Greg Atkinson

After 13 years of ministry on a church staff I’ve learned one simple, but very true law of ministry: Sunday comes every week. It doesn’t matter how big the event, conference, concert, production, musical… you name it - doesn’t matter what you just did, Sunday’s coming. 

It is relentless. I know this. I’ve known this for many years, but it struck me yesterday when we were in our production meeting for this Sunday and we were all tired and mentally exhausted from the previous week’s Christmas production.

This is my “ministry law” that I offer to you, friends. What law would you add?

CHRISTMAS RESOURCE:

This Christmas season at Bent Tree we’re using the Christmas Pak 4 by SermonVideos.com - thankfully they have it in HD.

Have you heard of the new “I am Second” campaign? Here’s a little info about it from their website:

I am Second is a movement where significance in life is a shared value among people of all kinds. Actors. Athletes. Musicians. Business leaders. Your next door neighbor. People just like you… I am Second is designed to help people discover their purpose in life.

We showed the video of Korn’s former lead singer, Brian Welch, two weeks ago in our worship service. It’s powerful stuff. This is something worth checking out and considering getting involved with. You may have noticed a billboard in your city. I saw one here in Dallas the other day.

Our pastor, Pete Briscoe, shot a video with them, too. It’s pretty cool. You might be familiar with or heard of my pastor, but never seen him this raw and honest. Good stuff! Check it out HERE.

My friend, Pace, at Fellowship Church posted this video that they did recently. I love it! Art is about expression. How are you expressing yourself as an artist? Does your church let you express yourself? Do you feel like your church stiffles or depresses creativity, freedom and expression in your situation? Express yourself!

New Creation from Pace Hartfield on Vimeo. 

EXTRA:

Speaking of expression: I’ve got a lot of thoughts and comments that I’m processing through right now. I’m pretty fired up. I’m greatly encouraged by the many of you that responded to yesterday’s blog post. I’m also greatly concerned by some people’s reaction. Bear with me. I’m trying to handle it Christ-like.

In order to allow our people to experiece life as one of our church planters and partners in India, we created Maratha Experience. This was an inspiring, colorful, self-guided tour through the streets of Pune, India (complete with goats). Big props to Aaron Bensko and our Visual Arts team. Below are some pictures from the experience - which was created in one of the hallways of our church.

Yesterday we finished our annual Missions Festival. The past 2 Sundays have been awesome. On the video side we did video tracks to “God of This City” (the Passion version) and “Tears of the Saints” (by Leeland). 

One of the most special moments of worship I’ve ever been a part of was yesterday as we worshipped like most of the Church does (with either no or low tech). We hung a light bulb from the ceiling (which is something our team had seen in a church in the Amazon) and used a cheap portable system to amplify our voices to entire room. It was definitely not the norm and will surely be memorable. Tomorrow I’ll show more pictures from our India experience - you don’t want to miss it!

Click below to see a brief glimpse of what worship was like yesterday:

EXTRA:
Boston was amazing! Such a cool city. I had Clam Chowder 3 times in 3 days. Great people. Great conversation at the Church 2.0 Local Forum. We had people from 3 states and I’m excited for those servants in a very special part of our country. Church 2.0 Tulsa is THIS Friday! 

Sometimes newcomers to a technical arts ministry are intimidated, overwhelmed or confused as to whether or not they are needed and how best to get assimilated to the team. At my church, I have 3 “gateway ministries” that are a quick way for someone to get plugged in. These positions are camera, graphics and stage manager.

This is not to say that these positions are not important, needed or difficult to do. These are just the best 3 options to quickly start out on the team. The other team positions are hand-picked after one has served in one of these “gateway ministries” for a healthy season and has excelled at them.

The truth is that we can have someone trained on graphics, camera or stage managing in 2 weeks (2 Wed. night rehearsals). This is just getting them up-and-running and able to dive in and be a part of the team. We LOVE welcoming new people to the team! The other truth is that it takes months and sometimes years to be GOOD at graphics, camera and stage managing.

When someone shows great promise and a desire to try something different, they become a potential Service Director. When a camera operator does well on camera for a long time and has a knack for technical things, they get moved to our Video Engineer/Shader position.

One current camera operator is being groomed as a Video Director, but is starting out as a Video Engineer/Shader to be in the control room during the “heat of things”. Another newcomer is being considered as a potential future Video Director and is spending time in “the empty chair“. Some camera operators make good shaders, some don’t. Some shaders go on to be Video Directors, some don’t.

This a little behind-the-scenes look at how people get involved and how we fill non-gateway positions like Video Engineer/Shader, Video Director and Service Director. The Producer is also a hand-picked postion. What’s the assimilation process like at your church?

I’m the Director of Technical Arts at my church (Bent Tree), so I oversee all the technical arts ministries. I’m coming into a new and long-awaited season of being able to put up the blueprints, take off my hard hat and be the pastor, shepherd and leader I am called to be. Praise God, this Sunday is Bent Tree’s official “Grand Opening”! After being in construction for 3 years, we are finally opening our doors wide to the community.

Many close to me have pointed out that I’ve been a little busy, a little (that’s an understatement) stressed and a little preoccupied with work the last year. I’m hesitantly glad to say that I think I’ve made it through the valley and am looking forward to moving forward as a church and as a Technical Arts ministry.

Let’s talk practical: I’ve blogged before about the team that it takes to pull off a Sunday. Only myself and our Audio Coordinator are paid. The rest of the team is an army of dedicated servants. It usually looks something like this:

1. Dir. of Technical Arts (that’s me - I float around, encourage and oversee)
2. Front of House audio (usually our full-time Audio Coordinator)
3. A2 (second audio engineer at FOH)
4. Monitor Engineer
5. Lighting Technician
6. Service Director (on headset with stage managers, times service, executes)
7. Stage Manager on stage left
8. Stage Manager on stage right
9. Stage Manager on floor
10. Producer (takes in overall experience, gives creative feedback/guidance)
11. Video Director (right now the VD calls and switches)
12. Video Engineer (this person is the camera shader and is responsible for starting the recordings for the DVD-R and capture to FinalCut for the video podcast)
13. Camera operator 1
14. Camera operator 2
15. Camera operator 3
16. Graphics Operator (right now their is one that runs EasyWorship)
17. FUTURE: Broadcast audio engineer (right now we capture to ProTools HD)
18. FUTURE: TD at the switcher (the Video Director will just call the shots)
19. FUTURE: Prompt Screen Operator (we are going to move to 2 graphics operators, one for the screens that the people see and one just for the prompt screens that the singers see)

So, currently there are 16 “black shirts” serving around the main worship center on a Sunday. As you see, I hope to increase to at least 18 in the next few months. I’ve said it many times before and I’ll say it many more times: YOU MUST CONSTANTLY RECRUIT! For various reasons, you have to keep recruiting. Once we have more than enough graphic operators, we’ll split and have 2 graphic operators each week. If we had too many of them, we’d split again and have one for an effects screen (which we’re working on). If we got too many camera operators, then we’d add cameras 4 and 5 on stage left and stage right.

One note: all 16 are at rehearsal on Wed. night: EVERYONE. We do a complete run-through with full music, tech and any other elemenHold high the value of rehearsal.ts that might happen (drama, etc.) each Wed. night from 7p to 9p. That’s a blog post unto itself.  Raise the bar. Set a standard for quality and value each person’s time and commitment. I don’t think it’s right for one person to miss and 15 others give up their time and be at rehearsal. ALL 16 must be there. Committing to serve on a given week means you’re “on” for Wed. night and Sunday. Our volunteers mark their availability via Planning Center Online - that’s another blog post all to itself. What a resource!

Usually I’m walking new team members around on Wed. nights, giving them the behind-the-scenes tour, introducing them to the team and passing them on to a volunteer team leader that trains them on their particulal place of service.

* Tomorrow’s blog will be about how new people get plugged in and where/how I start them out.

Another note: What I listed above is just what takes place in the main worship center. I’m working on a new position for an AV Coordinator to oversee the equipment throughout our campus. In putting together a job description, I realized we have 13 different venues (22 projectors) across our campus.

On a Sunday, “tech” is happening in classrooms, the Treehouse, the gym, the main worship center and our new FX Live family production that kicked off this past Sunday. The FX Live team has their own full tech team and uses IMAG (Image Magnification) in their production as well. NOTE: FX Live has 2 cameras right now (the same ones we used in our old worship center).

I’ll blog more about FX Live another time. You may have heard of North Point’s KidStuf - FX Live (FX stands for family experience) is based off of KidStuf - featuring worship for kids and parents led by singers, dancers and actors. They have a newly built 2 story theater/stage. I heard this past week that we have the largest family production theater in the country. Estimates are that we still turned away 200 people! We are meeting and planning on how to remedy this.

Below is a picture from this past Sunday’s official kick-off of FX Live:

More tomorrow on what I call “gateway ministries”.  SO.. what does Sunday look like at your church?

An Apple iPhone or iPod touch will become a central part of Abilene Christian University’s innovative learning experience this fall when all freshmen are provided one of these converged media devices, said Phil Schubert, ACU executive vice president.

At ACU - the first university in the nation to provide these cutting-edge media devices to its incoming class - freshmen will use an iPhone or iPod touch to receive homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, get directions to their professors’ offices, and check their meal and account balances - among more than 15 other useful web applications already developed, said ACU Chief Information Officer Kevin Roberts.

ACU’s vision for technology has been captured in a forward-looking film called ‘Connected,’ found online - along with information about ACU’s other ground-breaking mobile learning
efforts - at www.acu.edu/connected. - You can read more from this article HERE.

Below is a summary from someone who was a part of the freshman orientation at ACU:

This past weekend Abilene Christian University gave away about 1,000 iPhones and iPod Touch’s. All of the devices were given away totally free. Parents had the option to opt-out of the iPhone, in case they did not want to pay the monthly bill. In that case, students still received an iPod Touch 8GB Model. The iPod Touch, when connected to ACU’s Wifi Network can do pretty much everything the iPhone can do with respect to all of the ACU specific Applications. The iPod Touch just doesn’t have the GPS Guided campus map available.

ACU is the only place in Abilene, Texas with 3G Network Coverage from AT&T. AT&T did the work just for them, and will get to the rest of the town’s 3G coverage later. This in an unprecedented leap in technology for education, and Abilene Christian is leading the way. Oklahoma Christian University will soon follow. ACU gets calls weekly from other university’s administrations inquiring about this initiative. Hopefully many schools will follow in ACU’s footsteps.

HIGHLIGHTS:

• Students login to a special ACU app and their schedule is downloaded to their iPhone or iPod Touch
• GPS map shows students where they’re at on campus and how to get to their class
• Professors can take attendance by iPhones present in class
• Professors can get real-time feedback from students via surveys (”Do I need to spend more time on this or do you understand it?” - students answer “Yes” or “No thanks. I got it.”)
• Students can check their meal and account balance

PERSONAL:
Today my son, Tommy, turns 6 years old and starts his first day of school. My little boy is growing up!

For those of you that don’t know - I like to use the term “straight rockin’ it!”. I enjoy the breeze of reading many blogs at once via my Google Reader on my iGoogle page, which I check daily.

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about some blogs that I read daily now. I have 2 more blogs added to my blogroll that I’d like to share with you:

My new friends - Eric Michael Bryant and Randy Elrod. Both are great Church leaders, bloggers and all around great guys. I encourage you to add them to your Google reader and check ‘em out!

Eric is the Navigator (Executive Pastor) at Mosaic in LA and attended the Church 2.0 Local Forum - Orange County. I got to meet him after Mosaic’s Sunday night service, which was a great experience.

Randy is a good friend of my worship pastor, Scott Dyer, and heads up the re:create conference - which I hope to one day attend. It’s rare for me to just attend a conference, but that is one on “my list”.

* SO… what are the must-read blogs that you check daily?