Church Video Ideas

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

My mini-vacation last week was great. I didn’t think about or do anything church-related. I just rested, relaxed and had fun. I now feel refueled and ready to serve again. I’m grateful to my church and my boss for allowing me to take all the time I needed to recharge. I was all fresh and ready to return yesterday, but got pink eye and ended up missing. I’ve got eye drops now and should not be contagious anymore.

Now, I’m back in action in many ways. I’m on a new diet and fitness program (that came to me last week - I had a lot of time to think). I’m back in the gym working out and cutting back what I eat. I’m more active and eating less crap - which should make for a good/healthy combo.

I’m also back writing and prepping for some upcoming conferences. One magazine that I’ve never really mentioned, but I write regularly for is LifeWay’s “Let’s Worship” magazine. I encourage you to check it out HERE. Besides writing articles and working on my book, I’m doing some audio projects, too.

This week I’ll be making 3 recordings.

1. Tonight, I’m recording an audio class entitled “Communicating to Those That Listen with Their Eyes” for WorshipMinistryU, which is a great new online seminar tool for those in worship ministry. I’m honored to be among their terrific faculty. I’ll let you know when my class is ready and available.
2. Later this week I will record an interview for the Church Media Podcast. One of the things we’ll discuss is a Media/Tech meet up at NAB on the night of the 15th. They’ll be a group of tech directors, media producers and software company reps that will all gather to hang out and eat. If you’re going to be there, you don’t want to miss this.
3. Also, later this week, we’ll be back in the studio to revive the Creative Synergy Podcast. I know it’s been forever - but we’ll be back in action soon.

EXTRA:
If you haven’t voted for the worship presentation software that your church uses, go HERE. I’d like to get a recent poll before my “Worship Presentation Software” class in April at NAB.

BONUS:
Birthdays - Yesterday, my youngest turned 4. Today is my brother’s birthday.

Today’s topic is capturing your service for video. We are working behind-the-scenes to launch a new video podcast of our pastor’s sermon. I’m curious as to how some of you capture your service/sermon. I know some churches capture straight into Final Cut, some capture in QuickTime Pro, some even in iMovie. How do you capture your service digitally at your church? I’d love to hear. I’d still love to hear from some of you about how you do digital signage at your church.

EXTRA:
I had a great time at the creative brainstorming meeting yesterday at Fellowship Church. They have a very gifted and cool team assembled there. It was fun to be in that environment and take part in a series planning session. They had their worship leaders from the local campuses all there, as well as 2 technical staff members and their Miami worship leader, who was video conferenced in. I enjoyed lunch (Mexican food!) with their worship pastor, Pace, afterwards. I do want to again encourage you to check out Pace’s blog and welcome him to the blogging world. He also mentioned that his pastor, Ed Young, has just started blogging as well. You can check his blog out HERE.

I’m looking forward to seeing some of you later this week at NRB in Nashville. Several of you have emailed me and asked to meet up. If you’re going to be at NRB or live in Nashville, give me a shout (greg@churchvideoideas.com).

Saturday I’ll be speaking in the class: “On-Air Church – 10 Attributes of a Winning Program” at 3:45pm - 5:15pm. Sunday, I’ll be part a panel called “How’d You Do That? The Ultimate Q&A”, also from 3:45pm - 5:15pm. The “Ultimate Q&A” class is a chance for you to ask me and a few other panelists anything you’d like. I always enjoy participating in this class at NRB!

Also, Saturday, I’ll be attending the Church Media Reception at 9pm. If you’re going to be there, I’d love to meet you.

Next month I’ll be teaching two classes at NAB in Las Vegas. On Tuesday, April 15th, I’ll be teaching “Which Worship Presentation Software is Right for Your Church?” at 3pm. This class will feature representatives from EasyWorship, MediaShout and ProPresenter. *** I want to make it clear that though we use EasyWorship at my church, I stand behind and endorse all 3 of the above mentioned companies. I encourage churches to try the free downloads of all three and see which is best for their church. ***

On Wednesday, April 16th at 9am, I’ll be teaching “Church 2.0″ - a class based on my upcoming book. This class will stretch and challenge your definition of creativity and innovation. I’ll be talking about Church 2.0 churches and Church 2.0 leaders.

I’d like to once again mention and thank my sponsors for both NRB and NAB: SermonSpice is sponsoring my classes at NRB. eleven72 and ProPresenter are sponsoring my classes at NAB.

I’ll talk more about other conferences I’m speaking at in future blog posts, but for now, would like to simply mention 2 brand new conferences that I’ll be speaking at. Interestingly enough, both are taking place in my hometown of Dallas, TX. One is ECHO and the other is Fusion ‘08. I’d encourage you to check them both out. If you attend one or both of these in Dallas, we can work out a time to come visit Bent Tree!

EXTRA:

I’ve been re-reading “Let the Nations Be Glad” by John Piper (the revised and expanded 2nd edition). What a great read. I forgot how much of my philosophy and feelings about worship and missions were shaped by this book. If you haven’t read it, I strongly urge you to check it out HERE.

I must say I enjoyed my first visit to the city of Tulsa, OK, though I didn’t get to see much of the city. I went from the airport to the EasyWorship offices, was in a meeting all day - left there and had a great dinner at the Cheesecake Factory with Jeff Taylor (owner and creator of EasyWorship), then headed back to the airport and flew home.

What’s the word? The word (unofficially - this is just Greg talking) is that EasyWorship is working on a new and improved cross-platform software. That’s right - can you say “EasyWorship for Mac”? Jeff has assembled a very gifted and talented team and they have been hard at work on a forthcoming version of EW that incorporates many new features based on comments and suggestions from their customers. The design is sharp and intuitive, the features are exciting and will better equip your church.

I’m especially excited about one feature, but am not at liberty to talk about it. I was blindfolded when I was led into their office and kept in a dark room all day. My cell phone (which has a camera) was taken from me and I was sworn to secrecy. Okay - I exaggerate, but I really can’t talk about what I saw.

I’m back to work at the church today, have a few meetings and our weekly rehearsal tonight. More later.

PERSONAL:
Just to update you all: I’m still extremely sore from riding that horse the other day. I used muscles that haven’t been used in years. It hurts to move!

Hello blog world. I’ve been away from my laptop the last several days. The end of last week I spent with friends from other churches that were in town for the C3 Conference. I gave several tours of Bent Tree and enjoyed meeting some of you for the first time. Thursday and Friday night I attended “C3 Nights” where I enjoyed great nights of worship and speaking from Brian Houston and TD Jakes.

Saturday I spent the day with friends from Christ Life Church in Tempe, AZ. We toured Bent Tree and also went to worship services at 3 different churches: Gateway, The Village and Deep Ellum Church. Sunday, they came with me to Bent Tree and got to see the behind-the-scenes of what happens on a Sunday.

After having lunch with them and saying “Goodbye”, I left with our Worship & Arts staff for our retreat in East Texas. We spent Sunday evening and Monday together as a staff - had a great time, played together, laughed together and even got to ride horses! (I’ll post a picture of me on a horse very soon) Below is a picture of our Worship & Arts staff at the retreat:


EXTRA:
Today EasyWorship is flying me to Tulsa, OK to visit the EasyWorship headquarters and preview some upcoming changes to EasyWorship. I look forward to seeing what they’ve been working on and offering feedback.

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 don’t know what it’s like at your church, but at mine, we (my Audio Coordinator and myself) are constantly having to battle with frequency coordination throughout our campus. I’ve said from day one - I’ve never seen a church with so many wireless mics. Every classroom, every venue, you name it - it’s got wireless mics. This isn’t by choice - I inherited this.

Since our campus is under reconstruction, we had to move the children’s ministry from the Children’s Building over to the Education Building. When we did that, the kids’ ministry brought over their mics from their building, but they clashed with the existing mics in the E-building and canceled each other out. It has become a huge project to coordinate our campus (this involves my team, several different types of software, a scanner we just purchased, Clark ProMedia and a professional frequency coordinator from Florida who scanned our entire campus for all RF activity).

Across the street from us is a small church called Prestonwood (a church of over 20,000). People come to visit Bent Tree and everyone says, “Wow - Prestonwood is literally across the street.” Each time I say, “Yep, there it is.” We had to talk with their engineering team (yes, they have an Engineering Department) and coordinate our frequencies with each other. They had 3 professional RF guys on site when I called and were working on the same thing.
Yesterday, we learned that the 10 wireless mics we had set aside for our new kids’ theater won’t work after January ‘09, due to the ongoing bidding of wireless bands. Are you guys keeping up with all this? It’s huge and the Church doesn’t even have a voice in the decision - it’s all about money and churches can’t compete with what these companies are bidding. My Audio Coordinator talked with Shure yesterday and their guy told him to not even bother with writing letters - money talks, plain and simple.

Take a look HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE for more info if this is news to you. If you are keeping up with this, I’d love to hear your thoughts, observations, plans, ideas, etc. When we ordered our new microphone package for our new worship center, I ordered a wired mic for every wireless mic. I wanted to make sure we could do everything we do - just in case. FYI - All of our new wireless mics in our new worship center are Shure UHF-Rs. How are you future-proofing your church?

Yesterday we closed a chapter on our church’s history - it was our last Sunday in our current worship center. Our church has been in that worship center for 10 years. They’ve seen it go from one service, to two, to three and then to four.

In each service yesterday we had an open mic where people could come up and share testimonies of what God had done in their lives while we were in that building. Each service was extremely special, emotional and sentimental. We gave God praise as each person shared their amazing story.

After the last service we had a big group of people stay after and help us move the remaining pieces of gear/equipment to the new building/worship center. I had a great sense of peace wash over me as we made trips to the new building - it was so exciting to leave the old and see the wonder on people’s faces as they saw the new. I think we were also all glad to be done with evening services - at least for a while.

Today starts “crazy week” - we have training, commissioning and rehearsals every night of the week, preparing for our first service in the new worship center. I’ll be at the church every day this week from about 8 or 9am until 10 or 11pm, so please forgive me if my blogs this week are short or lacking. I’ll be back to normal soon.

I’d really appreciate your prayers for myself and my tech team as they are swamped with newness and learning curves this week. From Monday night to Friday night they will be learning new everything: new FOH audio board, new monitor audio board, new lighting board, new cameras, new graphic computer/presentation software, new camera shaders and scope, new video switcher - new everything.

During the days this week we’ll be setting up the stage. Our visual arts team is putting together a huge new scene on the stage featuring our new logo (we are also doing a new branding campaign and launching a new logo all around the same time). I’ll post a picture of it once they are done with the new set. My crew will be setting up our new risers, including a rolling drum and percussion riser that we ordered for the new stage. We also got a new DW house drum kit that we’ve got to set up this week (we gave our youth band our old house kit to use in the new gym).

I’ll be uploading media/backgrounds on our new EasyWorship computer. I think we finally figured out the issues we were having with getting it to work with our HD system - that will be another blog for another day. Again, lots of stuff ahead of me this week. Your prayers would be wonderful. More later!

PERSONAL:
Thanks to those of you that emailed me after my “Rest Day” post. I really do appreciate your prayers and support. My body/immune system totally crashed on Friday. My “rest day” turned into a doctor day. I had been putting up with a soar throat for the last month. I went to the doctor on Friday and found out I had an upper respiratory infection. I’m now on 2 antibiotics and should be feeling better soon. Pray for strength, stamina and health this week!

I’m sure many of you have done this and many of you will do this in the future - that’s making the switch from 4:3 to 16:9 (widescreen). Once I’ve been through the entire switch, I’d be happy to share any thoughts, lessons learned, feedback, etc. with those that are switching in the future.

For now, I’d love to here from any of you that have already made the switch. We’re in the process of uploading all new backgrounds, lower-thirds and creating the lower-third titles that we do for staff members (Pete Briscoe - Senior Pastor, etc.). If you have any words of wisdom, please email me at: greg@churchvideoideas.com.

Obviously, widescreen or 16:9 is not necessarily HD, but HD is 16:9. We are starting out with a total HD system, so if your church is full HD, I’d really like to hear from you. I’ve got lots of questions. *** Especially if you are using HD backgrounds in EasyWorship - HOLLA AT ME! I came home yesterday so frustrated and drained that I just stared at a piece of paper for about an hour and a half. I think I’m losing it!

We’re switching from another presentation software to EasyWorship campus-wide and I’m in the process (which I’ve done before and helped other churches with) of setting up EasyWorship for the first time and downloading all the codecs, etc. I’m sure it will eventually work, but we were having issues as of yesterday.

With the video card that came with the computer and the special (Blackmagic Decklink HD Extreme) video card that we had to get to stay HD, we have 3 video outs. The guys from Clark ProMedia did the initial/hardware setup and I’m trying to setup EasyWorship itself. Again, if you are HD and using EasyWorship, PLEASE give me a shout.

* My friend, Dave Clark, of National Community Church, just wrote an article entitled “Church Media: A 2008 Forecast“. I think it’s worth checking out. As he said, “High-definition video also will appear on the screens of many more churches this year. The prices of high-definition cameras and equipment have become affordable, even for average-sized churches.”

BONUS:

This just in from blog sponsor Worship Leader Magazine: The Upgrade Your Stage state-of-the-art giveaway is your chance to win an assortment of resources with a retail value of over $15,000 (for the grand prize) for your service of worship. We want to equip one church, so they can use their financial resources in other ways. There are also 1st and 2nd place winners who will also receive significant prizes.

Anyone can enter, as long as your church fits the guidelines, but the church chosen will most likely have the most need along with the best story. Though there is no set cap of church size, the finalists will likely be churches of 500 or less.

EXTRA:

I started a Shelfari group for Church 2.0 leaders - this is where you can list your favorite books that you recommend other Church leaders read. Check it out HERE.

EXTRA, EXTRA:

Anyone getting a MacBook Air?