Church Video Ideas

What inspires you? Different things inspire me - I look for inspiration from other churches, American Idol, The Grammys, concerts, conferences, things like Blue Man Group and KA in Vegas, etc. My friend, Pace, from Fellowship Church sent me THIS link to something they did this past Christmas. I was inspired. I was encouraged and I was proud that The Church is using it’s gifts and creativity again. Check it out!

EXTRA:
Each Friday I check out the “Video of the Week” from my friend, Bill Seaver’s blog: MicroExplosion. This week’s video was on giving a presentation. I thought it was great and would love for all preachers/presenters to watch it.

PresenTired: “The Voicemail” from Scott Schwertly on Vimeo.

The interview I did for the Churchy Media Podcast just posted. You can check it out HERE. In it, we talk about a tech get-together at NAB next week (Tuesday, April 15th at 11:30am). I hope you’ll download it and give it a listen.

Again, my classes at NAB (”Which Worship Presentation Software is Best for Your Church?” and “Church 2.0″) are sponsored by eleven72 and ProPresenter.

EXTRA:
Here a some pictures from our Good Friday service…

We’re in the craziness of Easter week. I know you are, too. Let’s all pray for each other.

Last night we rehearsed for our Good Friday services. Tonight we rehearse for Easter. I’m pretty excited about what I see coming together. I’ll have pictures for you in the near future.

For now, I’d love to hear what you’re doing at your church this Easter.

Lately, I’ve been considering getting Apple TV for our church. I have several ideas of how to use it and am sure there are others that I haven’t even thought about. If you’re interested or curious in how Apple TV can be used in a ministry setting, you can read more about it HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

Are you using Apple TV? If so, please comment and tell us how you’re using it.

EXTRA:
Today begins “Tech Week” at Bent Tree. We have rehearsal every night this week, 2 Good Friday services, dress rehearsal on Saturday and 3 Easter services.

If all goes well, I should be on my way to Nashville for NRB today. I was planning on having lunch in Nashville, but as I type this (Thursday night) there are hundreds of flights delayed out of DFW. I’m just hoping I make it in time for my class on Saturday! Pray for me. If you’re there - holla!

EXTRA:
I really Easter v.2 from Igniter Media Group. Not only are the stills and loops very usable, but they’re creative, edgy, artsy, and just plain cool. The video “Because He Lives” is a home-run. And to top it all off - they have an HD version of everything, which is crucial for my church now. Well done, Igniter!

UPDATE:
The snow canceled my flight this morning. They originally re-booked my flight for tomorrow night, meaning I would miss my class tomorrow afternoon. I called and got on a flight that leaves tonight. I’m going to go ahead over to the airport and see if I can catch an earlier flight. I’m still coming Nashville!

Many have asked what we’re doing as far as media in our new worship center. As I mentioned before, we are using EasyWorship as our presentation software. We are also slowly changing over our entire campus (all venues) to EasyWorship, which has a universal site license (other products such as MediaShout and ProPresenter charge extra to use their software on multiple computers). We have 7 venues that will be using EasyWorship, so the universal site license was a win for us.

My friends at EasyWorship were great during the crazy weeks and days leading up to our first worship service. Either we (Bent Tree) are the first church to use EasyWorship in an HD setting or we are one of the first - either way: we won’t be the last. I’ve heard rumors of confusion about whether or not EasyWorship can do HD. Let me set the record straight: it does and we’re doing it.

The trouble that we were having leading up to the first service was due to having the wrong video card. I went locally and purchased a new video card (NVidia GeForce 8800 GTS) and we were up and running in a matter of minutes. If you have any other questions about the initial setup of EasyWorship and the codecs I purchased/downloaded, just email me.

Here’s what’s up as far as the HD backgrounds we used. We’ve had 3 Sundays in our new worship center. The first Sunday we used all Igniter Backs Vol. 3 backgrounds (loops and stills). The next week we used more Igniter Backs and some brand new backgrounds from FortyOneTwenty. This past Sunday we used new HD backgrounds from SermonVideos.com.

I’d like to point out that I still encourage our volunteers that pick the backgrounds each week to use at least one still background for a song. As I’ve said before, motion backgrounds are most powerful in contrast to still backgrounds. You can read more on my philosophy of this in my “Less Is More” article.

EXTRA:
Still looking for FREE worship backgrounds? Check out HERE.

BONUS:
Yesterday we found our opening video to kick off our Easter service. It’s available at BlueFish.tv, it’s pretty sweet and it’s $1.99! Check it out HERE.

We have been meeting over the last 2 months to discuss this year’s Good Friday and Easter services. We are finalizing our plans soon and I’ll blog about them. What are you doing at your church this Easter season?

Each year I make “New Year Resolutions”. Of course I’m doing the standard: spend more time with God, spend more time with my family, lose weight, etc. I take all those seriously and plan to do all three, but I wanted to blog about a more specific list of ministry goals for 2008. Here they are:

• Lead, empower and develop my Tech Arts Leadership Team
• Lead a smooth transition into our new worship center and the remaining projects and renovations
• See our team double in size
• See our team become closer and share more social time together
• Develop and lead well those that I oversee
• Have a better process for assimilation for newcomers to the team
• See that our team and each volunteer does what they do better
• Video and catalog special moments throughout the year for a highlight video at the end of the year
• Raise the bar for excellence and quality in our corporate worship
• Offer more training for our Tech Arts team
• Help train and develop other tech teams and leaders for children and youth
• Improve upon and expand my knowledge of Final Cut Pro
• Go on a mission trip
• Read several more books (ministry, business and leadership)
• Continue writing for several magazines
• Complete at least 2 of my 3 book projects before the year ends
• Add some new classes and information to the conferences that I teach at
• Work with more churches to help them grow in their worship and technical ministry

EXTRA:
This just in from Matt at fortyonetwenty: “We want to give your readers a promo code for a FREE mini-movie from our site. The mini-movie you will get is called “Anything But Silent”". To get it just use the Promo Code: free4120

What a wonderful celebration of Christmas we had at my church. In our 5 services, we saw between 6000 and 7000 people come worship with us. It was a special time, as this was our last Christmas in our current worship center. It was tough seeing 600 people sitting in overflow rooms - knowing that our new worship center (with plenty of room) was across the parking lot, but not quite ready for use.

Our service was very worshipful and very well received. We flew in our friend (the one-and-only “Gersh” - formerly of Whiteheart) to lead the band and arrange all our Christmas music. Our band sounded awesome playing these fresh, new arrangements that Gersh had written just for our services. The band was behind a scrim and you could just see their silhouettes as they played, then they would “disappear” during the drama.

The drama was also an original that one of our drama volunteers wrote just for this year (as we are in a period of change and transition) - the drama was called “Seasons” and followed a family that had gone through a lot of changes in the past year and shared Christmas memories. They would mention songs that were special to them and then the lights would go down on them and up on our vocalists, which were dressed according to the style and genre of each song. So, you had the band behind the scrim in silhouettes and the vocalists out front in various costumes.

After the drama (which was 40 minutes) our pastor came out and gave a great 15 minute message. We then had a special music piece (”What Child is This”) during the offering and then closed the service with 3 more congregational songs. The last 4 services, we had children come up on the stage and stretch out all the way across it, as we sang the closing medley. It was a sight I won’t forget.

How did Christmas go at your church?

This is “tech week” at my church. I’m working 14 hour days and at the church until 11pm each night. We’ve got a rehearsal every night this week, dress rehearsal on Saturday, 2 services on Sunday and 3 on Monday. I don’t know when I’ll be able to blog again. I will sometime though, because I’d like to tell you more about what we’re doing for our Christmas services. God be with us all.