I started writing a post last night about my thoughts on MinistryTECH/CITRT and it’s unfinished and saved on my other computer. I want to get something up now, so here’s a little bit to help you out. Charles commented recently asking about my impressions of the mega church tour that we went on the day before MinistryTECH started.
In a word, Wow! Those are some big churches and they have a lot of cool tech stuff. If you go here, you can click the icon for my mega church tour pics. We toured:
- Crossings Community Church
- Church of the Servant United Methodist Church
- Henderson Hills Baptist Church
- LifeChurch.tv
From a tech perspective, they all share similar aspects, yet they each do things in their own way, and are each so unique in their style and atmosphere.
It’s inspiring to see how the big dogs do it because at my church, we have so far to go. At the same time, it’s encouraging because we are starting to do more and laying a foundation for where we are headed.
We saw many server rooms that day and I know Mike was pretty much done seeing server rooms by the time the day was over. It blows me away to consider how much these churches spend on technology to enhance the message they are delivering.
Is it too much? I don’t know, consider the impact they have on their community. I would like to dig into that and compare their tech budget vs. the actual number of people in their community they reach. Maybe even go farther and look at the percentage of their community that they reach.
For our church, our weekly attendance is about 5% of our community and that percentage is about the same that these churches reach of their community in Edmond, OK. Percentage-wise, our 650 weekly attendance is the same as an Edmond church of 4,000. Interesting! (to me at least)
For details of what was blogged about from MinistryTECH, check here.
For details of what was blogged about from CITRT, check here.
I have more to share, but this is all for now.
Hey! Great post, and I enjoyed the pics.
I work for LifeChurch.tv and it definitely shocked me in the beginning how much money we spend on technology. I can’t speak for the other churches, but at LC every dollar is extremely scrutinized before it’s spent, especially on technology.
I absolutely believe that between the work of the LC.tv staff and God’s work every dollar we spend comes back 10 fold through the salvation of many lives.
Interesting question. Essentially it’s business Return On Investment (ROI). We’ve informally had the discussion because we’re beginning to record video of the service to digital and there’s a knee-jerk reaction to provide some form of downloadable/streaming video service. The incremental cost of supporting text, audio, video is orders of magnitude in terms of architecture (remember, the room itself may need to support video in terms of lighting shot angles, camera location), equipment for capture, editing, storage and broadcast (read “bandwidth”).
I won’t argue with the patent statement that one saved soul justifies the cost, but you do need to decide what level your church can afford to play at in terms of effort ($, time, skills) when there are competing ministries that might be more fruitful given the same effort.
I agree with the other posters, they are great examples of what “could be”, but perhaps a more realistic example should have been given for you guys to go see. Sometimes I go to conferences and walk away with,” This could be cool for somebody, i guess”. Its hard to measure stewardship after seeing how these operate…:)