We’re working on an Easter video that I’m really excited about. It’s a poem, read by this really great slam poet spoken word dude, set to some fantastic piano music, and backed up by high end HD footage of a cross. Did you get all that? Anyway, I know we’re a little late to the Easter party with this one, but I’m really pleased with it nonetheless. Here’s a still I took while shooting footage for the video (keep an eye out for some of these stills going up on the website):

Easter is a big deal. Palm Sunday. Good Friday. Resurrection Sunday. These are seismic events in God’s redemptive storyline. Add to that the fact that tons of people who aren’t regularly in church are in church on Easter and you have a situation where, as a pastor or worship leader, you feel a great deal of pressure to deliver great services that powerfully reflect the Gospel of Christ. So what do you do?Using video in your Easter services certainly won’t solve all your problems, but church videos are what I know, and so I would like to give you a few reasons why I think using video can help to alleviate some of the pressure you feel to deliver powerfully at Easter.

Video…

1. Meets people where they are. You’ve heard it before but it’s worth repeating: We live in a visual culture. Incorporating video and other forms of visual media into your service will put people at ease, so they can settle in and prepare to hear the message. For example, starting the service with a funny clip is a great way to put the congregation at ease.

2. Connects emotionally. Video operates on an emotional level and provides you with a great tool for getting the congregation emotionally prepared to hear your message. Using a Sermon Illustration video is an excellent way to set up your message. The video you choose can illustrate one of your points, demonstrate a situation where people need to hear your message or raise questions that you can then deal with in your message.

3. Gives people space to reflect. Using video is also a great way to guide the congregation into a time of reflection and also helps focus them on the things you want them to reflect on. Use it to start the service to prepare their hearts for what they will hear. Use it during a special time in the service such as Communion to guide them through what you would have them reflecting on. Use it at the end of your message to give them space to think about and respond to what they’ve heard.

In all these ways and more, video provides you with a powerful tool to help do the most important thing at Easter” connect people to the life-changing message of Christ.

We just put up a new Easter video. Check it out:
You can find it on our website HERE

Hey all. You’ll notice the site at www.eleven72.com is all new. We finally have the new site up and running. It’s awesome. We’re really pleased with it. But up until today I wasn’t able to blog because we were having a lot of trouble integrating the blog into the new site and somewhere in the process of moving it, I lost the ability to update it. But that’s all fixed now. For the time being, it’s embedded here in this eleven72 page, which means you have to scroll in this window within a window, which isn’t the best set up, but at least it’s back up.Thanks to all of you who helped make Christmas and New Years great seasons for eleven72. Our Christmas video, Breath of Heaven was a top 5 video at all the various distributors sites and our New Years video is currently the number one video on Sermon Spice and Worship House. We feel so blessed. Thank God and thank you :).

We’re looking forward to an amazing, exciting, surprising, fabulous 2008.

Storme out.

That’s Breath of Heaven (or Breath of the sky) in German. We had some guys in Germany contact us. They want to use Breath of Heaven at their church for Christmas so they translated the text for us into German and we made a German language version. Pretty cool stuff. So, Breath of Heaven is one of the best selling Christmas videos in the world (currently number 4 of Sermon Spice and number 3 on Worship House) and now it’s being translated into other languages. God is good. If you know anyone who could use a German language version of Breath of Heaven, let us know :)!

December is flying by so quickly… A lot of good things are happening for eleven72. Our Breath of Heaven video is currently the number 2 video on Worship House and the number 3 video on Sermon Spice, which is awesome. Our Peace on Earth, Just Ask, All Too Familiar and Christmas Presence videos are also selling well.

With Christmas almost here, I also wanted to point you to some of our New Years content that we’re excited about. We’ve got a lot of fun videos for New Years. Change is Possible is popular year round but great for New Years. Resolve is our most popular New Years video to date. And we have really high hopes for our latest New Years video, This Year. All of the videos can be viewed and downloaded on our site (click here). Check out This Year on YouTube and please feel free to leave comments, rate it, favorite it, love it:

We just finished another Christmas Video. Many thanks to our two fine actors Peter Malof and Caitlin Wehrle. When Peter’s not playing the devil, he’s got a recurring role as Principal Brecker on NBC’s Friday Night Lights. Check out our new video: