 
• Think about using another app to host your livestreams. You can still promote your livestreams through Facebook without hosting the videos there. 

How to Keep Your Livestream Videos

You have a couple of options for saving your past Facebook Lives and preserving future ones. 

To download your past Facebook Lives for preservation, follow these steps: 

1. Find the video you want to download. 
2. Open the full screen view and click the meatball menu for more options. 
3. Click “download video.” 

Facebook also allows you to bulk download or transfer your videos. 

1. Open your notifications and select the one from Facebook about the changes to Facebook Live videos. 
2. If you want to download the videos, select “download live videos.” Then select where you want to download your videos to and the date range for videos you want to download. 
3. Click “create file.” 
4. If you want to transfer your videos, select “transfer live videos.” Then select “where” to choose the transfer destination, such as Google Drive or DropBox. 
5. Click “save.” 

If you want to turn some of your existing Facebook Lives into short-form content for Facebook, you can turn them into Reels directly in the Facebook App. You can find a walkthrough from Facebook Business Help Center here. 

It can be frustrating when platforms like Facebook make changes that affect the way you run your services, but it isn’t the end of the world. As long as you are making efforts to preserve your sermon videos on a platform besides Facebook, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.