Church Video Ideas

Here are a few Christmas media resources that my friends sent me to check out and are new for this year. I encourage you to check them out as well:

• “Breath of Heaven” by eleven72 - $20
• “The Devil’s Take on Christmas” by eleven72 - $20
• “A Christmas Wish” by Flashlight Films - $12
• “Christmas 101” by Flashlight Films - $12
• “A Christmas Response” by Floodgate Productions - $20
• “Christmas v.2” collection by Igniter Media Group - $35
• “Xtreme Christmas Backgrounds 3” collection by Radiate Films - $25
• “Christmas Pak 3” by SermonVideos.com - $40
• “Complete Christmas” collection by WorshipFilms - $49 (also available in HD - $69)
• “Kid’s Christmas” collection by WorshipFilms - $35

EXTRA:

I made a collection of still backgrounds last year for Christmas/Winter. You can purchase them HERE.

Each season seems busier than the last when you’re in ministry, but no season tops this time of year! Here we are again in December juggling preparations for Christmas programs, special services, ministry outreach events, holiday parties, family events, not to mention Christmas shopping. And somewhere in here we have to focus on wrapping up “business” for the year. It’s time for those of us with “use-it-or-lose-it” budgets to make the most of whatever we’ve got left.

Thankfully, HighwayVideo.com has put together a terrific year-end sale, which means you can get more bang for the last of those 2007 bucks. From now until the end of the year, you can purchase ANY of Highway’s 5-video DVD volumes for only $25 each.

Highway Video makes some of the best videos on the market (in Collide Magazine I rated them as one of my Top 10 Church media producers), which makes these deep discounts all the more valuable. So check out Highway’s “2007 Blizzard of Savings” sale before the year, the sale and your budget all disappear!

Usually I do a thorough (and very time-consuming) review of all Christmas media resources each year, but this year I am swamped, so I’m going to link you to my review from last year HERE and the best of the new from this year HERE. I’ll be reviewing some select Christmas media products that are new for this year soon.

Also, a few years ago I worked on a template for a traditional “Lessons and Carols” service. I make it available to churches every year for free. If you’d like to use it, base yours off of it and make it your own, however it can serve you - download it HERE.

EXTRA:

A few years ago I arranged “O Holy Night” for worship leaders that lead from acoustic guitar and want something more modern sounding. You can download the chord chart HERE and listen to the arrangement HERE. On the recording, I’m playing guitar and a local worship leader friend (remember my blog on “The Network”) is singing.

PERSONAL:

I’m on vacation today through Wednesday. I hope to do a lot of reading and research for my book, as well as spend some time with my family and not think about church for a few days.

I’d like to tell you a little more about one of the regular readers and comment contributors on this blog - his name is Richard Gaspard and he’s the Media Director of Crossroads Church and Director of Production of Crossroads Creative. Richard is a talented, visionary leader and has developed a video ministry that is truly on another level. (Remember my article: “The Next Level“?) Well, Richard and Crossroads have taken that step to the next level and started offering their media created in-house to other churches.

If you’re looking for media resources created by another church that can relate to your world, you’ll probably find something you can use at Crossroads Creative. Their videos are available for download or you can order the DVD volumes. They have creatively divided their resources into different series. Their series are called:

• On Ramps (video sermon series intros)
• Scenic Routes (video parables)
• Fast Lanes (video skits)
• Video (video clip-art or generic video announcements that you can customize for your church)

* PLEASE NOTE: For you, the readers of my blog, you can get 30% off your order through January 31st by using the promo code: CVIDEAS.

Personally, I’m proud of Richard and what he’s done at Crossroads and hope to see our video ministry expand in the future so we can offer “Bent Tree Media”. Well done Crossroads Church!

Yesterday was a 14 hour day, so I’ll be brief. I’ll be reviewing some new Christmas media resources in the near future. For now, I’d like to mention 2 things: One from SermonVideos.com and one from WorshipHouse Media.

My boy, Craig, and his team at SermonVideos.com have created a new Christmas Pak for ‘07. Their Christmas Paks are a favorite each year. I’d encourage you to check out the first two if you don’t have them and if you do, it’s time to purchase their new Christmas Pak 3. Go HERE and look for the newest resource on the right.

My friends at WorshipHouse Media are giving away a FREE download every weekday until Christmas! That’s right… every weekday. Also you can watch a daily podcast from Dale and Kent. Go HERE and click on the “Daily Freebie” ad to go to each day’s freebie.

EXTRA:

If you’re a fan of Paul Baloche (like I am), you may want to check out his video of the Christmas version of his song, “Offering”. You can watch it HERE.

I’m off work today and hope to catch up on some long overdue reviews. You would not believe the amount of products that I receive from companies/producers. I have a stack of unopened packages sitting on a shelf in my house. I hope to review them today and tell you about them soon. Look for reviews of new media resources from LifeWay, Crossroads Creative and Christmas resources from Angelhouse Media, Flashlight Films, Highway Video and Worship Films.

If you haven’t already, I’d love for you to join my Facebook group for my upcoming book: Church 2.0. You can find the group HERE. I’d love for you to be a part of the group and join the conversation. Please feel free to post new topics and items for discussion.

EXTRA:

Who’s hoping to get a Kindle this Christmas?

We recently made a great purchase at my church. One of our electric guitar players had played at another church and used a product called Axe Trak. He’s a very good musician and picky about gear, so he was skeptical at first, but after playing through it, he had to admit he thought it worked great. He came back and told me about it. We bought one the next week, loved it and bought a second one this week (we often have 2 electric guitars).

What does an Axe Trak do? It allows your electric guitar player to have their amp beside them on the stage, but via the Axe Trak, there is no stage volume. We had been putting our electric guitar player’s amps in holes we built into our stage. The holes (with the lids on them) reduced the stage volume, but were a pain to set up, mic and needed a fan constantly blowing on the amp, which means we had to crack the lid open and caused a danger on our stage (one of our vocalist fell in one of the holes while walking backstage and hurt her leg pretty bad). We’ve had several other people (including myself) that almost fell in the hole, when the lid was left open or not fully closed. With the Axe Trak, we have closed the lids for good.

Here’s some more info from the Axe Trak website: “The warm sound desired by most guitarists can only be created by the speaker of a good sounding guitar amp being mic’d in the right environment. Direct amplifier outputs sound fake, fuzzy and extremely harsh. The AxeTrak® alleviates this problem by allowing the user to connect directly from the speaker jack of their guitar amp to the input jack of the AxeTrak®. The output of the AxeTrak® is then plugged into a recording console, mixing board or computer soundcard using a standard low impedance microphone cable. This method of recording allows you to get a direct signal that includes the preamp tubes as well as the power tubes if using a tube amp. This is very important if you are a tone freak like most guitarists.” Check it out HERE.

That is the question and the topic of my weekly column on Monday Morning Insight. Go HERE to read this week’s article.

I was recently contacted by Albert Martin, a tech staff member at Granger Community Church. He told me that they used to use another presentation software at GCC for their lyric presentation, but between the quirky behavior and crashing, it became really frustrating for both he and the volunteers that run the program most of the time.

As a result, Albert has been developing a brand new piece of worship software from the ground up that “has proved to be both extremely stable and incredibly easy for our volunteers to learn and use” (he said he has trained volunteers in 15 minutes for what used to take at least twice as long). GCC has been using this every week since early this year.

The software is just wrapping up development and he’s released a FREE public beta for other churches to use and test. He currently has a very brief website up during the public beta period that gives a brief overview of iWorship along with several screenshots. A more thorough website is being prepared for the final release. Check it out HERE.

I created some still backgrounds that are good for Thanksgiving and the Fall season in general. They are called “Thanks Backs” and are available in standard size, as well as for widescreen. If you’re looking for some seasonal backgrounds, I hope these can help.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! I can’t wait to see my kids dress up tonight. I might just sneak some candy, too!