Introducing Media to your Church Part 1:
Don’t Fear the Gear

(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

Introducing Media into your Services

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?

The Purpose of Media in a Church

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.

If you blog and there's no one there to read it, does it make a sound?

We're still ironing out the kinks on how to integrate the blog into our site so we haven't linked to it yet at eleven72.com. If you're reading this, you're one of the select few. Maybe even the select one.

One of our goals this year is to grow our mailing list. We really want to grow the eleven72 community and toward that end we're offering a free video to anyone who signs up for our mailing list. You can sign up by visiting our homepage at www.eleven72.com. The free video is Fear, which has been one of the most popular videos we've made thus far. Check it out.

Even if you have no use for our free video, please sign up for our mailing list. That way, when we're out socializing, we can brag about how many subscribers we have :). Seriously, we would love to be able to let you know when new products come out or when big events happen in the life of eleven72.

The purpose of this blog is to keep any interested parties up to date on what's going on with eleven72. We'll use it to keep you up to date on our latest productions and newest products, as well as sharing general thoughts and ideas about media and technology as it relates to the church.

These are exciting times for us at eleven72 and we can't wait to share them with you! We would also love to hear from any and all of you. So feel free to share, comment or weigh in any time.