Greg Atkinson

We had a great Thanksgiving. My wife works weekends at a group home for girls. We had several of the girls over to our home for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a special time and humbling to know that it was the best Thanksgiving any of the girls had ever had. The Cowboys continued their win streak, thus adding fuel to the Romo fire. By the way, I just found out that I get to go to the Cowboys/Saints game on December 10. I can’t wait!

Friday and Saturday we got out all our Christmas decorations and began our annual quest to make our home come alive with Christmas lights and stockings. Yes, our tree is up and lit, complete with the angel on top (which I always get to do - though my 4 year old son did kind of help me this year). Sunday we went to our church as a family. I didn’t have to run or play anything, so I got to sit with my wife and just enjoy our time of worship. My highlight was my church’s worship team doing one of my favorite songs for the first time: Revelation Song (which you can hear on my Myspace page by clicking on the song name). My Tuesday night band, i55, gets to do that song often and we love it.

Today, I’m teaching a “Philosophy of Ministry” class at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. I’m looking forward to that. It’s from noon to 2pm - if you’d like to pray for me during that time. Starting in January, I’ll be teaching a worship class at Dallas Theological Seminary each Monday afternoon.

IN OTHER NEWS:

Podcast Episode 3 is now LIVE. In this episode, Anthony and I interview Brad from Church Marketing Sucks. Check it out!

*In related news, Creative Synergy is a featured podcast on PodPoint. Pretty cool!

This morning the Creative Synergy Podcast team is back in the studio to record our next two podcasts. The first features an interview with Brad Abare from ChurchMarketingSucks and the next features an interview with Shawn Wood, Communications Pastor at Seacoast Church.

There’s some buzz and hype stirring around about the fifth episode, which we are working hard on behind-the-scenes. The 5th episode is when we (along with some special in-studio guests) tackle the tough subject of churches and copyright issues. You don’t want to miss any of these. If you haven’t subscribed already - what are you waiting for??? The first two episodes have received rave reviews and encouraging comments from around the world. Tune in!

Yesterday was a good day because I got to sit with my wife during worship. I had been “on” the last few weeks. It’s always good to have an intentional week “off”. They are needed and will allow you to serve and be “on” for longer.

If you haven’t already, go get and listen to our new podcast. I think you’ll enjoy it.

One of my favorite Independent producers is Chris McGowan. I came across his work, was blown away and signed him to WorshipHouse Media as one of their Indys. He’s done some amazing videos which you can search by going to WorshipHouse’s Independent section and looking for his name. On his church website, he’s giving away a FREE video that encourages you to vote. Check it out.

I’ve mentioned before that I subscribe to Jake Ludington’s newsletter, which is always full of techno info. The Levelator was highlighted in his last newsletter.

One of the biggest frustrations of people who record and edit audio is the amount of time it takes to fix volume level issues. If you record two people, one of them is invariably softer than the other in the mix. You might turn your head away from the microphone to look at a distraction or have the microphone pointed away from the source. This even happens to the pros on occasion. To solve this common frustration, Gigavox created The Levelator.

Essentially, the software examines a WAV or AIFF file, looks for volume inconsistencies and fixes them. It’s a bit geekier than that under the hood. The Levelator handles both the gain optimization on a file and RMS normalization to make sure the volume level is consistent. The output is a new file, so you can always go back to the original if you need to. The software runs on both Windows and OS X and is FREE for personal non-commercial use. While The Levelator can’t do anything to make your podcast more interesting, this is the first tool Jake has seen that makes almost anyone sound like they hired a top-notch engineer. If editing audio has been holding you back from podcasting or making music, give The Levelator a shot, you’ll be surprised by how simple it is to sound great.

Each month WorshipHouse pulls together a unique “House Collection“. This month they pulled from Organic Video’s distressed motions. I must say - these are some of my all-time favorite motion backgrounds. In my conferences, I call them the “hottest” and most popular loops out right now. If you don’t have them, yet, you need to get them today. You can get them all in one downloadable zip file via the House Collection.

EXTRA:

This morning, Anthony, Brian and I go in to the studio to record our second podcast. We’ve been amazed at how quick word is getting out about our first podcast. We’ve got comments and listener questions from around the world - some of which we are going to address today. We’ll also be playing a cool interview with Mark Batterson, pastor of National Community Church in Washington DC (plus 2 of his media pastors). Look for Episode #2 coming soon!

I came across this announcement from a church and thought it was pretty admirable and noteworthy. Most churches are upgrading from tapes to CDs and from VHS video to DVD. This is a cool way to allow those on the receiving end to upgrade with you. We all have either have an extra/cheap DVD player that we can give away (I just sold one on Craig’s list for $10) or we could buy a cheap one and donate it to the cause. This may not fall in some people’s cutting edge/innovative idea category, but I dig it and applaud them for their ministry to those that can’t get out. Aren’t we called to provide for the widows and the weak?

EXTRA:

Picking up on the topic of service audio and video recording, there are lots of things to consider (including copyright issues). Anthony Coppedge and I are going to be addressing this on our new podcast: Creative Synergy. Subscribe today!

As I’ve mentioned before, Anthony Coppedge and I teamed up to do a new podcast called: Creative Synergy. Our first episode is available through iTunes. You can link to it from our website: www.creativesynergypodcast.com. Also on our website are show notes with links to what we talked about. In our first episode, we play an interview with Kem Meyer of Granger Community Church - it’s pretty cool. Check it out!

I found out about Sermon Cloud through the PastorHacks blog. This is from the Sermon Cloud website: Sermon Cloud offers churches FREE Advanced Sermon Syndication & mp3 services. Are you interested in podcasting, syndicating and using all the other ‘Web 2.0′ buzzwords for your church?

Sermon Cloud features include resampling mp3’s to be optimized for the internet, Syndicating content (Integrating directly into iTunes store, syndicating through RSS feeds), displaying recent sermons on your church website, Podcasting mp3, sermon streaming capability in our Jukebox player, tagging system, commenting on sermons, community recommending sermons, searching for sermons and more…

Sign-up for free to begin uploading sermons today!

This morning, Anthony and I recorded our first podcast, which will feature an interview with Kem Meyer from Granger Community Church. We had a great time and are looking forward to hearing the finished version. Our engineer and producer, Brian Davis, is very talented and has a background in professional radio. We are thrilled that he is a part of our podcast team. I’ll blog about it on here once the podcast goes LIVE.

Speaking of Kem Meyer, she just posted lots of FREE resources from Granger on her blog. Check them out:

• Big Idea Series Worksheet
• Volunteer Expo Insert
• Staff Blogging Guidelines
• Public Blogging Guidelines
• Weekend Program
• Promotion Request Form
• Kem’s Homemade Lego Cake [Nobody actually requested this but Kem worked really hard on it and wanted to show someone]
• Press Release
• Media Spokesperson Tips
• Promotional Deliverables and Audience Priorities

You may have heard the rumor: Yes, I’m am about to launch a new podcast! I’m partnering with Anthony Coppedge. We will soon be launching a new podcast called “Creative Synergy”. This podcast will be for all Church leaders (pastors, worship leaders, communication folks, and techies - anyone connected to church leadership and especially if they’re involved in worship planning). Our website for the podcast was designed by our new friends at Bombay Creative. FYI - The founder of Bombay Creative, Kent, has a tremendous blog that I read daily: Church Relevance. We hope to record our first podcast this week. More on that soon!