Mister Nifty

If you don’t have experience in video ministry and are planning to install multiple projectors or screens of any kind in your church read further. A common mistake among those starting out cold turkey with video equipment is to take a primary video feed and split it between two screens without amplification. When you split a cable into two cables, the signal does not remain 100% strength on each. It splits the strength of the signal and divides it between the two. The screens will display your video feed, however the picture will be dimmed to 50% of the original output. (more…)

Today, I worked in the media booth of our local church. This was the first time in several years that I have been the guy sending Scriptures and media to the projection screen. I have been in a managerial role for many years in church media and have not worked in some of these integral roles on a weekly basis. I was reminded that being involved in the routine church media tasks is not only somewhat stressful (everyone will see your mistakes on large screens), but also taxing on a worker’s spiritual connection with the worship and the Word of God.

For those who get to experience inspiring and anointed preaching with no task other than being a hearer, it’s easy to be moved to a faith response to God. However, media team members are actively engaged throughout the services, and typically a wall or glass barrier is between them and the ministry going on from the stage. The response dynamic is sharply different between a media team worker and a member sitting in the audience. Media workers are usually not as engaged in the services as a normal attendee. This presents a problem.

We all need nourishment from the Word of God no matter where we are positioned in the church. It’s imperative that each person in the media team make a conscious decision to be engaged in the worship and the preaching, and not be consumed completely by the tasks they are assigned.  A continual disengagement from the preaching of the Word can mean spiritual malnutrition. If your media team is small, the negative effects of this can be even greater. I have seen strong followers of Christ brought to a place of spiritual stagnation serving in routine duties the church. Duties can easily become priority over relationship with Christ. Excellence is important, but not at the expense of the growth and maturity of the media team members.

The longer team members are disengaged from what’s happening in the service, the more exposure they have to bitterness and resentment toward the ministry of the Word. Their service is not producing growth or fulfillment and frustration ensues. We understand fulfillment comes through our interaction and relationship to Christ. It is vitally important that team leaders to not only care about the tasks needing to be accomplished, but also the spiritual atmosphere of the media room as well. Here are a few tips I’ve come up with to help guide leaders.

• Make sure your schedule accommodates team members to attend multiple services on a monthly basis. If your media team is not large enough to do so, start a training program to gain new team members. If your church is small and there isn’t anyone to volunteer, taper your media ministry down so it doesn’t burn out your team members.
• Build a relationship with each of your team members and communicate with them about their spiritual growth.
• Set the atmosphere in the media room. Pray before services as a team. Set a monthly prayer meeting with the team on a weeknight to pray for the ministry and those who need to come to Christ.
• Create guidelines in the media room that foster order and reverence for worship and the ministry of the Word. This should include some/all of the following:
  • No eating/drinking during services
  • Only essential staff in the room during services
  • No surfing Internet sites during down times
  • No personal conversations during services, this includes texting/mobile chatting
• Work with the pastor and worship leader to plan services so that your media team can respond to the Word through prayer and worship outside of the booth. This might mean a stationary image on the screens during this time, or no video recording during altar service.
• All team members should have a salvation experience.
• If you identify a spiritual need or malnourishment in a team member, allow them to take a break and sit in the congregation during services. This means you also need to build a strong team that can fill in during these times.
• Make it a habit to frequently pray for your team members

These are just a few tips to help your team keep a balance of service to the church and their personal relationship to Christ. Above all, we are striving to get to Heaven, and the last thing we want to be a stumbling block to the spiritual growth of our team is our media program. Take stock today and take action to ensure you have a not only a skilled team but a spiritually strong team.

I’ve written about projection software in the past, but I wanted to refresh your memory on a free software called OpenLP.  It is a fully functional projection software package that gets you up-and-running in minutes.  Certainly, you cannot compare apples-to-apples with Media Shout or other expensive software, but if you need base functionality without a lot of frills, save your money and install OpenLP. I have to admit, I was skeptical at first, but after using the program for only a few minutes, I was very impressed.  The interfaces is intuitive and easy to understand. I tried to break it with no luck.

Some of the features you’ll find in openlp.org 1.2 (from their website):

• Add and edit songs.
• Preview songs, Bible verses and images.
• Comes with two translations of the Bible – KJV & ASV.
• Import a Powerpoint presentation (PowerPoint XP/2002 and up required).
• Present your presentation from within openlp.org.
• Show videos.
• Show images.
• Slide themes, with gradient, image and colour backgrounds, fonts & font effects.
• Import and export of themes.
• Saving and opening of Orders of Service.
• Announcement pop-ups.
• Custom slides.
• Multiple Bible verses per slide.
• Themes set either globally, per Order of Service or per song.
• Import Bibles from CSV files.
• Search through all words in every song in database for a certain word or phrase.
• Search through all words in a book of the Bible for a certain word or phrase.
• CCLI/SongSelect integration.
• Link audio tracks to songs, e.g. for use as backing tracks.
• Translations for Afrikaans, Deutsch, English, Portugues-BR and Español.

Features planned for OpenLP 2.0 and later:

• Cross-platform support for Mac OS X and Linux, in addition to Windows.
• OpenOffice.org Impress and PowerPoint Viewer integration.
• On demand Bible verse downloads from online Bible sites.
• Song use auditing.
• Remote operation.
• Text over video.

If you don’t have a huge budget for your screen ministry, I would highly recommend OpenLP.org. What can you lose by downloading it and taking it for a spin?

Go to OpenLP.org

After writing a post about managing your church licenses and permissions. I had quite a few responses from people asking how they could stay legal when using other people’s intellectual property.   One area I addressed was projecting videos that you did not have permission to distribute (i.e. movies, sporting events, etc…).  There are a lot of pastors who use movie clips to illustrate their sermons, but sadly a good portion forget that they are breaking the law.  Wingclips.com takes care of the licensing nightmares for you.   Here’s an overview I asked Jeremy from WingClips.com to write for Mister Nifty.

WingClips.com focuses on the growing trend of multimedia in churches and the need for ministry to become more visual and contemporary. What better way is there to convey a biblical message to a modern society than by showing an inspirational clip from a recent film?

We live in a culture hungry for truth but lacking in contemporary ways to experience it. For many of us, movies are a gateway to that truth; a hyper-reality that parallels our own needs, desires, and struggles.

Thus, WingClips seeks to provide pastors and teachers with culturally relevant illustrations to engage their audience. Movie clips have the ability to visually connect the point of your message into the hearts and minds of your congregation; something that words alone cannot deliver.

Now you can view and download inspirational movie clips from Hollywood, independent and documentary films for your next sermon. WingClips.com offers a Free subscription and a low-cost Premium subscription, both giving you unlimited access to all our clips.  WingClips is the only free and legal way to incorporate films into your teachings.

www.WingClips.com

As our world seems to rotate around video/tv/movies these days, this is an especially good way for youth pastors to stay connected to youth culture.  Give it a try.  It’s free!

Several months ago I stumbled upon what I think is the best solution for broadcasting your church service. For many churches, the technicalities of online streaming video is way out of their league and budget. Truthcasting is a phenomenal solution that brings simplicity and economy to the table. They offer free bandwidth, storage, and archiving of videos and podcasts of your services forever. The only cost to the church is the purchase of a Mac mini. The retail is around $700.00. This is a one-time fee that gives your church the hardware you need to get this running. You own the equipment and have a turnkey solution almost immediately.

The process is simple. You record your services on DVD (with no singing for copyright purposes) and you insert the DVD into the Mac Mini. The TruthCasting software rips your service into a streaming video and podcast MP3 and uploads it automatically to their server. The only thing your video person needs to do is title the sermon, and enter some other information about the service. Lastly, you post a link on your website to your very own TruthCasting channel. For more information check out their informational video here.  Also, check out this interview we received from TruthCasting.com  READ MORE

A few short years ago, the time and expertise it took to host video content on a church website was available to a few, technically saavy congregations. YouTube launched it’s video sharing site in February of 2005 allowing user generated content to quickly find it’s audience. However, the technical limitations (most video sharing sites limit video length to 10 minutes) and social ills associated with YouTube and other sites have prevented sermon content from taking advantage of this distribution platform. TruthCasting, a new place to view and store your full sermons online, offers a bold approach and an innovative solution. Mister Nifty took time to track down one of the founders of TruthCasting, Matt Frazier, and ask about the future of online sermon broadcasting.

Why would the pastor of a small/medium-sized church have interest in putting their sermons on the internet?

The same reason pastors spend hours to prepare weekly sermons for their congregation. If the prepared content is valuable enough to gather a group of 300 individuals every week, when given the chance, that same content will find it’s world wide audience. TruthCasting gives people ease of entry into this kind of distribution without the need of having video professionals in their community. Suddenly, the pastors of small churches will find their sermons consistently viewed around the globe where they never imagined having influence.

How does it work?

We provide a digital media converter and publisher we call a RELAY that will upload video files to a custom channel in the TruthCasting network. The RELAY will automate all the complicated steps to a simple process for the novice. Simply title, label, and tag the sermon for key search words and the RELAY does the rest. Within a couple of hours of the sermon being taught, it is available in video or MP3 format.

How much does the service cost?

The service is totally free. The RELAY will be shipped to you close to the retail cost of a Mac mini, and then there are no fees for storage or usage. We see value in the number of churches that make use of the free service TruthCasting provides.

Well, that is certainly different from other organizations that do the same thing you do. How else are you different?

Our primary difference lies in the service provided with the RELAY. For the first time, we have tied together, what used to be a time-consuming, 5-step process for professionals who know things like compression rates and coding ftp sides of websites. Now, the non-technical pastor can fill out questions in an online form, hit submit, and let the RELAY do the rest. No technical training, to valuable time wasted, and no service fees.

What about copyright concerns with music and graphics?

We want to work with churches to respect the copyrights of music and graphic artists. That practically means that churches should post video from where the pastor’s content begins, and not include traditional time of music. The nature of copyright law makes it difficult for anyone to provide blanket protection from infringement violations. So, we see ourselves helping in the education effort of what constitutes a copyright violation.

What equipment does it take?

For the church that is already publishing content to DVD, this is a no-brainer. They will plug the RELAY into their network and can begin filling their channel with archived or current content right away. For those who aren’t capturing their content on video yet, they can be broadcasting globally with a simple direct-to-hard-drive video camera, any computer to drag and drop the video file into the RELAY, and an online connection.

See TruthCasting for yourself at www.truthcasting.com

To get your church set up with a channel on the TurthCasting network, contact the team at TruthCasting by sending an email to michael.ames@truthcasting.com or by calling 214.440.4040

This is a great tool for church graphic design.  CreativeMYK hosts a gallery of great worship and sermon graphics.  You can download most of them in Photoshop layered files and insert your own logo and information.  This artwork is free, however please read the useage agreement for your specific projects.

Here’s a sample of some of their artwork (provided by third-party members).