Here at CTM, a good bit of what we post is related to the ‘How To” for a particular subject.  This could be Audio, Video, web site, podcasting, video casting, using new tools or expanding on old tools.  Sometimes, as tech ministry leaders/volunteers, I believe we can get caught up in the “How To…” and forget the “Why To…”  I know I am guilty of this. In this post, I specifically wanted to humanize the technology and provide a few small examples of “Why To…”  Please understand, these examples are not meant as bragging about what my small church is doing.  These are simply meant to remind us (me) WHY we really do what we do.

Video Streaming / Archiving

It may not be that big a deal to those of you that are involved in churches on TV, etc., but for our church it was pretty cool.

RRBC has been live streaming via Ustream for a couple of years now.  The church is  small – 200ish on a Sunday morning – if we’re lucky. The video gear is cobbled together (a Sony Handycam over firewire into a desktop PC), but it’s accomplishing what we need it to for right now.

Anyway, to the cool part.  We had a guy call the church recently.  He just wanted to talk to someone a little about the church in general. He said that he and his family have been looking for a church and they had been watching our services online for the last three weeks and had enjoyed being able to do that.   Since that call, this family has visited the church in person.

Podcasting

Podcasting has been around for some time now.  At no time has it been quicker and easier for churches to make their messages available to anyone that has web access anywhere in the world.  So too, it has never been easier to share the message with those you see regularly.

One of our former Youth shared this with me about a year ago.  Her mom, due to work, was unable to be there every Sunday.  So, she would download the sermons and burn them to a CD for her mom to have on her way to and from work.  Her mom loved being able to listen while she drove and she felt more connected.

YouVersion

YouVersion is the new kid on the block.  Like many other churches and ministries, we have created a YouVersion LIVE group that people can access during the sermon whether they are on site or watching via the web.  This has been a great new way to interact with even more people.

I saw another church leaving their LIVE event “open” during the week.  That seemed like a good idea so we decided to try it.  We now leave the event “open” from Sunday until Saturday at 11:55 PM with a link to the video replay.  The first week, I decided to check the prayer requests during the week to see if we had any. This is when the stories of those touched outside our walls began to develop.  Via the prayer request function available in YouVersion, our church has had the opportunity to:

• Pray with a young lady about her finances and new business
• Reach out to a family in severe financial need just around the corner (sadly, she told our pastor that our church was the only one she contacted via the web that responded)
• Pray with a woman about her aunt’s health
• Pray with a man whose daughter was being admitted into the hospital.  (Both are in Nigeria. He found our event on his BlackBerry in the waiting room)
• Reach out to someone with addictions

From a tech standpoint, we have hiccups each week and things don’t always go the way we want them to go.   But, I’m trying to let go of the worry about the “How to…” and focus on the “Why to…”  God has still been able to use the tech/media and the operators – with all their imperfections – to reach people in need.

And that is the “Why to…”:

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.