In the middle of your next service, ask yourself this question: What is on the projection screens (or LCD’s) and why is it there?

Often habit becomes tradition, tradition becomes concrete and sometimes concrete just gets in the way. If you have live video there, is it necessary? If you have slides or still imagery there could you have an animated background?

My point here is to look at what’s there and how could you enhance or build on the communication that is already happening on the stage. It’s quite possible that you could do something very easily, using the equipment, software and hardware you already have.

Secret Tip: OpenSong …. it hides a multitude of sin if you’re currently in the Powerpoint realm and can’t afford to purchase any presentation packages, we still use it because we love it, and it’s free!

2. Take The Service Live Streaming …. on Twitter

140 characters has proved to be enough space to preach the gospel, deliver the news or simply interact with other individuals in recent times. How could you use it in your service?

I’m encouraging my Senior Pastor to use it, much like Hillsong’s Senior Pastor is, to communicate to his congregation and to promote transparency. On a larger church wide aspect I’m using my church’s twitter to keep congregation members updated on Church news and events, and we’re looking at how we can microblog on the message being preached so church members can look back at some notes or so members away, or people viewing on the internet stream can catch the notes or scripture references.

Secret Tip: Tweetlater.com is a blessing. You setup the tweets across the week and let them go! Hootsuite looks good as well.

3. Take The Service Live Streaming …. on ustream.tv

Ustream.tv is a free service for streaming video and/or audio to the internet. I use it to stream our video feed to our website, and we’re currently investigating a more fruitful way of doing this, including talking about a web only service playing music that we have written. I’m also a volunteer at the Christian Community Radio Station here on the Gold Coast and just this weekend we’ve set up an audio only stream, that uses Adobe Flash Media Encoder 3, and ManyCam to stream the radio service across the internet. (We’re a few cables away from a permanent install on that one).

If you have a video mixing desk and you’re wondering how to get it to ustream.tv, you simply need a analogue video/audio to DV converter, I use one from Canopus.

Secret Tip: ManyCam edits, or creates, your video feed that you send to Ustream, or FME3 then onto Ustream. It’s a welcome friend in the Internet video world and lets you do all the ‘cool’ things you might not be able to with your current video setup.

4. Have A Look At Your EQ

I was shoved behind the sound desk 7 years ago and I’ve been freaking out ever since. Well, until Andrew Ironside did a master class in Sound Engineering for my team and some other local sound guys recently and opened my eyes to the beauty of a graphic equalizer. We’re extremely blessed at SURFCiTY to use a Yamaha M7CL powering Nexo Geo S8 speakers and woofers. The truth is that EQ skills can be applied to any sound desk, just to varying degrees.

If you don’t know EQ, find someone who does, if you do know EQ, listen to a CD and ask yourself how you can make that sound, do you want to create that sound? what did you like and dislike about that sound? Try taking your senior pastor, worship or music pastor through the same purpose. Make sure that the people behind the sound desk are working with and for the musicians, singers and leadership. The last thing a church needs is disunity between the communicators and the people that can make the communicators be heard.

Secret Tip: This Frequency Ranges PDF will make your life that little bit better, and put some understanding to all of those numbers on you sound desk.

5. Got Light?

Chances are your stage is already sufficiently lit, if not then get on to that sooner rather than later. After you have done the necessary lighting look around at what’s left and see how creative you can be.

Example 1: The old and no longer used overhead projector, yes that thing you tried so long to get rid of! How could you use it in your next service? I’ve printed out a word with black background on a transparency before and projected a word on to a wall. Or could it wash colour somewhere for you?

Example 2: Down-lights are rather cheap and easy to wire up, could you hang a few from a ceiling or rack and make some impromptu look-a-like Christmas lighting.

Example 3: Left over cans from an upgrade or what-not. Put a gel over them and splash them up a wall or a truss, put some colour where there was none before.

Secret Tip: Lighting has often been seen as the divide between the emergent church and the boring church. Don’t let christianese or common thought get in the way of you taking light into dark places and putting colour into life. Lighting could possibly be the easiest, coolest and most effective change you’ve made in quite a while.