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.

In my “Church 2.0” class at NAB, I did a live text poll where people in the class texted in their vote and it updated in real time on the screen (via PowerPoint). Many asked how I did it. I did it using a website called Poll Everywhere.

I’d like to encourage you all, my blog readers, to participate, too. Please go HERE and select your answer to the poll. I tried posting the poll on my blog, but the text was too small to read. If you go to the link above you’ll be able to read all the options well and vote online. Tomorrow I’ll post the results.

EXTRA:
Here are some places to check out free videos (that’s right: FREE) - actually they’re all types of media resources.

• Free Countdown from SermonSpice
• Free loop or motion background from WorshipHouse
• Free iPod film from Modern Parables
• Free stock footage from RevoStock
• Free download from SermonVideos.com
• Free Mother’s Day Countdown from WorshipFilms
• Free Mother’s Day Backgrounds from Midnight Oil
• Free media resources from WORDsearch Media
• Free video from eleven72
• Free download from Floodgate Productions
• Free media resources from Organic Videos
• Free media resources from Sermonade
• Free media resources from Muddy River Media
• Free graphics from WorshipGraphics
• Free SD or HD clip from 12 Inch Design

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…

The Swerve blog announced a summer message series entitled “One Prayer“, which is very intriguing. It’s many churches coming together and participating. Check out the explanation video from Pastor Craig. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Is this something you’d do at your church?

EXTRA:

I am thrilled to announce that SermonSpice has opened a Spanish media store. I have been begging producers for years to produce content in Spanish or at least with Spanish sub-titles. I applaud….cheer… and herald SermonSpice for their vision and commitment to equip this HUGE part of our Church. Well done!

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.

Besides this Sunday, Easter and a lot of other things campus-wide, one of the projects I’m working on is digital signage for our community space. I have several ideas and thoughts about what I’d like to do. I’m still very open and looking for ideas on the how to do it.

I’d love to hear what you’re doing at your church for digital signage - both content and how you do it (what hardware and software you use). Here’s more food for thought on digital signage.

EXTRA:
I know some of you are new readers of my blog (that I met at NRB). Here are the 2 articles I mentioned in my classes: One is called “Firing a Volunteer” and the other is called “Refining the Team“.

BONUS:
Today I’m attending a creative brainstorming meeting at Fellowship Church. I’ll also be meeting with their worship pastor, Pace and getting to know him better. You can check out his new blog HERE.

Lately, I’ve been giving lots of tours to friends from other churches. One thing that they notice and I’m proud of is our extra chairs located beside each tech position. There is a stool beside our FOH audio engineer, there’s an extra chair beside our Service Director, there’s an extra chair beside our lighting tech, there’s an extra chair beside our video director and video engineer/shader and an extra chair beside our graphics operator.

Hear me friends: this is something I do VERY intentionally. When I’m a little sad is when that “extra chair” is an “empty chair”. We almost always have someone in training/learning at every position. If there’s a week when I see an empty chair, I look to my leaders and ask, “Do we not have someone training this week?” I (and my volunteer leaders) work hard and again, very intentionally, to see that the extra chair is not left empty. As I’ve said countless times on this blog, you must continually be recruiting and training… recruiting and training… recruiting and training. It never ends.

PERSONAL:
Why do I write with passion? Why do I travel away from my family to go speak at a conference? Why do I consult with other churches? Because for what ever reason, God has given me a heart that bleeds for His Church. I love Christ. I love the Gospel message. I love my church home and place of service (Bent Tree) and I want to be a good steward of the knowledge, experiences, education and tough lessons learned that God has given me and my church.

What’s my pet peeve and drives me crazy? When a thriving or successful church, especially a larger church, keeps secrets. You ask him how they got to where they are and they don’t share. There’s nothing Kingdom-minded about that. If you’ve ever interacted with me at a conference, you know that I pass on everything I can think of - the good, the bad, the ugly. I share ideas, thoughts, philosophies and challenges with anyone that will listen. This is what a “Church 2.0 leader” does (more on that in my upcoming book).

Do I think I know it all? Hah! Not even close. That’s why I’m constantly meeting with peers and picking their brain. I ask a lot of questions and try to learn from their lessons, philosophies and experiences. I, and my church, am an open book. Come, visit, share, ask, learn. We’ve had tech directors from around the country visit our church to attend a service and see behind-the-scenes. I welcome each of them with open arms. Usually, I feed them, too (just look at me). I’m a big boy.

Sorry for the little rant. I just had this on my mind and heart and wanted to express it publicly. I love you. I love hearing about what God is up to in your church, ministry and community. I want to be a friend and help to you and your ministry in any way I can. We’re in this together, friends. Put away any spirit of competition - that’s not of God. Let’s share our resources, our ideas, our struggles - that’s the Body of Christ!

ON ANOTHER PERSONAL NOTE:
We will miss you Brett Favre!

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.

I know several people that are coming to Dallas this week for the C3 Conference at Fellowship Church. I’m planning to meet with a few of them and give them a tour of Bent Tree. If you’re coming to town this week and want to get together, just shoot me an email and let me know: greg@churchvideoideas.com.

EXTRA:
We have a team of leaders from our church in Pune, India training Church leaders for our adopted people group, the Marathas. This past Sunday we spoke with one of our elders live during our Sunday morning worship service. It was about 9pm his time and it was morning for us. It was very cool. We could all hear him clear as a bell and he heard us with no problem. We did it using Skype!

EXTRA, EXTRA:

According to TechCrunch yesterday, a source close to Microsoft says the company will launch a new desktop software called WorldWide Telescope on February 27. Pretty cool. You can read more about it HERE.

BONUS:
I read this in WIRED magazine: You can place a picture of you and/or your family on the moon - that’s right: on the moon. Check out HERE for more info.

FYI - There has been some great discussion and comments on the frequency post, as well as the team leadership post. Go back and check them out. As far as the “Firing a Volunteer” post, I’ve been thinking about the whole refining of a team (this applies to any team at your church, not just the tech team).

I’ll probably turn this into a future article, but for now, here’s what I’m dealing with in my ministry. There are a couple of very talented and skilled people that say or imply things like “I want to do _____” or I don’t think I’m going to serve. Or “I’m going to do ______ or I quit.” - that type of thing. These aren’t people that I’m ready to “fire”. They definitely have some heart/attitude issues that need to be addressed, but the firing of the individual I mentioned last week was well beyond that.

As I’ve said before and will say again: ministry is people and people come in all shapes, sizes and personalities. Every church has them - the team members that you have to spend more time with than others, the ones that you have to have plenty of communication with, meetings with to discuss something they’ve said or done, extra coffees, breakfasts or lunches to get to know them better and allow them to get to know your heart better.

Thank God these people don’t make up the majority of your team (at least they don’t for me), but they do exist on each team. Though they can be frustrating and challenging, I do take a step back every now and then and see how God is using me and our technical ministry to shape and mold them into a person more like Christ. These difficult people are prime opportunities for growth and with the proper leadership will one day turn into model team members. I’ve seen it time and time again.

My number one request of myself, my staff, and my volunteers is that we are teachable. You don’t have to get it right every time, you don’t have to know it all - just be teachable. That’s all I’m looking for. I have a TON of grace for someone that’s teachable.

SIDEBAR:
Don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know.” A while back I was going to make that comment its own blog post. I can’t tell you how many times one of you has emailed me to ask a question and my response has been something like, “I honestly don’t know, but here’s someone who might…”. If you’ve ever heard that from me before, you know I’m telling the truth. If you don’t know something, just admit it and either give the task, question or project to someone that does or commit to learn it and let God stretch you.
SIDEBAR END

THE LESSON:
So - back to refining the team. Some things are constant, friends.

• You will always (and I mean always) need to be constantly recruiting and training new team members. Team members leave or step down all the time for various reasons. You must work hard and constantly to see that your team has depth - I can’t stress this enough.
• You will always need to keep attitudes in check. My boss calls it “keeping a short account”. If someone has an attitude on Sunday, we are meeting on Monday - it’s that simple. Don’t allow things to fester and go on without accountability.
• You will always need to be in communication with your team. Whether it be in person, phone calls, or emails - you should be touching base with your team regularly. Send them random thoughts, praises, dreams, goals, devotionals, stories of what God is doing at your church (often they don’t get to hear the stories that you do).
• You will always need to be growing personally, spiritually and professionally. You are their leader. They look to you for wisdom, discernment, guidance, vision and shepherding. You’ve got to stay on your knees (I’m talking to myself, too). You’ve got to stay in the Word (I’m really preaching to myself now). You’ve got to ask the Holy Spirit for wisdom and discernment, which God’s Word tells us He will give to those that ask (Proverbs 2:1-11 and James 1:5). You also should be reading. I encourage you to always be reading some type of book on leadership. If you can’t buy it, go to the Library and check one out.

Here’s what I’d love for you to comment on: What is one or some of your favorite books on leadership?

EXTRA:
If you haven’t heard, yet: Granger Community Church is going multi-campus. Check out Pastor Mark Beeson’s announcement HERE.

EXTRA, EXTRA:
For an update on my blog post “Blu-Ray It Is”, you can read the latest HERE.

BONUS:
To mi amigo, Mark, who requested more links to free stuff. I do still link to free media downloads as I come across them. I try to list the ones that people wouldn’t come across on their own. If you’re just looking for any free stuff, click on my “Blog Sponsors” tab above and go to each of the sponsors websites. Most of them have a monthly free download. HERE’S a FREE download you may not know of.