Listening to what churches are thinking…

I’ve been involved with Social Media and all it’s “word of mouth” capabilities for over 2 1/2 years.  I’m also involved in over 22 LinkedIn discussion groups with 4 of them about ministry.  If your not involved yet, I would highly recommend it, as you can be “listening” and encouraging to many churches, or christians out there.

One discussion caught my attention today as it focused on small churches and how they plan to reach out to the digital community.  They were talking about video and websites.

Most people think that it’s very expensive to get a web site, create video and post online.  Never could that be further from the truth these days.  Here are excerpt’s of this discussion:

Question posed to the Web Ministry discussion group -

Cisco predicts that by 2013 90% of all Web traffic will be generated by video.  I’d love to know what your church is planning to do to increase your congregation with online video?

Some answers were as follows:

“This is a great thing for churches to be thinking about. Our church is just a small church in rural New Hampshire, but we’re in the process of converting our website over to a WordPress site where it will be easy for us to post videos / podcasts / content / etc on a daily basis and start interacting with our site visitors more.”  J.D. Independent Technology Consultant

“We’re a pretty small church with a basic website, but we’ve decided that it’s a must. We’re adding a short “Thanks for checking out our website – Come and visit” video from our pastor, and thinking about a short “Christian Mythbuster”-like series to cover the misconceptions people have about visiting a church.”  R.P. founder of worshipbasics.com

Another one stated – “Probably the same thing we did with radio and television…”

What are you thinking for the now and up coming broadcast capabilities?

New School Year-Familiar faces, new faces

We are well into the new school year at CCA.  The start of this year has been like two steps forward, three steps back, but we are currently starting to see the kids pulling together towards the goal of WORSHIP.  

Let me elaborate a bit….

This past school year was exceptional, the Worship team 2008/2009 had an amazing year…sounding good, ministry minded, they had matured spiritually alot and entered into worship.  With most of the team being juniors, we looked forward to returning students being more mature and the team ready much sooner.  As the new school year started 2009/2010, this year’s team had grown to 45 young people, and no experienced drummer.  :O

With mic sharing going on – 3 vocals to a mic has become the norm.   Running a 32 channel board, we had to ad-lib real fast!  Everything was piggy-backed with drums, piano, woodwinds all being submixed so we could extend our available mic channels.  SHEEESH!  With two new drummers, and possibly a third, we had to focus on how to train them most efficiently to regain the solid foundation we were lacking.  All this was going on while having to plan and sing worship every Sunday.  Challenges are good.  They stretch you and shape you.  

Looking at the positives:   In training this year’s Worship Team, we are blessed to have 2 cello players, a trumpet player, a flute player, and  2 clarinet players that also rotate as drummers.  We run 2 keyboards and a piano, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass, conga’s/percussion along with over 30 singers…total of 17 nations represented on the Worship Team this year.  God is awesome!

So..where are we now?  

This past Sunday, as we entered our 12th week of service in the school year, we noticed that the team has started to “understand“…they are on the verge of working together towards the goal of “Worship” and “entering in to Worship“.  They are starting to flow, along with starting to feel the songs and singing together, aware of what they are actually doing.  That is a great place to be heading.  The time and training invested is definitely starting to show.  Their dedication is also showing as sports and other activities have begun full steam.  

Worship Dance team is also growing and learning new material.  The flow is more evident this year.  Along with the desire to express worship.  That  also is a good thing.

 We’re looking forward to God’s direction as always that He may be glorified!

Worship Team Training

This year we  had the privilege to train and mentor our home church’s worship team with:

Worship Team Training consisting of:

• Working together for one purpose-Worship
• praying together
• leading
• playing skillfully
• layering
• building the song correctly
• being sensitive to the flow of worship
• stage presence
• sound tech training
• visual tech training

Powerpoint seminar/training which included:

• building video announcements in Powerpoint
• adding video to Powerpoint
• inserting music into Powerpoint
• building good visuals
• working with motion

Other items covered:

Seamless integration:

 Using Audacity to edit songs inserted in Powerpoint video announcements creating a seamless flow.

 

 

It is good to Praise and Worship the Lord.

A bit of who we are

We are musicians… We not only are musicians, but we have traveled throughout the United States with our 4 children, ministering with music and speaking in many, many places…from youth homes, prisons, churches, youth camps, pastor’s retreats, regional district meetings, schools, orphanages and on and on goes the list. Throughout the time we traveled, we also found ourselves reaching out, helping, encouraging, rebuilding trust in places, renewing vision for some, handing out hope and restoring faith in others. None of this we could do on our own, mind you, but it was a position and place we seemed to find ourselves placed in over and over. For the past 7 years we’ve been able to train worship teams involving students and staff, at Canyonville Christian Academy. The time and training applied has been very fruitful with students from 17 different nations stepping up to be a part of worship, they have learned to play and sing skillfully before the Lord, some have also interned with sound and others with visual design. These are future leaders that will be going back equipped with knowledge and experience better able to serve in their own communities and countries. This year we have added worship dance.

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