What does it take to televise the worship service? One might think that all you need are a couple of video cameras and a link to the television station, but there is more to it than that. The standard for broadcast TV is so high that it is hard to match without a million dollar’s worth of equipment. And the quality has to be there for the service to be widely accepted.
One church that I was involved with had an ideal situation. They had captured the local access channel, ensuring them an audience. They could show their worship services live every Sunday. However, they also had to provide programming 10 hours a day – 7 days a week. So they got the equipment and ran a television studio out of the church! During the day they broadcast family oriented programming. On Sundays and Wednesdays, they broadcast their worship services. And this was largely run by volunteers – teenagers at that. It just goes to show the creativity and talent of the local church.
Scheduling Staff is usually handled by internal calendars or event management systems (i.e. EMS).
But how do you schedule volunteers? Why not devise a calendar system on the Church web site that would let volunteers schedule themselves for various tasks. You would assign each volunteer a set of roles, e.g. sound technician. They could then look at the calendar and pick the days that they are available to run sound. The calendar system would then keep track of the fact that they had volunteered to run the sound desk on the particular date. If they needed to change, the system would allow them to drop that commitment of time and post the task back to the available tasks pool. Another volunteer trained in sound could then volunteer online to take their place. You might need a hot list of items that were coming up, so that volunteers accessing the calendar would see what was most needed. Overall, this would take care of scheduling volunteers for technical ministry tasks automatically.
Does such a system exist? Perhaps, but it would need to be flexible and role based. If you know of such a system, then please comment below so that others can discover it.
What is the difference between publishing on paper and on a website? In one sense, both are means of communication. The content can be the same. Yet there are many challenges that come up when you move from printed page to web page.
The flow of information is different. There is no need to spill over to the back page, because a web page can be any length. And you can use hypertext links to jump around to different sections of the article. Doing that in print was once called “programmed learning.”
Web pages lack a context. If you jump around in a book, then you know where you are based on the feel of the book. But you could get to a particular web page via links on a dozen different pages on as many sites – and that doesn’t count the results of various search engines. You have to write the web page with the notion that the user may not have seen what you wrote on the previous page – i.e. they just got here.
These are just the tip of the iceberg, but they illustrate that each media has its pros and cons. An author that writes for multiple types of media has a real challenge on their hands. A good resource on this subject is the following book:
Price, Jonathan. Hot Text: Web Writing That Works. 1st. Albuquerque, NM, USA: The Communication Circle, 2002. ISBN: 0-7357-1151-8.
July is a month to celebrate our Patriotism, as the 4th of July rolls around. Most of our Churches celebrate this with a special worship service emphasizing a patriotic theme. This is a good way to recognize our nation’s birthday. However, you can take this too far. For example, it would be easy to put the American flag up as a background image for all of the worship slides. But would it be appropriate to have the Apostle’s Creed appear on top of the American Flag? Maybe. Maybe not. Americans believe strongly in the Separation of Church and State. However, where do you draw the line? Perhaps a better idea would be to put the Christian Flag up as the background for the Apostle’s Creed. That demonstrates both your patriotism – i.e. by showing a flag – and your belief that God is the ultimate one you worship – i.e. by saying the Apostle’s Creed. Here is what the Christian flag looks like:
There was a time when you had to publish the monthly newsletter on paper, incurring ever rising printing costs and postage. Now, you can get the same information out in electronic form, using EMail. But how do you manage a large mailing list? Just building a huge distribution list in Outlook is not very effective, and opens you up to spammers. EMail Communication Services exist to help you with this communication. They provide huge capacity and security at relatively low cost. Many will support multi-user access and scheduling of EMails in advance. Here is a review of some of the commercial services available:
Does your Church use such a service for the weekly or monthly newsletter? If so, please comment and let us know how you use this service. What are the pros and cons?
What is the measure of grace? There is an abundance of books on the subject of God’s grace, some of which I have read. And I have come to understand grace in theological terms. However, grace also applies to human relationships. It is the measure of that human relational grace that I want to take here.
When our enemy hurts us, we are told to “turn the other cheek” (MAT 5:39). I have often pondered what Jesus meant by that. Was he talking about physical or psychological abuse? Does that apply to the coworker that we perceive is sabotaging our project so that theirs can succeed? I tend to think that Jesus saw physical abuse on the streets of Nazareth. When a Roman soldier came through town, by law he could demand anything of the people. If you complained, then more than likely you got the back of his hand across your face and the soldier just took the item away from you. Who would stop him? Yes, the soldier was being barbaric, and we would say that he was no better than the mugger who stops us today on the sidewalk. But Jesus knew that the way to respond was to change the heart of the soldier, not start a fight over a piece of bread. In a fight, you would more than likely just get killed, and the soldier would be that much more filled with guilt. When you turned the other cheek, the soldier would realize that you weren’t going to oppose him, and he would be left wondering why. That is grace in action.
You see, it is grace that enables our “other than by instinct” response to human situations. Without an understanding of grace, our responses would be “tit for tat” – i.e. violent and vengeful. And we all know about the cycle of violence, that it just spirals out of control. Wars have been started following a simple disagreement. With grace in our lives, we can “turn the other cheek” when provoked. We can respond with love for our enemy, and do the right thing to heal the situation. Our enemy may not always understand why we aren’t responding the way they would – i.e. they may expect us to be seeking revenge. But ultimately, they will learn to respect us, because they realize that we are seeking justice.
This is the work of Jesus on the cross. And it has a benefit in our everyday living. The measure of grace is the impact it has on our human relationships. It affords us a chance to be human beings who are more concerned with doing the right thing that exacting revenge. With finding justice instead of perpetuating injustices. With sharing God’s grace rather than hoarding it.
May your life be filled with God’s grace – i.e. overflowing and abundant!
How do you learn HTML? HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. It represents the lingua franca of the Internet. Learning it, in all of its variations, is a mind boggling task. But you can get started on it with a simple editor and a browser running locally. You first have to learn the syntax of the language.
There are a number of excellent introductions to HTML. One is found at W3C School – i.e. the standards body for the Internet. W3C stands for the World Wide Web Consortium, and it has a web site at www.w3c.org that contains the standards. Their introduction to HTML can be found at introduction.
Scheduling staff is usually taken care of via internal calendars or event management systems (i.e. EMS). But how do you schedule volunteers? Why not devise a calendar system on the Church web site that would let volunteers schedule themselves for various tasks. You would assign each volunteer a set of roles, e.g. sound technician. They could then look at the calendar and pick the days that they are available to run sound in worship. The calendar system would then keep track of the fact that they had volunteered to run the sound desk on a particular date. If they needed to change, the system would allow them to drop that commitment of time and post the task back to the available tasks pool. Another volunteer trained in sound could then volunteer online to take their place. You might need a hot list of items that were coming up, so that volunteers accessing the calendar would see what was most needed. Overall, this would take care of scheduling volunteers for technical ministry tasks automatically.
Does such a system exist? Perhaps, but it would need to be flexible and role based. If you know of such a system, then please comment below so that others can discover it.
You can read the Bible in a year. All it takes is 15 minutes a day, 365 days, and you will know the content of the Bible! For more information, see the reading plan:
Many churches are now capturing the worship services for later playback on their web site. The technology to do this is readily available. People can even playback the service on their video enabled cell phone. Or they can play the service back on an iPod – i.e. in audio or video mode. Or they can play back the service on their computer over a broadband connection. Or they could receive a DVD of the service via mail or home delivery. Or they could just read the sermon online.
The technical demands of these processes are enormous. It takes a lot of hard disk space to record and process the service. And it takes a broadband connection to upload it to the web server. And the web server has to be capable of handling streaming media. A good rule of thumb is as follows for capturing video live:
For every 5 minutes of video (DV), you will be using up 1GB of hard drive space.
That implies that a one hour service will occupy 12 GB of hard disk space. If you just record the sermon, then you can cut that in half – i.e. 30 min or 6 GB. But this is still a huge load on system resources. Since you want to maintain quality, you will want to capture the service at the highest resolution possible – i.e. in these examples, standard resolution or DVD quality. High Definition would be even more. Then, to process and store the service, you will use up intermediate storage – i.e. rendering space for programs like Final Cut Pro. The overall load on hard disk space is enormous.
How do you plan for and manage this load? There are many approaches you can take. One would be to size the hard disks of your video editing system to handle a year’s worth of worship services, using the rule of thumb above. Another would be to use NAS (i.e. Network Attached Storage) technology to store everything except this week’s worship service. You also need to plan for having a web site with sufficient storage and bandwidth to support all of the services you want to have online at any given time. You will need to manage these spaces so that you do not exceed the limitations of the web host system, as that will incur high fees.
How do you design a church web site for good accessibility? There are a number of issues that come up, such as readers for the blind. Yet, the church should be one place where we take these things into consideration, so that the very least (Mat 25:40) can use the web site.
One issue is color. For those with color blindness, a beautiful color scheme may really be unreadable. This surprisingly affects a significant percentage of adults – i.e. over 10 million adult males in the US. However, those of us who don’t suffer from color blindness don’t recognize it. There is a web site that helps you visualize this effect. Check out the Color Accessibility wheel by Giacomo Mazzocato:
TIP: To use the wheel, select a background color, then select foreground and move around the wheel to see the effect. Some color combinations essentially look the same to a person with color blindness, and the wheel shows this clearly.
These days it seems like everyone is vitally concerned with security. Political rallies have to have security. Sports stadiums have to have security. Airports are sometimes so tight that you have to plan to leave an hour earlier than normal, just to get through the security screening. Employers check the background of new employees, to make sure that they aren’t a security risk. So what about people working in the Church as a volunteer?
There was a time when the Church was considered a haven for those in trouble. Perhaps that time has passed. These days, with the concerns over security, perhaps we have to make sure that Church employees are people who are trustworthy. But what about volunteers? Should they have background checks done to make sure they are also trustworthy? What do you think?
Every worship service utilizes lyrics – i.e. words that the congregation is expected to sing, speak or read silently. This is typically shown via a video projector on one or more screens. But who determines the content of these slides? And what is the process whereby that content is generated every week for worship? And how do you ensure high quality in this presentation?
Overall, the worship service is the responsibility of the minister, so the minister will certainly have input to the lyrics for the service. This may take the form of Bible verses and/or creeds. Slides containing the Bible verses that are read or referenced should always be shown. Slides containing the liturgy should always match the bulletin. Other slides may contain creeds or statements of faith. Some slides may be used to make points or provide illustrations to the sermon. The minister will determine the scriptures and the translations involved. The words may even be shown in multiple languages – e.g. Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, Latin, ….
Typically, the minister delegates the music to a music director or director of worship. The music director will then have input to the praise and singing in the service. This may take the form of congregational hymns, choir anthems, or solos. The music director also determines the music, but only the lyrics are typically projected. (Technology exists for showing sheet music, but this is usually only applicable to the musicians.) Slides for this part of the service should always include the lyrics that the congregation is expected to sing. If there is a screen setup so that only the choir can see it, then the lyrics to the anthem may also be viewed. This helps the choir look up from their music books and out towards the congregation.
The process of generating worship lyrics needs to be well defined. After all, the Church will use this process 52 weeks a year. One person on the technical ministry team – i.e. an editor – will be responsible for generating the worship lyric slides. They should receive input from the minister, music director, and anyone responsible for the bulletin. The style and content of the bulletin should match the worship slides, right down to using the same Bible translation for scriptures that are going to be read. There should be a defined sequence of steps involved in this process. Here is one example of that sequence:
Minister plans the worship service in advance, setting the theme, scriptures, and points to support the sermon.
Music director plans the music for the worship service, setting the songs and the specific variations to be played. For a hymn, you might have a selection of verses.
Bulletin source is prepared, setting the content for the bulletin.
Technical ministry team receives input from the minister, music director, and publisher of the bulletin. There should be a hard deadline for this – i.e. well before Sunday morning!
Editor prepares the set of slides to be shown during the worship service. This takes time, but it can leverage the content from previous worship services.
Editor publishes a draft of the slides for this coming Sunday.This should be in the final sequence, just as they would be projected on Sunday morning.
Slides are reviewed by all parties concerned. Any exceptions are reported to the editor.
Slides are delivered to the sanctuary control room on Friday at noon for presentation on Sunday morning.
The slides should always be reviewed by multiple eyes. One editor will tend to overlook certain issues; and you don’t want them showing up on Sunday morning, when they will be difficult to fix. The slide presentation software should catch typographical errors – i.e. be sure to run the spelling checker, for you can expect that somebody in the congregation will be an English teacher. The reviewers should look for quality issues – e.g. the transposition of slides in a music verse. The review process should seek to add polish to the finished presentation, not provide an opportunity to make lots of changes. IMHO, getting the whole process done by Friday noon is critical to having a slide presentation on Sunday that is high quality.
One could think of this process as a collaborative one. You could even agree to publish the prepared slides on the Church’s intranet so that they can be reviewed online. Given the weekly timeframe of preparing for worship this Sunday, this would avoid having to wait for eMail comments to circulate. Worship Presentation Software should support this process, not hinder it.
May worship always be focused on reverence and awe – Hebrews 12:28.
WordPress has now released version 2.5. MinTech will always strive to be current, so we have upgraded to this release. Some of the new features that this upgrade provides are as follows:
New Search Capability
If you have any questions, then please take a look at WordPress.
What are the primary elements of a video illustration? There has to be an opening image, an attention-getter. And there has to be an ending image, something you want to leave the congregation with. In between there can be anything you like to get the Word across. You can use the same content as a parable, or fall back on standard elements:
Setting – evoking a mood by presenting a background that people will recognize, e.g. the Holy Land
Theme – presenting the main idea, e.g. Love of Neighbor
Point of View – demonstrating a point of view, e.g. Stewardship
Character – developing a character through their action, e.g. Acting on the basis of Love
Whatever the content, remember that the objective is to get the congregation thinking along the same lines as the preacher. If you can do that, then you’ve succeeded.
Which video file format do you use? There are a multitude of available formats for video information. Here is an admittedly short-sighted list:
MPEG – i.e. MPEG-2
AVI
MOV
MP4 – i.e. MPEG-4
The decision as to which format to use may be dictated by the hardware and/or software that you are using. However, more and more software is able to support multiple formats. It can get rather confusing. Each format has things that they do well and things that they don’t do so well.
How do you light up the sanctuary for worship? If you have video cameras, then you need lots of light. If you have musicians, then they need light on their music. If you just have a congregation and a preacher, then any lighting will do.
Video cameras require a lot of lighting to get a great picture. If you’re using IMAG, then you need a great picture, so you probably have stage lighting installed. To get a great picture, you need consistent, white light on every spot of the stage. That can be difficult to achieve – i.e. getting the lighting even everywhere the preacher goes during a sermon. And you will find that controlling the lighting can also be a full time job for a volunteer or staff person. Worship is a very dynamic environment, so the lighting has to change to match the action. The lighting should set the focal point, whether it be the preacher or the soloist in the choir loft. This helps people to focus on the Word or praise.
Posted on March 23, 2008 by BRoberts | News| Tags: Easter
It is Easter! On this day, the celebration of the Resurrection takes on new meaning, as we gather in our churches to worship. May you be blessed as you worship the Risen Lord today!
St. Patrick’s Day is a national holiday in Ireland, where he is their patron saint. Roman Catholics in the US also celebrate this day, with parades and parties and an emphasis on green. Dating to the fifth century A.D., Patrick was a Briton who was kidnapped as a teen and sold into slavery in Ireland. He escaped after 6 years and returned to his family. He then joined the Church and ultimately became a missionary back to Ireland. His is a story of forgiveness and renewal. As a result of his efforts, Christianity came to Ireland – then a pagan land. Patrick took his adversity and turned it into an advantage. The result gave him new purpose in life.
This year, St. Patrick´s Day became a controversial point in many communities. March 17, 2008, falls during Holy Week, and many Roman Catholics thus found themselves torn between celebrating the day and honoring the traditions of Holy Week. Some cities even moved their St. Patrick´s Day celebrations up to March 12th as a result.
With our large church buildings comes a problem – how do you ensure that everyone can hear the Word? An audio system is required to reinforce the sound so that everyone in every seat can hear distinctly. A good sound system makes a big difference to worship. But how do you find a good audio desk?
There are plenty of options to choose from – too many to list. But some general criteria to consider are as follows:
Number of microphones – i.e. this determines the number of channels you will need
Location of any fixed sound sources, e.g. a choir loft
Number of musicians – i.e. how big of an orchestra do you plan to have for that Christmas contata?
Location of the sound booth – e.g. on the main floor or in the balcony
Once you have some ideas about the sound system, then you can explore all of the vendors. And you will find a lot of them out there, eager to show you their equipment. (Some will even bring it on site to demo.) This is where quality and cost comes into the picture, and you will want to choose carefully to get the best value for the money.
In today’s praise, music is exciting and uplifting. But where is the organ? Churches with installed organ pipes were lifting up praise years ago. People were often awed by the majesty and power of the organ, as it filled the sanctuary with sound. Those organs still exist, but they are rarely used in worship. Why? Perhaps it is because organ music sounds traditional, and we have moved on to a contemporary sound. Or perhaps we have adopted new arrangements that call for a greater variety of musical instruments, e.g. violins. Some organs have a tremendous variety of sounds built in, but the violin is a very particular sound. Or perhaps we have just gotten tired of hearing the organ. (A lot of musicians would find that hard to believe.)
Another idea to consider is a technical perspective. Organs are often times very independent sound systems. The organist controls the volume with the swell pedal. A sound engineer is not required, and indeed they will be frustrated by the organ. They will never be able to get a balanced blend because they do not have any way to adjust the sound of the organ pipes. Perhaps we should install some sort of over-ride sub-system, whereby the sound engineer will have control. But currently, all we have is the organist on their swell pedal. And the organist is probably wanting to be heard, so they will have the pedal down. Still, there are times when the organ should be used. What do you think those times are? For example, some of the old hymns sound best with the organ playing. It is because they are so familiar with that accompaniment. Other times, the piece was written exclusively for the organ, and hasn’t been rearranged for other instruments yet.
The organ makes a mighty sound in the sanctuary, and it is a magnificent instrument. Perhaps it still has a place.
Jesus said that He did not come to be served, but to serve (Mark 10:45). In saying this, He established the standard for those who claim His name. We are to be servants, not masters who lord it over others. In the Church, we talk about humility. How do you practice servanthood? Do you look for opportunities to serve that only utilize your talents, or your general skill? Do you serve with the expectation that you will be praised or rewarded afterwards, or only to be satisfied that you have served others in Christ’s name? What do you expect in response to your service? A hearty thanks, or a trophy?
These are some things to ponder on. Feel free to comment on your attitude of service.
We live in an amazing time. There are so many great Bible study programs available. And the Bible is present on the Internet for anyone to read and study. Mintech has a plugin that retrieves the text for any passage cited in a post, e.g. Psalm 23:1. You can just hover over the reference, and a window pops up with the passage. Currently those passages come from the Good News Bible, but other translations are available. Where do you go for Bible study on the Internet? Here are some links to check out:
At its best, eMail saves time and effort by letting you communicate more efficiently. But it can also be a real time-waster. One survey concluded that corporate users were getting 126 messages a day. According to the study, that can wind up taking up 40 percent of the work day. If the focus of your job is handling eMail messages, then that is well and good. If those eMails saved you hundreds of phone calls – i.e. you sent an eMail in place of playing phone tag, then you also are more productive as a result. But if your main focus is somewhere else, then all that time at the computer was less than optimum. You may be thus suffering from eMail Overload.
Churches have discovered eMail. It is perfect for distributing newsletters and such – i.e. the savings in postage is awesome. But is a phone call a better means of communication? And eMail may very well communicate information, but it doesn’t enlist support very well. And it doesn’t provide immediate feedback on new ideas. And people that are harried by eMail Overload may only give a passing glance to that message you sent them about the upcoming meeting. So should you really be surprised that they didn’t show up? Of course, we all have busy schedules, and things do come up – i.e. often at the last minute with family. However, there is a difference between a verbal “I’ll be there” over the phone and an eMail “Okay.”
How does your Church use eMail to contact members and staff? Is it effective? Or does it add to the eMail Overload problem?
Bradley Roberts has both deep roots in the Church and a long career involving technology. Browsing these pages, you´ll find a vibrant faith and a servant´s heart.
