Introducing Media to your Church Part 2:
The Computer

(This is Part 2 in a series. To begin and the beginning, go here)

The Intel 486 that some well wishing parishioner dropped off (rather than throw it away) isn’t going to do it. You’re going to need more firepower than that to get those images up and flying through the air. If your church is portable, then a laptop will do fine, but if you have a permanent home, I’d recommend a desktop. You can get more desktop for your money and it’s good to have a computer that’s always present, hooked up and dedicated to working as your church media center.

To get started using media in your church, all you need is a computer that can run PowerPoint. PowerPoint is a good starting place because it allows you to get up and running in a hurry. Chances are you or someone you know is familiar with PowerPoint through work or school. So there’s a low barrier to entry. But as soon as you want to start putting worship lyrics up over moving backgrounds and playing videos off the computer, you’ll quickly realize PowerPoint’s limitations. It’s simply not designed with the worship environment in mind.

For that reason, I recommend that you start looking into buying an application specifically designed for use in a church worship environment. There are a number of good programs on the market. Three that come to mind are Media Shout, Easy Worship and Sunday Plus. Media Shout and Easy Worship offer a free trial version that you can download and try. And Sunday Plus will send you a demo version that you can try. If you want to go more in depth on choosing the program that’s right for you, check out eBibleTeacher’s excellent Worship Software Selection Guide here.

Quick Note: These programs might seem a little expensive up front, but what you get for the price is an incredible value. What these programs can do used to take a whole room of equipment with people trained to run it, and it used to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, the power in these programs is well worth the price. With the latest software, you can import PowerPoint slides, put up text over moving backgrounds, and play video clips from different sources (including live sources such as a camera in your sanctuary). In other words, you can pretty much do whatever you need to now or in the future.

Wasn’t this post about computers, not software? Yes, but in order to know what kind of computer you need, you need to know what you want to do with it. If you’re planning on running video, you’ll need a computer that can keep up. The last thing you want is the blue screen of death right in the middle that is supposed to set up your message. Each program will have its’ own System Requirements, but if you get a computer capable of running one of the programs well, I’m sure it will run them all. Just to get an idea of the ball park, I pulled the Recommended System Requirements off of MediaShout’s website. Here’s what you need to shoot for if you want enough power to move forward into the church video age:

OS: Windows XP (Home, Professional, or Media Center Edition)
CPU: Intel Pentium 4, 2.4 GHz (or equivalent)
RAM: 512 MB
Graphics: One DirectX 9.0c Hardware Accellerated dual-head graphics card/display adapter with 128 MB VRAM
Other: DVD drive, quality sound card; video capture card or FireWire port (IEE 1394) for external video feed
I’d also recommend getting an extra 512MB of RAM to get you to 1GB out of the box. You can find great deals on computers online in places like tigerdirect.com, overstock.com, and Frys.com. And CNET is a great place to read reviews if you want to know more about how various computers rate with the experts.

Again, don’t let all this tech talk get you down. You can do this. Looking past all the technical details you don’t understand and the money you don’t have to spend, the first step is hugely important. If you have a computer that can run PowerPoint and was made some time in the last few years, you’ve got the tools you need to begin. Just keep in mind where you’re going and be thinking about the tools and resources you’ll need to get there.

So you’ve got the computer. All you need now is a projector and something to point it at (aka a screen). Up next in this series of missives: Projectors.

(This is Part 1 in a series. There was a brief introductory post that started this thread. To begin and the beginning, go here)If gadget spec sheets don’t get you geeked up, don’t worry. In fact, if you have no idea what a spec sheet is, don’t worry. You don’t have to be a tech guru to use media in your church. If you can lead a church, with all the uncertainty and messiness that the human experience entails, you can do this. And chances are that there is a person or people in your congregation who would proudly wear the Geek badge. People who can help you look over those spec sheets and decide what technology will best serve your congregation’s needs and budget.

All you need to get started using media are three readily available things:

1. Computer
2. Projector
3. Screen

What kind of computer do you need? How powerful does your projector need to be? Where do you get a screen? And, maybe most importantly, how much is this going to cost? We’ll start with the computer on my next post.

Part 2

You’ve realized that you would like to start using more video and multi-media in your church services, but you’re not sure where or how to start. For some, this is much bigger than just a technical issue. It’s not just “How big should our screens be?” Or “What kind of projector should we buy?” There are bigger questions-”How do you go about introducing media into a traditional church service?” Or “I like some of the Sermon Illustrations I’ve seen, but how would I use them in my sermon?” Or even simpler questions like how long should a video be? How often should I use video? How do I know what to use?There aren’t any easy answers to these questions. There are almost as many answers as their are churches. The right solution is what will best serve your congregation. It’s what will do the most to help connect your people to the life changing power of Jesus Christ.

Over the next few days or weeks, I’ll attempt to tackle some of these questions here on our blog. First up, how do you go about introducing media into your weekly services?

I was going through the documents folder on my computer today, doing some house cleaning, when I came across something I wrote in August of 2003. A short document called “The Purpose of Media in a Church.” Prior to starting eleven72, I spent about five years as the Media Director of Gateway Church in Austin, TX. I’m not sure why I wrote it. I guess I was trying to focus my thoughts on why we use, or should use, media in the church. Here’s what I wrote:

Why do we use video/media/art at Gateway? Why is it important?

Media is a powerful communications tool. Using images, text and sound, media engages us at a core level. It challenges us, reveals things to us and enables us to riff off of it down what our Associate Pastor refers to as rabbit trails in our minds.

Media causes us to respond emotionally. It disarms us, lays us bare and opens us up. It shows us who we are, how we are, what we are. It gives us something to look at, listen to and reflect on. Through it we can explore our world and open ourselves up to people and situations we wouldn’t in our everyday lives. It challenges us and enables our empathy for others. It reveals truth about the world around us.

Media is important because stories are important. Because emotions are important. Because it engages our souls in a conversation that doesn’t have to make sense in a literal, mathematical or logical way.

So there you go :).

Lee and I spent the day editing. We’re putting the final touches on “The Body” and “How Much?” They are the Sermon Illustrations for our next two Programming Packs. The packs will be called Church Vol. 1 and Money Vol. 1 respectively. We’re really excited to get these next two packs up and out there.

What’s with the Programming Packs? A few months ago Lee and I received a list of the top ten search terms pastors and church media planners were entering while browsing for content on a popular church video site. The list was (not necessarily in this order):

1. Jesus
2. Prayer
3. Worship
4. Faith
5. Evangelism
6. Cross
7. Love
8. Trust
9. Church
10. Money

We saw the list as a need we could help fill and decided to make a series of themed volumes centering around each of the ten words. Thus our Programming Packs were born. We say they are “Designed To Fine Tune Your Service.” What we mean is, each volume is designed to add media support to a service or series based on one of the ten topics. Each Programming Pack contains:

• 1Sermon Illustration (Shot on HD!)
• 1 Countdown
• 2 Moving Worship Backgrounds
• 5 Stills
• 1 Bonus Illustration (The Countdown with the Clock Removed)

What’s exciting about this is that all of the elements can work together to wrap a theme around your service and/or each of the elements can stand on their own. You can use some for your series now and save some of the elements for another series. And the worship backgrounds will work any Sunday for any topic!

So far we’ve completed Jesus Vol. 1 and Prayer Vol. 1. We’re finishing up Money and Church and we’ve got a rough cut and a count down for our Evangelism Volume.

Check out the volumes tab on our page and let us know what you think. We welcome suggestions, feedback, input, etc. Our goal and purpose is to serve you and your congregations!

I just returned from directing my first bonafide Foley session with my good friend and audio wiz Jason Young. Jason’s got a great little studio and runs his own little shop called Invisible Strings. In addition to doing film sound and mixing, Jason’s an accomplished composer and musician. He’s also got a blog he runs called The Big Think.

Doing Foley work was the coolest. Jason and I had so much fun. We recorded newspaper sounds, a laundry basket sliding on the floor, footsteps, punch being poured from a ladle… If you haven’t done any Foley work, I highly recommend it :). We’re finishing up our latest Programming Pack, Church Volume 1, and the short we’re working on is called “The Body” (You can check out our other Programming Packs by hitting the Volumes tab on our Home page). It’s a funny piece where all the actors are playing body parts. They’ve got shirts that say “Eye” or “Ear” or “Appendix.” Eye, Ear and Foot live together and Ear is arguing with Eye about how there must be more to life (Eye has seen it all don’t you know), when they get an invitation to a party where the whole body is invited. No spoilers here. You’ll have to wait and see what happens. Suffice it to say that the shoot was fun, post is going great, and we can’t wait to have it done in the next couple of weeks!

I’ve added the first link to the site over there to the right. It’s for a site called Church Video Ideas, which is run by a very cool guy named Greg Atkinson. Greg is a church tech pioneer and Church Video Ideas is one of his latest, greatest ideas. You can read all about his many accomplishments on the blog.

Greg was kind enough to review our Jesus and Prayer Volumes on Monday (the link will take you there). He also mentioned us in his Episode 2 podcast that you can find at CreativeSynergyPodcast.com, which he records with another church media guru named Anthony Coppedge (hit the link to check out his blog).

All in all, very cool stuff for eleven72. After the mentions, the traffic on our site went crazy and we’ve been getting hits from places as far away as Japan. We always wanted to be big in Japan. So, thanks so much Greg. We really dig what you’re doing.