Well we are right smack in the middle of planning and preparing for Seeds Conference 2012. Honestly, I can’t wait to host so many pastors and leaders from all over the world. It’s truly the highlight of our year!

I’m in the middle of prepping for some my sessions and getting content together and I’d love to hear from YOU! That’s right, you reading this blog right now. I don’t care if you’re planning on coming to Seeds Conference or not, I want to know what you want to hear from us. I can’t promise I’ll use your suggestions but they will provide me a leaping off point for what I’ll share when the time comes so respond using the comments of this blog and let’s hear it!

Many people worked long and hard on this one! We have a HUGE behind the scenes video blog scheduled to post in January so stay tuned for that. In the meantime here’s some behind the scenes info on this years Christmas services:

Planning for the service doesn’t begin at all until November 1st. We literally have nothing in mind until then and it’s a mad rush to get it all put together in roughly 7 weeks.

Many of the songs this year are completely original arrangements. This proved to be quite risky but very rewarding.

Drummer Boy was inspired by Sade’s Soldier of Love, Michael Jackson’s They Don’t Really Care About Us & Coldplay’s Princess of China.

The costume design for Drummer Boy, I hate to say, was greatly inspired by Justin Beiber’s Santa Claus is Coming To Town video that played before Arthur Christmas and Michael Jackson’s classic military jackets. Lisa Ensor did a phenomenal job decorating them for us.

Cirque du Soleil has been a big inspiration to us these past couple of years. You can see/feel their influence all over this years performance.

The clown piece was actually an idea we developed last year but abandoned because we felt it was too difficult to pull off. You have no idea how many hours were spent watching clowns perform just so we could learn how to communicate without speaking. EVERY single physical gesture they make is very intentional was developed during several intense practice sessions in front of a mirror.

We arranged a gorgeous version of Favorite Things to be sung by Dyana Bush that was cut in the last rehearsals because we felt it just didn’t fit quite right. I’m sure we’ll find a place for it next year. She sang it beautifully.

Hours were spent picking each song that plays in advance of the service. It’s all French music and most of it isn’t Christmas music at all. It was chosen specifically to get you in the right frame of mind to accept the clown bit that starts the show.

EVERY shot in the Santa Claus Is Coming to Town Movie sequence was made by us including the shot of the city.

We watched the 1943 film Double Indemnity very closely to authentically craft the dialogue for Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. The scene where Fred MacMurray meets Barbara Stanwyck for the first time was especially useful.

You may notice a line or two from the old movie in Home Alone in the Santa Claus is Coming to Town movie.

The scene from the movie Chicago called “They Both Reached For the Gun” was of great use to us in creating the dance for Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.

The set this year was heavily inspired by Radiohead’s 2008 Tour. Although our’s looks similar to their’s we used ours in a much different way, giving it, I think, a totally different feel.

Last but not least thank you so much to ALL the people who worked so hard to make this year’s performance the HUGE success that it’s been. You guys make it happen!

Good news! We finally have our “Christmas Story” music available for purchase! For the past 5 years, our Christmas show has featured our pastor reading the Christmas story set to a beautiful orchestral piece, written and produced by one of our volunteer musicians. Creative Audio Lab has graciously made this available for our Seeds members at a nominal charge. There are 3 packages to choose from which include the Soundtrack, Script, Cueing Video, Piano Notations, and much more. Click the banner above to purchase this for using in your Christmas service!

Since we’ve gotten a ton of requests from our church members for the pre/post-service music playlist, I thought I’d post it here on Seeds. I spend a couple of hours each week looking for songs by Christian artists that veer a bit from the typical CCM feel, and for those of us who remember the golden days of Christian music I always throw in a couple of nuggets. I’ve posted the list on iTunes and will continue to update it.

• Check It Out Here

We are always asked “Do you use a Teleprompter?” The answer is yes, we do. We have been using one for about a year now. I’ve recorded this video (without a prompter) to share why we use it and exactly what prompter and software we are using.

Hey everyone - If you’re like us, Christmas is now on your mind! Lately we’ve had a ton of people ask us for charts, audio files, and the like for many of our Christmas songs from Celebrate With Family 2010. Most of what you’re looking for is easy to find. We’ve already posted a ton of files here on Seeds under the Resources tab. But, just to make it a bit easier I’ve added links below to all of our Christmas files. Also, if there’s something you want but hasn’t been posted, don’t be shy. Just ask! We’ll do what we can to help you out. For those of you who are interested in using the Christmas story score, Creative Audio Lab is currently packaging it up for purchase (available in early October), so you can contact them for more info.

• Little Drummer Boy
• Deck the Halls
• The Grinch / Thriller
• Carol of the Bells
• Christmastime

Last year, when the Grinch idea came up for our Christmas event, it was already November. A bit late in the game? Yes, but there was no question about moving forward! My project was to produce the choreography (with help, of course! The electric slide is as far as I go when it comes to dancing), cast the scene with dancers and of course… costuming. At the time, we thought it’d be pretty simple to find an existing Grinch costume that had been used in some brilliant theatre production. We Googled and made phone calls to no avail. All we could find were corn ball Halloween costumes online. The clock was ticking, so we decided to make our own costume from scratch. 

Of all the Christmas projects I’ve gotten to be a part of over the years, this was one of my favorites. So I thought I’d share some of the steps we took and resourses we came across in case any of you are thinking about adding a Grinch to your Christmas event this year and have higher hopes than a lame Halloween costume! After all, it’s only September! You’re in a great place, my friend!

Inspiration
Our first step was to find a couple of inspiration pics. Here’s a look at a couple that we drew from. We loved the realistic look of this long matted hair and the color of it looked like it would pop on a live stage. We opted to go for makeup instead of a masked face so we could capture expression from the Grinch on the big screens. 

Seamstress / Pattern
I contacted a super talented seamstress in our church that I had worked with before. We ended up using this pattern (Simplicity 2853). It’s a Lion Costume so we made a couple of adjustments. We didn’t use a full head piece, but instead made a collar that laid over the top to thicken up the chest. We make our own hands out of a pair of gloves and added room for a belly. I will say that we went back and forth with our seamstress several times to get the costume to fit properly. I was glad we worked with someone who was so close by, super creative, and didn’t mind working hard until we found the right fit.

Fabric
The fabric was a tricky thing. Here’s the site that we ended up purchasing fabric from. We went with a Mongolian Fur (acrylic) in white and did the color ourselves. I called on our friend Andrew Dale who is a bit of a genius when it comes to all things spray paint. Here’s a quick video of us doing the work a couple of nights before the first CWF Show.

Feel free to hit me up with questions if I missed a detail you’re curious about! Happy Grinching everyone!

• Click here to download the SeedsConf 2012 schedule PDF. (Subject to change, of course.)

We get a ton of questions about our announcements so I thought I’d upload an entire After Effects project with all the source files. You can see all the keyframes,  masks, and what blend modes we use to get a pseudo chromo key.  Everything is highly compressed or has a watermark on it just for licensing and download purposes. You’ll need to have CS5 to open it up, but if anyone knows how to save a version to CS4, let me know so we can make it available for more people.

• Click here to download the After Effects project. (updated link)
• Click here to watch the announcements in our weekend service.

You have until September 15th to get approval from your Senior Pastor to attend Seeds 2012, because you will save BIG if you register on opening day!!

This is a HUGE blog filled with great info. Hope you find it useful! Enjoy.

Here’s a tour of our “game day” process. It’s quite lengthy and hopefully extensive enough for you. If we left anything out let me know!

You asked for it so here it is!

I’m gonna keep this topic brief, but I wanted to say a quick word about running a tight ship during worship rehearsals. I learned a long time ago that musicians are the hardest group of people to wrangle. Put 8 or 12 of them on a stage and good luck getting much done. I can say this because I suffer from the same “right-brain” issues. We’ve actually found that in creative meetings that “creative wandering” is a positive thing, but during rehearsals it can be a disaster waiting to happen.

One of my favorite movies lines goes something like this: “Spontaneity has its time and place.” Yes, we take time to chase a few rabbits during rehearsals, and yes we spend a ton of time looking for a more awesome keyboard sound. And spontaneity in worship is an awesome thing! But we have to make sure as worship leaders/pastors that we know when enough is enough. I want to make sure each week that we budget our rehearsal time in such a way that we get the most out of our team members. It’s frustrating to everyone if we work for 2 hours and get nowhere.

This is why it’s important to come to rehearsals as prepared as possible. If I as a leader don’t have a plan or vision for what the set is going to be then I can’t expect my team to stay engaged as I try to figure it all out. Being prepared is crucially important to the production team as well. I waste their time by not giving them a clear idea as to what’s supposed to happen.

Try a few of these ideas this week to keep your rehearsal focus a little tighter:

Keep the information pipeline running - Send emails and texts to team members throughout the week to keep everyone in the loop. Get your soloists prepared ahead of time. Make sure your players can handle the songs and arrangements you will be attempting.

Consider shortening your music set - I’d rather be able to knock 3 songs out of the park than come close on 5 songs. It’s simply a matter of time and energy.

Limit the number of people who can talk to the sound guy - You want to shave off 45 minutes of rehearsal and keep your tech team from pulling their hair out? Don’t allow every single player and singer to have direct access to your audio engineers. It took me 2 years of retraining my guys to let me or my music director know if they needed a monitor mix change, not yelling it from the stage.

Identify the team members who slow you down - Sounds harsh, but it’s worth doing. I’m not saying you need to replace them, I’m just saying you need to know when they are on the stage. Maybe take some extra time with them BEFORE rehearsal starts and get them comfortable with their monitor mixes, tones, etc.

That’s just a few ideas on keeping a better focus during rehearsals. I’d like to hear from you on how you keep things rolling…

Shooting on green screen has its challenges, so here are five tips that will help you get a cleaner key and more natural backgrounds.

• The most important thing is lighting. If you don’t evenly and brightly light your curtain or wall you’ll be spending some frustrating time in post. Evenly lighting your wall means it should be the same brightness from top to bottom and left to right. You can check this with a waveform monitor and some cameras have them built in.

• Keep your subject as far from the wall as you can to avoid light from the green screen bleeding onto your subject. If you’re not framing up full body shots then avoid standing on green, it will reflect green light into the shadows and cause some problems when keying.

• Use a higher shutter speed to help cut down on motion blur. Motion blur creates soft spots that will mix the green into your subject and it’s tough to key without losing some edge detail. I like to set my shutter at 1/120th. Now check out this tutorial to help you get started on basic color keying.

• Replace the background with something more interesting than a solid color or and less distracting than a stock animation. Keep it subtle. You can find some great textures to use at YouWorkForThem.

• Add a small amount of blur to your backgrounds to help your subject stand out and your backgrounds will look more natural, too. I use “fast blur” in After Effects with the amount set to 3 or 4 on a wide shot. The tighter the shot the more blur you’ll need.

There are a couple of schools of thought when it comes to finding that worship moment that seems to make time stand still. There’s no sweeter time than when we can just put the band in neutral and experience the presence of God, and everyone in the room is right there with you. Those are the moments you live for as a worship leader. I’ve been leading worship teams now for more than a decade and I’ve watched or been a part of thousands of worship services and events and I can tell you from experience that when you don’t have that “God is here!” moment the worship times feels a bit incomplete.

So, how do we find those moments on a consistent basis? Do we just hope they happen as we sing and worship? And do we hope that the congregation all feel the same way at the same time? As I’ve visited with worship leaders from around the country I hear their frustration in trying to make these moments “appear” on a regular basis. Let’s face it - this is what we are hired/expected to do: lead God’s people into His presence. And if we consistently fail to do that, well…..

The old school philosophy says: Let’s just sing our songs and those moments will happen. Don’t over-plan or over-rehearse because we’re not sure where that moment will show up. I believe this is a recipe for constant disappointment. Do we need to be sensitive to the moving of the Holy Spirit at all times during worship? Of course! A sincere and prepared leader can sense when God says, “Slow down. Let’s stay here for a bit.” But I’ve found that we can absolutely know ahead of time where those moments may appear. Here are a few ideas on “Producing the Moment”:

1. When you put your set list together think about where the lyrics of the songs are taking you. What the song has to say will determine our mindset as we worship. Try not to shift gears too abruptly with the lyrical content. Also, think about how hard the congregation will have to work to sing the songs later on in the set. Lots of lyrics could mean lots of reading the words on the screens which is counterproductive.

2. Limit the number of new songs per set. Again, making the crowd work for it decreases the chances of finding the moment.

3. Where are you going musically? Are you shifting gears to much? There’s a way to build a set musically that can set you up for a beautiful moment of worship. Staying in the same key and tempo for more than one song can allow you to build momentum.

4. During rehearsal it’s important to find the soul of the set, not just getting the songs to sound good. This takes extra time and concentration. We rehearse the set as a whole, not just song by song. We make sure the songs flow together and that there won’t be any hiccups, no awkward transitions. We want to take the worshippers on a journey, much like the pastor will do in his message. And during rehearsal we will look for that “moment” where we can slow down and let God speak to us. It’s a lot like trying out a recipe before you serve it to your guests.

5. Don’t try to manufacture the moment on the spot. I see so many worship teams that will sing a song WAY too long trying to make the moment appear. Mostly you just get an overlong set that never really goes anywhere that’s devoid of peaks and valleys.

I realize this is a highly debatable subject. I look forward to your responses…

In our creative and production process I’ve noticed that there is a distinct “WHAT” phase–where an idea or creative concept is dreamed up and put forth. Then there is a “HOW” phase–how do we take the WHAT from the drawing board and turn it into a creative experience? This HOW is where my primary focus lies as a Production Manager.

Switching from touring to church production about 6 yrs ago, it’s been interesting to note the wide variation with which churches tackle the HOW. Some churches have a near-perfect scenario with a distinct separation between a creative team determining the WHAT and a production team staying focused on the HOW.

But what to do if this isn’t the case? Perhaps you have only a few people who are tasked with doing it all or maybe you’re a one-person-show? Whatever the case may be, we all still have to accomplish the task at hand, but I’ve noticed that sometimes basic production principles and most importantly, safety, is usually completely disregarded. Reviewing some of the more popular websites and blogs here and there I’ve noticed that most safety and fire-code restrictions & regulations are rarely addressed or mentioned. Although this blog isn’t the proper forum to try and address all of this, it’s imperative that we all exercise due diligence to cover the bases so safety guidelines are followed to the letter. We owe nothing less to the churches and congregations we serve. Over the past 20 years, these guidelines became the mainstay of my career, as non-compliance with a safety guideline or a fire-code here or there could be the kiss of death for a show or event.

This may be the first time this safety topic has come up for some or for others it might seem that it doesn’t really apply to your specific situation–but hang in there with me! Here’s a few examples that may be of interest:

• It’s rare to find a church that doesn’t have some type of soft goods and/or curtains in use as part of their production and stage setup–check this out:

• Most of us employ some type of audio rig–some small, others quite massive–how well is it rigged?

• Stage lighting of some sort is something else almost all of us have in common: large or small, complex or simple–the safety issues are elementary. Look at this:

I could go on and on with example after example of safety and compliance concerns but I’d wager a guess that with very little investigation, most of us could find several areas that need improvement. Becoming adept at the correct way to accomplish the HOW of your WHAT is an art and there are some of us that have spent our career cultivating what we do, however, have hope as it can certainly be done on any level as long as you are willing to cover all the bases.

With this in mind, hear me say: If it can’t be done safely–it shouldn’t be done at all. There is no middle ground. You MUST commit to either acquiring the knowledge personally, consult someone credible AND knowledgeable or adding someone to your team or sphere of influence who possesses the knowledge.

Most of us are investing real dollars into real gear resulting in real safety concerns to factor in–if not taken seriously, structures can be damaged, services can be cancelled, money gets wasted, and people can get seriously hurt. Investing a bit of time to acquire a base of knowledge on the HOW can be remunerated many times over as it will distinctly affect the development of the WHAT you are planning. Over the years, Whit and his creative team have started to really understand some of the basic principles of what is realistic in regards to HOW we can go about making their WHAT a reality and a success. It is a continued learning process amongst all of us but it only serves to make our team stronger and more adept at how we look at our future.

Although it’s easy to get great production ideas and such from this and other websites and blogs–some ideas and suggestions are simply that: an idea or suggestion. They may need to be taken with a grain of salt as everyone has built their production based around their own specific needs and situation. Take heed as what you see on the web may be (and most often times IS) completely different than your situation.

Check out a few resources that might steer you in the right direction:

The “2009 International Fire Code” and the “2009 International Building Code”–I’ve given these guides quite a workout over the last several years especially when it comes to working with architects and building designers–have been told this is pretty much the holy grail for them. Do not be afraid–dig in!

Also the “Backstage Handbook” is a great but simple reference book that provides a bounty of info for basic stagecraft–from building a scenic flat to tying perfect stage knots (please learn how to properly tie a bowline–perhaps the world’s most perfect knot)–it lays it out. This should be a staple for anyone needing solid stagecraft answers or just a reputable reference guide.

A final note that everything we do at COTM is applicable to our situation only. It remains the responsibility of all of us to determine what is safe and right for our particular buildings, environments, and locales. This premise is paramount as you take into account your own specific context, needs, and limitations in the pursuit of your own version of production greatness.

A few years back when the trailer for the Christopher Nolan movie “The Prestige” was released, I was so fascinated by it that I went to the library immediately and checked out the book by Christopher Priest that the movie was based on. I read it from cover to cover in a little more than a day (I’m a slow reader).

One of the main themes of the book that’s present in the movie, though not to the same extent, was that the answer to “how’d he do that?” is almost always so obvious that our minds would never allow ourselves to consider it as a real possibility for how the illusion was performed. In other words the “magic” behind the magic isn’t really all that magical at all. In fact, almost always, the answer to the riddle is quite simple.

The best example of this in the book was a story of an old Chinese man whose big illusion was making a fish bowl appear out of thin air. The answer to “how’d he do that?” was simple. He keeps the fishbowl between his legs and underneath his gown and using a little sleight of hand he’s able to make it appear like the fishbowl materializes magically out of thin air. The real discipline of the trick is walking like he has a fishbowl between his legs ALL THE TIME, every hour of every day, so that people think that’s how he normally walks. This is the discipline of great magic. He’s selling the illusion even when he’s not performing the illusion. There’s really nothing all that magical about it, it’s purely a discipline.

The thing about it is, that’s really disappointing to us, the audience, because we WANT to believe that something greater is at play here. When we watch Criss Angel or David Blaine on TV, nobody ever suspects that some of the people in the crowd are in on the illusion or that they use actors and trick photography because that would be too easy, that would be disappointing because it’s so obvious, so we rule that out as a possible explanation and begin to attribute abilities to magicians that are superhuman.

Here’s my point. Anytime we see anything great, anything fantastic, anything, dare I say “magical”, we automatically assume that the process that created it must also be just as fantastic, just as great, just as magical, and the plain truth of the matter is, IT’S NOT!

The more opportunities I’ve had to be around people who do great work, the more I have discovered that there’s nothing magical about the magic they make. It’s purely the discipline of pouring over the details again and again looking for ways to improve their craft that makes them so good at what they do. It’s easy to assume that those who write great songs just wake up everyday and write five killer tunes before breakfast because hey, they’re Joel Houston after all, but the truth is for every amazing song they write, there are hundreds more that are utter garbage. Their magic is in their daily discipline of writing, writing, and writing some more.

So if you’ve been feeling less than adequate and wishing that some amazing artist would take you behind the scenes and show you the secrets to the artistic universe, don’t feel bad, we’ve all been there, but realize that while there’s always more to learn, the greatest lessons are learned through the discipline of doing it everyday.

Getting someone to come to life and have personality on camera can take a lot of coaching and directing. Just telling someone to up their energy is pretty vague advice to give and usually only yields more hand motions and an extra smile.

Something we’ve found that helps bring out personality and life is to ask the talent to speak with more volume, to speak loud enough to clearly reach someone in the back of the studio. When you speak louder you speak with more confidence and it helps personality to show through on camera. It will feel unnatural for most people at first, because it is unnatural, so you’ll have to keep pushing them to be louder through the entire script. Give it a try and see how much more energy comes through on camera and how much more you can connect with your audience.

Here’s the opener for our Easter services at Church on the Move this year as recorded at tonight’s rehearsal. Hope you enjoy and if you attend COTM do yourself a favor and DON’T WATCH THIS!

A few months back we posted a video of one of our creative meetings here at Church on the Move. The response we got was huge! So, we thought we’d do it again. Be warned this video is LONG and it’s totally unedited and unscripted but it should give you an inside perspective on how we work as a team and how we plan our services.

Here is the down-low on how we achieved the scrim-panel move for the opening nights of our Seeds Conference. We kept it mostly low-tech (emphasis on mostly…) with technology we already knew how to operate and sort out. The impetus for keeping things simple was pretty much culled from self-preservation as we knew the one time we didn’t really desire major technological issues was the opening of our first Seeds session. Go figure.

These 6 sharkstooth scrim panels were custom fabricated out of some larger pieces we had used a few years ago–a local company was able to make this happen for us but scrim material is available in almost any kind of custom size at Rose Brand.

The object of this element was to project 6 different images on 6 different scrim panels that could raise/lower as needed. Due to the heavily populated stage area overhead–working out the mechanics of the manual raising and lowering process proved to be the biggest challenge. Although not completely groundbreaking, here’s a brief breakdown on how we made it work out for our needs.

To give us a starting point for both the raise/lower mechanism and a place to tie off the actual scrim panels we mounted (6) horizontal runs of uni-strut on the ceiling hanging exactly where we wanted them to hang. Using pulleys in some strategic positions, we used nylon parachute cord that ran from our six “custom” (ahem–homemade) winches mounted on the catwalk, up to the ceiling, over to each scrim area, and then down to the scrim itself. Here’s a few photos to illustrate:

As for these winches, it’s essentially a wooden box with a reel in the middle that would wind up the parachute cord without too much or too little friction. Didn’t want it to be a huge struggle to wind up while raising and didn’t want it to have the tendency to free-wheel when lowering. Powdered graphite came to the rescue to keep the reel lubricated within the wooden box and between the nylon cord and the pulleys, the friction point was fairly easy for our stage crew to deal with. You can see that we installed a stop of sorts so when the scrim was set to the desired height, you could pull out the metal peg for the handle to rest against with no continued rotation. This made it an easy maneuver to operate: the crew could move the scrim up or down, pop the stop into place and walk away secure that everything was locked down and stable.

The scrim itself was equipped with grommets spaced 1’ apart all across the top edge and down each side. The grommets at the top were used to tie each panel to the uni-strut and all the side grommets were affixed with a snap-link. The snap-link allowed us to run that continuous piece of nylon from the winch upstairs all the way down through the snap-links where it was tied off. At the bottom, we put a piece of 1” conduit through a sewn pole pocket in the bottom of each panel–this gave us a little bit of rigidity without adding too much weight.

For projecting–we used six Barco R-12 projectors–we’ve used these quite a few times and the 12,000 lumens have always delivered a decent punch while still being pretty easy to setup and operate–finding six that had similar hours on the bulbs was a bit of a challenge but projecting onto scrim vs. screens gave a little bit of latitude in how they were all matched. We flew these on three different trusses positioned around the room that were all about 60’ out from the scrims–based on the actual scrim, this was +/- about 5’. Our video engineer spent some time dialing in the edge-blending on board each projector to soften the projected hard edge of the image area–this created a nice drop-off to the edge of all the projected areas.

Getting the content to the projectors was a bit more complex as we had to send six different video feeds with different content on each but still remaining in sync with each other–having used Catalyst media servers for quite some time it was a natural choice.

With the Catalyst, each server has only one physical output or two if you don’t mind sacrificing your reference monitor. In order to keep the reference monitor intact, we used a couple of Matrox TripleHead-2-Go’s. This device can take one video input and create three video outputs–these are not actually three separate signals but separate sections of one display that is three times the normal width. For example, if the input signal has a resolution of 1024x768 then the output signal will be 3072x768; Output 1 would use horizontal pixels 1 thru 1024, output 2 would use 1025 thru 2048 and output 3 would use 2049 thru 3072. With the Catalyst’s ability to create internal video “mixes” (windows in the program that act as separate video outs), and the TripleHead units, we were able to meet our playback needs with only two media servers.

A bit of clarification on the Catalyst–a Catalyst media server is a Mac Pro computer utilizing Catalyst software–although this software is complex, the computer setup is still relatively basic. The signal path for each media server (routed to three projectors each) is as follows:

• Output 1 was a simple DVI reference monitor and output 2 was our signal to the projectors–this output first hit a TripleHead where it became three VGA outputs, then each VGA went to its own analog video DA (1 VGA in x 2 VGA out). The TripleHeads must see an EDID signal to function properly so output 1 on each DA went to a VGA monitor and the DA output 2 was converted from VGA to 5-wire RGBHV that was sent on to the projectors.

It made sense to set the Catalyst rigs up near the GrandMA in lighting world since that was what would be controlling them and design-wise it kept everything in the same sandbox. This did add a bit of complexity to the lighting control area–check out these pics:

When it was all said and done–we had put in enough pre-production effort to wrangle in most of the obvious problems that reared their head–the technology was kind to us and our crew did a magnificent job of dealing with the winches. The result was exactly what Whit and the creative team had in mind.

For the full version of seeing the scrims in action, check out Night 1 and Night 2 general sessions from the conference.

Imagine you and your spouse are going out to dinner at a new restaurant. You walk in and find that the place is nice. Really nice. In fact, it’s downright fancy. The service is impeccable, the table setting is expensive and the atmosphere is to die for, but then, comes the food…

…A Digiorno Pizza.

Feels out of place doesn’t it? Here’s the deal, there’s nothing wrong with a Digiorno Pizza but in the wrong setting it doesn’t make sense. Imagine the same food in a different setting, like say, your home. What was, in one setting, a disappointment is now a tasty meal in another.

This happens in our churches all the time. We serve Digiorno Pizza like it’s steak and lobster and people respond with comments like “it feels like a performance.” What they’re really saying is, this just doesn’t feel right. Something is amiss.

Here’s my two cents.

Some people on our stages are Digiorno people and some people are steak and lobster people. That’s reality. The trick then, is presenting them in the appropriate way. If you don’t have a GREAT band than by all means, don’t try to light them like U2. If you don’t have great lights, then stop flashing them through every color possible.

The point is, when we overdo our presentation we come off as, at best, overambitious, and at worst, arrogant.

I realize that for so many of us, all we’ve got to work with is Digiorno people. I get that. But here’s my advice: Embrace it and be real about it because when we play and create within our strengths AND weaknesses we relate to people in a more genuine way.

So many times when it comes to launching new projects we get stuck in the planning phase. We dream, we scheme, we plan but so often we never actually do anything!

I think the reason we get stuck in the development phase is because we’re waiting for everything to be just perfect, for all the pieces to fall into place before we’re willing to launch.

Here’s the bad news. It’s easy to hide from making any real changes and launching any new initiatives in the planning stage. It’s easy to “act” like things are changing and growing when they’re really not because we’re always in a perpetual state of planning.

I love what Leon Fontaine of Springs Church says: Ready. Shoot. Aim.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t plan, but there comes a point as a leader where you just have to venture out into the unknown and figure it out as you go.

For years at COTM we knew we needed to get younger on our stage. It was no disrespect to the people who had served on our worship team over the years, but we knew if we were ever going to connect with a younger crowd we were going to have to make changes and give younger people opportunities to serve and grow.

The trouble was that because the people we needed to make the change weren’t just waiting in the wings, we hesitated in making it. Finally, after years of realizing that it was never going to be convenient or easy to change, we decided we just had to go for it and two years later, we have loads of young people serving on our stages.

I’m convinced that many times the right people and the right answers that so many of us are looking for are hidden from us until we are willing to take a step of faith and begin something.

You’ll never be able to plan for everything so you might as well just get ready, shoot, and aim.

Lately, I’ve been challenging the team around here to get into a habit of preparing themselves for creativity.

Here’s what I mean by that.

So often the best ideas come when you’re not “trying” to be creative. You might be watching TV or taking a shower or listening to a favorite song and inspiration will strike, the question is, are you even aware that it’s striking and if so, how are you capturing that inspiration?

Here’s what that looks like for me.

First off, I try to filter everything I see, hear, and experience through the filter of “is this useful?” When I hear a song or take in a movie or go to a concert I’m constantly asking myself, is this useful? I study songs, environments, designs, films, all of it constantly looking for things I can apply to our services and events. Remember, so much of the creative process is simply learning to consistently ask the question “what if?”

Secondly, if inspiration was to strike, are you ready for it? Do you have a method or a format for capturing those ideas?

It seems simple, but it’s huge because if we want God to entrust us with great ideas we have to be ready to capture them when he gives them to us. Personally, I use an iPad and a Moleskine, for keeping track of all the ideas that rattle around in my head. But whatever you use, don’t forget that you’re responsible for what God has placed in our hands so carry a “capture” device wherever you go because you never know when creativity may strike.

1. My Girls - Animal Collective
2. Icarus - White Hinterland
3. Cosmic Love - Florence + The Machine
4. Compulsion - Doves
5. Helena Beat - Foster The People
6. Gutter - Paper Route
7. Blue Water - Doves
8. Need You Now - Cut Copy
9. Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) - Florence + The Machine
10. Closet Astrologer - The Ruby Suns
11. Hailin’ From The Edge - Apparat
12. You Don’t Know Me - Apparat
13. Walking On A Dream - Empire of the Sun
14. Standing On The Shore - Empire of the Sun
15. We Are The People - Empire of the Sun
16. Sleepwalkers - The Hundred in the Hands
17. Folds In Your Hands - Passion Pit
18. Good Evening - The Concretes
19. Pigeons - The Hundred In the Hands
20. The Cedar Room - Doves
21. Fader - The Temper Trap
22. Three Trees - Tanlines
23. Reinfo - Tanlines
24. Chinatown - Wild Nothing
25. Intro - The xx
26. Without You - Rainbow Arabia
27. Dogs Days Are Over - Florence + The Machine
28. Despicable Dogs (Washed Out Remix) - Small Black
29. Houdini - Foster The People
30. Strange Overtones - David Byrne & Brian Eno
31. Home - David Byrne & Brian Eno
32. 1517 - The Whitest Boy Alive
33. Summer Song - YACHT

One of the biggest mistakes you can make in creative planning is assuming your first good idea, is good enough.

Think about it. Every bad church video you’ve ever seen started as a good idea to someone. Somebody, somewhere thought that singing that song or making that video was a good idea. The problem is that what often sounds like a good idea in a brainstorming meeting turns out to be a bad idea in execution, at which point it’s too late to make changes.

I’ve learned over the years to let even my best ideas sit for a while, because often when I allow myself time to review my ideas over and over again, I find glaring problems with my initial concept that must be adjusted to avoid a mediocre result.

Here’s how it works for us. When we arrive at what we think is a solid concept, unless it’s something really basic or something we’ve done before, we wait, we let it sit overnight at a bare minimum. On a really big project, like Easter or Christmas, we’ll have several (and by several I mean tons) of meetings over a period of days reviewing and evaluating the concept in microscopic detail, like it was the first time any of us have ever heard it.

Here’s why: the amount of time you spend on the details will have a great impact on the success or failure of your project. Mies Van Der Rohe, a German architect, famously said “God is in the details” and he was right. Your mind just isn’t equipped to see all the nuances of a creative project all at once, so you have to force yourself to focus on them to find success consistently.

So, in summation, if you’re regularly going with your first “good” idea, you’re either God or you’re not doing very good work. It just isn’t that easy for anyone.

“Walk with the wise and become wise…” - Proverbs 13:20

You heard recently from one of our interns, DyAna Bush, about what she’s learned since she joined our team. I recently had a conversation with our other music intern, 19-year old Jordan Moore, about the things he’s learned since becoming a NEXT intern. Although he didn’t have as many specific points of reflection as DyAna, he did share something I felt was particularly interesting. He said that just by being here he’s become much more aware of what it means to be excellent in the area of ministry. Jordan leads worship now and then, but most of his time is relegated to changing guitar strings, hauling gear from one room to another, cleaning the dishes in the kitchen, driving to the music store, and anything else we can think for him to do. But even in the menial tasks he’s acquired a spirit of excellence. Just by being around our creative team day in and day out he’s picked up on the way we do things.

The Bible is clear that when we hang out with fools, we become like them. However, when we spend time with the wise we become wise. It’s a bit like osmosis – a gradual transference of substance from one place to another. The question is: Who is transferring wisdom, creativity, excellence, ideas, etc. into your life? As worship/creative leaders we must continue to surround ourselves with people who challenge our ideas, sharpen our instincts and dare us to move into new and different arenas.

In 20+ years in the music industry and in the ministry I’ve known too many musicians and worship pastors who believe that they can do all this on their own. Their ideas are the best ones, their way of doing things is paramount to the way anybody else does it. Shall we say that walking alone produces isolationism? I think we can. Isolationism then produces an unchecked ego. Ego produces failure. “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” says James 4:6.

A few suggestions for worship leaders:

• Build a diverse team. Allow them to challenge you (respectfully, of course). Welcome their input and allow their ideas to trump yours at times.

• Find “next generation” musicians to pour your wisdom into. You’ll be surprised how much they’ll end up pouring into you creatively.

• Step outside your comfort zone. Listen to different types of music and judge it for its creative spark, not on your personal taste. Do the same with movies, performance art, etc. Expand your horizons!

• Give it time. Osmosis is a gradual process – it does not happen overnight. Remember, we “walk with the wise”, we don’t sprint.

It’s difficult to become excellent or expand your creativity just by reading a blog post. You have to surround yourself with excellence and creativity day in and day out. I’m proud of Jordan and what he’s accomplished since he’s been an intern. I’ve benefited as well. He’s reminded me of what it is to be wide-eyed and excited, ready to do something big for God. I’m thankful every day to work with people who make me better, who allow me to do what I’m created to do on a high level. Do the same for yourself. Osmosis-ize your life!

If you think about it, a song is nothing more than a collection of sounds that, ideally, come together to create ONE sound. It’s a combination of voices, keyboards, guitars, drums, and other odds and ends that make a song sound like it does.

I learned a long time ago that creating a great sound begins at the instrument, not at the mixing desk. So, if I wanted to improve the sound of my song I must begin with improving the individual sounds at the instrument.

In my experience most people approach it from the opposite end. They assume that they sound great and that the mix engineer is responsible for the vast majority of their sonic problems. To be clear, a great mix engineer is worth his/her weight in gold, but I firmly believe we could improve the sound of our worship experiences greatly just by diving into the sounds at the source.

To quote Butthead: “You can’t polish a turd, Beavis.”

I’m not trying to be crass, but I think that quote perfectly sums it up. Does your guitar player really know what a good guitar tone should sound like? Do you? How about the drums? How often are the heads changed? How often are the drums tuned? What sort of keyboard sounds are you using? Whatever random piano sound happens to be on the Korg the church owns? This stuff doesn’t have to be expensive, but I can promise you good sounds don’t happen by accident and if the sound is the song then those things matter.

Just this morning I was fortunate enough to do an interview with Sean over at THiNK International. If you’re not familiar with THiNK they do a whole host of things but one of the coolest is a series of interviews with different church leaders. If you haven’t checked them out, I highly recommend browsing around their website, it’s loaded with cool resources.

If you’d like to see my interview with Sean you can check it out here.

Over the past five months I’ve been one of the first NEXT interns for COTM’s Performing Arts Department. Recently I was asked, “what have you learned so far?” Here are a few things I’ve been thinking about in response to that question.

It’s All In The Details
Creating an engaging worship experience for our church family is more than picking a few pretty songs, it’s about collaborating as a team to choose the right songs, the right worship leaders, the right transitions, and so forth. Each set is scrutinized to the N-th degree in an effort to allow our congregation to connect with our Heavenly Father. I’m constantly amazed at how the smallest detail can greatly make or break a worship set.

Last weekend’s Kid’s on the Move worship service is a great example. Kenneth Weston and I led the worship set in KOTM: Mighty to Save & We Exalt Thee. We played both songs in A - which worked great for the first tune. The kids were singing loudly and at the top of their range. It was a beautiful moment as 400 kids sang “OUR GOD CONQUERED THE GRAVE.” We Exalt Thee was a little different. The song is a favorite in our elementary kids’ services, so we were surprised when the kids just didn’t sing as confidently as usual. After a quick meeting with our team we realized that A was the wrong key. To sing along, the kids had to sing low for this song because the octave up - where they usually sing - was too high. In effect, they were singing, we just couldn’t hear them very well. It was an overlooked detail that affected the service.

Preparation Is Key
Our department stays busy. In a week, our bands can play up to 15 sets. This doesn’t include big events (Seeds Conference, Easter, CWF). When we plan a service on a Tuesday, the real work often begins right after the meetings break. Each musician and singer begins preparing on their own. Andy says, “Practice happens at home. Rehearsal is what we do when we come together.” If we aren’t individually prepared, it effects everyone!

In addition, confidence and excellence follows a significant amount of preparation. As I’ve taken on the habit of preparation, I’ve found God faithful to take my offering of preparation and use it for His success. I’ve heard many of our leaders here say that it’s preparation and structure that allows the Holy Spirit to move in our worship services, not the other way around. This truth is apparent, and I’m excited to see what more God will do with COTM as we continue to humble ourselves in preparation and see to the details.

Creativity Is A Group Effort
This is one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned - there are no creative geniuses. There’s not one guy coming up with all the ideas. There’s not one person who can take credit for every great idea. It’s a team effort. Instead of chasing ideas, we chase people. We gather the right people together to talk out every idea. That’s where the real genius takes place.

I hope this helps anyone considering the NEXT internship. I’ve got more than 7 months left, so I’m sure I’ll have even more to write in the future.

When I get the opportunity to meet production teams from other churches most of the questions revolve around how our design process is structured and what specific visual elements I’m responsible for. I’ve received questions like, “Who decides what goes on the onstage LEDs?”, “Who designs the scenic layout?”, and even this one: “Does Whit sit with you and write all the lighting cues?”

My job title is lighting designer but “design coordinator” might be more accurate. I don’t solely develop our scenic designs from conception to completion but rather build onto an agreed upon concept. These first concepts usually involve three people: Andrew, Whit, and myself. Occasionally we’ll include other members of Whit’s creative staff, most commonly Gary to discuss LED usage, but at this point in the process too much input can actually be a hindrance. These first meetings have been as simple as just a verbal discussion and as complex as a very detailed whiteboard layout with scaled cardboard cutouts and anywhere in between.

My job really begins after this initial concept is decided. The first thing I do is get the concept laid out on paper through a CAD program called Vectorworks (I’m horrible at drawing which gives Whit much to make fun of–I think it’s giving me a complex). We’ve had a few ideas completely fall apart at this point as I might find an overlooked design issue or something but most commonly it’s for a more practical reason. This is a good time to mention that just because it sounds good in a meeting and looks good on a whiteboard doesn’t mean it’s really going to work. Similar to the old architect saying, “You can use an eraser at the drafting table or a sledgehammer at the job site.” The two most common problems at this point are usually budget and equipment availability–believe it or not we don’t just get to pick what LED wall or lighting fixture we want. In actuality, most of these design decisions are based on what our trusted vendors have available and what they can cut us a good deal on. Getting these issues sorted out is an area where my production manager Andrew plays a major role.

Ok, so the concept is good, the design is feasible and the gear is available–now what? This time it’s a group discussion with myself and Andrew along with Whit and his creative staff. Even though I’ve usually got some drawings together by this point–my plan is for this meeting to be a complete waste of time. What’s that!? Hear me out–If the first meeting was productive; if I asked the right questions; if I was thorough in getting the info from Whit; if Andrew and I spent the next several weeks looking at the design from every angle–then there should be nothing come up that hasn’t been thought of. The truth is that it goes both ways–some meetings have brought up additional ideas that have totally made the design and other times we go full circle to end up at the same place we started. Either way we get there, it’s a win.

Up to this point the focus has been on the physical look of the stage–LED panels, curtains, scenic objects, etc. But at 4-6 weeks out I really begin to focus on the lighting aspects–this is really the only area of the design that’s not a collaborative effort. The decisions I make on fixture types and layout are largely based upon my knowledge of what type of look and feel Whit is expecting with the event.

It’s now 2-3 weeks out from our set change and two main things are happening: The first is that Gary, our graphic designer, is coming up with concepts for what will be on the LEDs. When we first began using LED onstage, Andrew and I were more involved in this process–In fact I believe for the first couple designs there was no outside involvement at all. This didn’t work out so well because if I’m busy finding videos for use on the LED wall, who’s designing the lighting? Since then, Gary has come on board and begun to develop some amazing custom content but is still open to input from us when needed. Developing video for use as a scenic element is different than developing it for use on a main screen–It’s vital to have a good relationship between the guys making the videos in an office somewhere and the guys implementing them into the event.

It seems appropriate here to explain why as the lighting designer I’m even talking about video at all. Once video breaks the plane of the stage and becomes a scenic element it needs to be controlled by the same person controlling all the other light emitting objects in the room. This allows it to be timed properly with all the other cues and integrated seamlessly with the overall look. Otherwise you end up with all these different elements lacking synergy and cohesiveness. Since my lighting console controls the Catalyst media server we use for the onstage media playback, I have to stay heavily involved…

The second thing that’s happening 2-3 weeks out is that I’m working to finish the CAD plots. Being able to convey my vision in an easy to understand manner is vital to a quick and relatively painless set change. No matter how small your operation is–PUT IT ON PAPER–Even if it’s done with notebook paper and a pencil. It let’s work happen without you having to be directly involved. It’s an art to provide just the right amount of information so things will run smoothly without providing so much that you cause confusion.

Click on the image to download the PDF.

Click on the image to download the PDF.

Ok, skip ahead to production week. The plots are printed, the gear is here, and it’s “go” time. I stay involved enough in the set change to make sure it goes smoothly but detached enough to not get tunnel vision on one specific area. I love this stage in the process and will never get tired of the rush that comes from building something from nothing. At some point this week I have to detach from the technical altogether. Since I’m not a naturally creative person, any artistic creativity I have has been hard fought for. Like many in the production field I got into it because I understood the gear; I grasped how to hang lights in the air and have them stay put safely–then how to send electricity to them so they would light up but the truss they were hanging on wouldn’t. To this day getting into a truly creative mode requires me to separate myself from thinking about the technical and focusing on relaxing into the artistic. This is where it pays off to have worked with my production manager Andrew for the past ten years as he recognizes when it’s time for me to slide into artistic mode and gives me the tools I need to to do the job. Having a trained, top notch lighting crew is invaluable at this point as they can continue to function while I’m consumed with these other design aspects.

What’s my creative director’s involvement at this point? As little as we can get by with. After a few years of working with Whit, I’ve gotten to know his taste pretty well–he might throw out general ideas about specific parts of the show but he leaves it to me to figure out how to implement those ideas and fill in the gaps in between. During the first rehearsals I’ll bring up the rough looks that I’m thinking about using and if I see him thrust a thumbs up into the air then I know I’m heading in the right direction. If I don’t feel like a part of the show is coming together the way we want I’ll ask him to step in to help me approach it from a different angle.

As in almost everything creative or production related–most of what we do is subjective but for our specific production designs and workflow, this is the basic formula we’ve found that seems to work best within the confines of our creative flow, our building capabilities and our staffing options.

All images are from the design process of the Celebrate With Family 2010 service.

I finally was able to sit back and watch Celebrate With Family 2010 yesterday from start to finish. I realized I hadn’t seen the entire show yet, only bits and pieces, and I was pleased at how the entire thing felt so cohesive. Nothing felt left-footed or out of place, there didn’t seem to be any weak moments. That was a great feeling.

I get to work with such talented people, but what’s awesome is that each of us helps make the others better. As we began to prepare for CWF, it was obvious that we would not succeed if we all worked separately – musicians creating the music, video producers creating videos, etc. There had to be a collusion of ideas, but even more a critique of each other’s work. In talking to so many worship leaders across the country I’m surprised to find that most of them work in a vacuum – void of any helpful criticism or direction as to how other service elements are being created. The reason our Christmas service felt so cohesive was that we all worked together.

To best illustrate this idea of collaboration and critique, I’ll share with you how pre-production laid the groundwork for our opening 3 songs for CWF 2010 – Little Drummer Boy, Deck The Halls, and The Grinch/Thriller. Six weeks or so before our first concert we nailed down the specific ideas for these songs referencing several songs by other artists, commercials, YouTube videos, and anything else that helped define the vision of where we wanted them to go.

LITTLE DRUMMER BOY influences
“Little Drummer Boy” by Jars of Clay from their project “Christmas Songs”
“Clap Hands” by Beck from his performance on the Sarah Kuttner Show via YouTube

DECK THE HALLS influences
“Deck the Rooftops” by GLEE cast from the project GLEE: The Music – The Christmas Album
“Play 60 Bus Commercial” by NFLRush.com via YouTube
“How Cute are These Boots” 2009 GAP Christmas commercial via YouTube
“Mickey” by Toni Basil (yes, seriously)

THE GRINCH/THRILLER
This one’s pretty obvious, although we did listen to a lot of Will Smith as we were writing the Grinch chorus. You gotta do what you gotta do…

Once we had that direction I took my staff musicians into the studio and we began to create. We spent several days tracking these songs as if we were making a record. We wanted to get as specific as possible with drum patterns, keyboard sounds, vocal parts, and even lead vocals. It was important to make sure our ideas worked now, not when we hit the stage for our first rehearsal. During this process we would send files back to our creative team to get their opinion. If what we had created didn’t match the initial vision of what we had discussed we would begin to make tweaks. Honestly, there were several times where we felt pretty good about what we had created, but when it was reviewed by our entire team we understood where we had fallen short. This process went on for at least 2 weeks, and slowly but surely our collective vision became reality.

The time spent in pre-production paid dividends immediately. On Tuesday, Dec. 14 we had our first on-stage rehearsal, just 4 days before our first performance, and it was apparent that we would not be holding up production while we made the music work. That saved time, wear, and tear on our crew and our volunteers. We made maybe 100 adjustments during rehearsals but the decisions we made during the pre-production phase were solid. And it translated into the most amazing production we’ve done here at COTM.

Well another year is in the books and Christmas is now behind us. We put a TON of work into this year’s Christmas services at Church on the Move and the payoff was huge. We had 20,322 people attend over 8 services and the feedback we got was amazing. I’ve posted the entire service for you to view as well as the best bits in individual HD clips. We hope you enjoy and look for a video commentary on 2010’s Celebrate With Family service very soon! Hope you and yours had a very Merry Christmas!

Right now we’re in big time Christmas mode, so I’m going to blog quickly about a Christmas project we just finished in KOTM. Kids on the Move revolves around series (I Love My Bible, I Belong to God, etc) - those series revolve around weekly big answers (“My eyes belong to God, Jesus Rescues Right Now) - and those big answers revolve around one central truth or verse. For the last 5 weeks we’ve been in a series leading up to Christmas called “To the Rescue.” Our mission is to teach kids that WHEN YOU NEED HELP, JESUS COMES TO THE RESCUE.

One of the greatest ways we can help kids remember these themes is through our songs. Earlier this year we decided to do our best to write and record a song for each series we teach. If you haven’t heard any of these songs yet, you can check out I Love My Bible, Jesus Is Alive Right Now, or By Faith. Our series ”To the Rescue” is no different. For this we challenged ourselves to write a killer worship song - that song is You Are My Rescue and you can download it here on Seeds. We’ve been working pretty hard to refine our songwriting process and I get asked about it a lot, so here is that process in a nutshell.

STEP 1 - GET THE WORD OUT
COTM is blessed to have several musicians and singers (staff members and volunteers) who love songwriting. Once our theme was nailed down, I sent an email to this list of people, sort of an open call for demos. I included the series info, what sort of feel we were looking for, and the demo deadline. Demos submitted could be super polished or as raw as iPhone recordings.

STEP 2 - LISTEN AND GET OPINIONS
Stephen Posey, Andrew Dale and I listened to the demos. For this project, three were submitted. Honestly, we could have recorded any one of them and had a solid song, but we’re not in this just for fun. We want to get it right. We listened to each tune many times. We got opinions from other folks around. We asked questions of each song like: “Is it catchy? “Is it enjoyable to listen to? Does it communicate the theme? Is it the right song for the series?” After much deliberation, we chose to take the best of two songs and mesh them together.

STEP 3 - LAY OUT THE MAP
This is something we learned early on: DON’T WASTE THE CHURCH’S MONEY. God blesses our diligence to protect the tithe. As much as we can, we go in the recording studio with not only a game plan, but even a demo of our own. Andrew Dale will often record our final version in Logic before we step into the studio. Sometimes we’ll even use guitar, drum, or keyboard tracks that he’s recorded on his laptop. This saves us TONS of time! (Check out I Love My Bible and listen to the drums. They’re straight from Andrew’s laptop.)

STEP 4 - APPOINT A PRODUCER
For us, songwriting is a group effort. We want the opinions, but in the studio, you need someone to make the final call. The producer needs to be someone who specifically knows the heart of the series, after all why are we recording the song? Often in the studio it will be myself, Andrew Dale, Kenneth Weston and our audio engineer. Andrew’s working on instrumentation and Kenneth’s chiming in on vocal parts. 9 times out of 10 everyone will be on the same page with where the song should go. For that rare 1 out of 10 times, the producer can step in, listen to the opinions, and make the call. Assign a producer at the beginning. 

Let’s keep in mind, this four step process is not the Bible. You might hate working like this, but it worked for us on our last project. I’d love to hear about our songs being used in your kidmin services. If you’re using them, drop me a line on Twitter, by emailing me or just comment below. 

I hope this helps.

Although everyone manages to stay quite busy this time of year, it seemed a good time to introduce a few new entries on our Resource page. We’ve added a Production section so we can display some examples of our previous production sets and layouts that are referenced throughout these site.

At the moment we’ve put a few shots of our Christmas shows from the last few years as well as a stage plot for each. We’ll continue to add more production elements and I assure you that we’ll post the good and the bad… You can trust that there are some real gems to display when the time is right! Hopefully all these examples can be a valuable reference as you plan for upcoming set changes and events.

Hey Kidmin people! First off, you probably don’t know me because I’m not involved directly in kid’s ministry in any way, but we do have some things in common. For one, we’re both passionate about reaching our audience and regardless of the differences in our demographics one thing connects us all; we’re all human beings!

Walt Disney said in 1938 — “When we’re making a picture we don’t think of grown ups and we don’t think of children, but just of that fine clean un-spoiled spot down deep in every one of us, that maybe the world has made us forget and that maybe our pictures can help recall.”

I love that quote because it so beautifully describes what it is we do—tell stories, and great stories connect with us all regardless of age.

One of the more troubling trends I’ve seen in kid’s ministry in the last few years is the propensity to throw out mediums that have been effective at telling great stories for years because we believe that a particular medium is no longer effective. This is incredibly naive, and I say that with all due respect to those who chosen to serve our kids.

Recently I re-watched a documentary about the history of Pixar and I was struck by a remarkable comparison to kids ministry today. After Pixar had a real string of hits under its belt and the company really began to take off financially, an unfortunate thing began to happen. Many of the other animation studios started laying off their traditional 2D cell animators thinking that 2D animation was a thing of the past. They thought that Pixar was succeeding simply because they worked in a different medium.

When the leadership at Pixar heard about this troubling trend they were crushed. To think that in some way they had contributed to the destruction of a medium they cared so much about killed them. As it turned out they had learned so much of their craft from the people who had pioneered traditional 2D cell animation. In fact they love 2D animation because they understood what Walt had laid out so many years ago. That the medium is secondary to the story. Pixar’s movies work not because they’re made in a computer instead of by hand, but because they’re great stories.

So when Disney bought Pixar and they merged the leadership structure of the two studios what was the first thing they did? The Princess and the Frog. A 2D traditional cell animated film. And it was a success.

That brings me to this “great puppet debate.” What’s the debate? Puppets work when you know how to use them. They are a means to an end, not the end itself, and when you mix those two up you’re destined to do some really bad creative work (i.e. most DreamWorks movies).

Consider this: If you didn’t know how to use a shovel wouldn’t you look like a fool to throw it out claiming it had no purpose?

I realize not everyone in kid’s ministry has the capability of producing a great puppet performance. I get that. Video may be your strong suit just as computer animation is Pixar’s but don’t be so narrow-minded that you throw out an entire medium of beautiful art because you can’t figure out how to use it.

Creativity is not limited to the mediums that we deem worthy, story transcends medium and until that truth hits you like a ton of bricks, you’ll always make bad creative decisions because you’ll be focused on the wrong things.

Think I’m wrong? Ask Pixar.

Can’t believe this worked out–but the universe has aligned itself in just the right way and we were able to carve out some time to make the tracks available for our rendition of Relient K’s “12 Days of Christmas” from our 2009 Celebrate With Family Christmas service.

In the download, there are 6 audio (.wav) files and the chord chart PDF. The audio breakdown is as follows:

• Click track with an audible count-off
• Bass line
• Choir
• Lead Background Vocals
• Background Vocals & Gang Vocals
• Sound FX (the “pop” heard near the end)

CLICK HERE to download.

All of these were bounced individually and at the same length so you can easily import them into either a Pro Tools or Logic session file and be good to go. You can even use in GarageBand also–you just won’t have many options on outputs to multiple channels, etc; Just make sure the beginning of all the tracks are time-aligned to each other. I usually pre-mix these tracks a bit inside Pro Tools so you may find a bit of volume automation written in here and there–this can can easily be removed if it’s not your cup of tea–I promise not to be offended.

Hope these files help make all your Christmas dreams come true. Or at least maybe your Christmas dreams will rock a little more than normal!

I’ll be honest, every year we resolve to get an early jump on planning our Christmas service, and every year we wind up planning it right up until the last minute. This year is no exception. We had a meeting or two about Christmas in July but we didn’t really get anywhere. Maybe it’s just me but I struggle to “feel” Christmas in the middle of July.

Quantity, Not Quality
Usually, we start planning Christmas in earnest around the middle of November and that’s usually because someone reminds us that Christmas is only 7 weeks away at which point we all freak out. The first step in the process is what we call a brain dump. Basically, we gather all the creative teams from around the church (Kids on the Move, Oneighty) and we start throwing out anything and everything that might work. The idea isn’t to “solve” the service, it’s more about stirring the creative pot.

So many times the best ideas come when you’re not actively engaged in brainstorming, but to get your mind working on a subconscious level you have to first exercise it on a conscious level. Most of my best ideas come in the shower because in the shower I let my mind drift and wander and that’s when I find solutions. So, don’t feel like you have to solve every problem and develop every idea each time you and your team sit down to brainstorm.

Find the Feeling
Once we have a few ideas on the board we start to think about the feelings that each song/sketch will evoke. This is HUGE! We want our Christmas service to be an emotional journey, but that doesn’t just happen by chance, you have to carefully craft that experience. Here are the feelings that we aim to evoke each Christmas in no particular order:

• Beauty – Christmas is a beautiful time of year so we definitely want our service to reflect that beauty.
• Humor – Laughter is such an essential part of any gathering because there’s no better way to gain your audience than to make them laugh.
• Family – For most of us, Christmastime is family time. We always try to include songs that make the audience feel warm towards those they care about most.
• Wow / Awe – You gotta make people say “Wow!” at least one time! This could be accomplished in a million different ways, but I think it’s important for people to experience something bigger than themselves.
• Worship – This is obviously the most important part. Our whole goal is to lead people toward worship - that’s why the reading of the Christmas story is always the pinnacle of our Christmas weekend.

What Is Necessary?
After we write these feelings on our board we try and assign them to each song/sketch in the service. The reason that we do that is to make sure we’re not repeating ourselves. An example would be “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” and “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”. Both are gorgeous songs but they evoke the same feelings – beauty & family – so it would be redundant to include them both. The goal is not to try and cram everything we can into the service, but rather to include only what is necessary.

Refine, Refine, Refine
From here we refine, refine, refine. We’ll talk through our service hundreds of times before it ever comes time to rehearse. Every song, every costume, every joke, it all gets talked through over and over and over again. It’s repititive and it’s exhausting, but it’s necessary because it’s through this process that you remove the parts of the service that aren’t working.

Remember this, the people who do the best work make it look easy, but it NEVER is! You and I see the finished product and it looks effortless but we don’t see the countless hours spent practicing in the gym/studio/office. Sometimes I think that because the work we do is primarily mental, we think we don’t have to practice in the same way we would if our jobs were physical. We all expect athletes to practice, and your mind works the same way as the rest of your body. It needs practice and refinement. These are the building blocks of a great creative work and without them, you’re toast. It would be arrogant to think that your first plan will be a home run. Don’t trust it, refine.

Sometimes when you’re watching a live cut of a service you lose a little bit of perspective because most of the shots are pretty tight, so during our bigger services we’ll place a locked off camera at the back of the room so that we can go back watch the whole thing like we were standing in the sound booth. It’s come in pretty handy over the years and so I thought it might be helpful to post the video here so you can see our service like a fly on the wall in the back of the room. Enjoy.

About five years ago we decided to start trying to put a little extra “oomph” into our Christmas services. We’d been doing a Christmas concert for years but it wasn’t part of our weekend service experience and it wasn’t really a big focus for us as a church. It was a concert filled with typical Christmas music on a Wednesday night. One of the first ideas we came up with shortly after forming our creative team in 2005 was to really expand our Christmas experience. Since then, our Christmas services have really become a huge deal around here and a lot of effort and planning go into crafting them.

Obviously, we’re not the only church who does this. We know that, like us, so many of you are working really hard right now to put together some incredible Christmas experiences for your communities and, like us, you’re sweating every song, every word, every video, and every detail. So here’s the deal. I thought it’d be fun to post our last five Christmas services in an effort to show the journey that we’ve been through the last five years and to hopefully spark some creative thinking for you and your team.

2005
You’ll notice straight away that we’ve come a long way since 2005! You’ll also notice that some things worked really well and some… not so well, but I wouldn’t trade these experiences for anything because they’ve been a great teacher. Really, this was our first attempt at anything like this and I’ll be honest, we were so proud of this service. We started planning this thing so late, we had no production budget, and the stage was made up of a giant REAL Christmas tree and fiber optic curtain.

2006
This year we hired Daniel Connell as our lighting designer. We were so impressed with the job he did that we hired him! The opening sketch was heavily influenced by a Willow Creek sketch and watching it back it seems REALLY LONG! We went for a big band feel and it’s a little on the cheesy side, but the trade off is that the big band is always pretty warm.

2007
This year was the first time we’d really jumped into the world of giant video screens and I’ll tell you, it was a lot harder to work with than what we ever anticipated. The challenge we ran into was making the stage feel warm. The giant video wall just felt a little soulless and we worked really hard to warm things up. We experimented with some cool ideas like putting the choir on video that worked pretty well. This set really had a pretty big wow factor and we got a lot of great feedback but putting it together was a nightmare (it weighed something like 30,000 pounds) for us and our production team.

2008
For this year we really scaled back our Christmas production. We were just relaunching an outreach that we do at our camp (Dry Gulch U.S.A.) called The Christmas Train which reaches about 50,000 people a year. We hadn’t done the Christmas Train for the previous 3 years and so we went with a much more scaled back version knowing that much of our time would be spent getting the Christmas Train up and running.

2009 Celebrate With Family
We had just finished remodeling our auditorium in October and we knew we really wanted to do something special. For the first time ever we really tried to combine our Christmas Train outreach and our Christmas services and we saw a huge impact. We were packed out in every service until a GIANT blizzard blew through on Christmas eve. All in all we were really happy with the way our first ever Celebrate With Family event turned out.

Like so many other churches, our Christmas services are a really big deal and like you, we put a TON of work into these services because the payoff is so worth it. We’ve seen so many people come to Christ through these services. So many people, who would normally never darken the door of a church, are willing to come to a Christmas event.

We know that putting together one of these services is a major chore and we’re always looking for new and fresh ideas to help us in our creative process so a few weeks back I had the idea to sit down with our team and do a commentary of our Christmas service from last year in the hopes that hearing some of our thought process would be helpful to those out there who are slaving over their Christmas services!

Enjoy!

P.S. I mentioned in the video that we’ll cut in some wide shots to give a wider perspective but after a few technical hangups we decided to just post the wide angle of the entire service. We’ll post it here very soon along with some other goodies. Stay tuned.

I won’t lie, it can pretty challenging to tell a true story well through video. There are so many factors, so many pitfalls, but when you get it right it can be pretty amazing.

Just the other day I came across a video that definitely got it right. It’s by Adam Kring and the incredible team at Newspring. Love the work that Adam is doing and thought it’d be worth sharing here.

For us here at Church on the Move, one of the HUGE benefits of the Seeds site has been getting to connect with people serving in their local churches all over the country. Just hearing how God is at work in other places really inspires and motivates us to keep on keeping on.

When we launched Seeds, one of the first people to sign up was Marty Taylor, one of the creative geniuses at Northland in Orlando. We hit it off right away and I’m now honored to call him a friend as well as a fellow presenter at Seeds Conference. Marty and the team at Northland are doing some of the best and most creative work I’ve seen in the church and If you’re not familiar with Northland you can check out their website here and if you’d like to follow Marty on Twitter (which I highly recommend) you can do that here.

Anyway, without further ado here’s a recent interview I did with Marty.

So, let’s just jump right in! Your official title at Northland is “Executive Director over Media Design.” What exactly does that mean?
The easy answer is, I lead the teams in charge of everything that is visible. Anything to do with video, print, web, user-level technology, branding, public relations, etc. If it’s visible, we typically have our hands in it.

I am a regular part of the creative process for worship services and I am part of the Executive Leadership Team for the church.

The unusual thing about my job from a typical media director at a church is that I do not lead the audio teams. The sonic audio experience is so closely connected to the music that the audio teams are part of the worship department.

The official name of your church is Northland, A Church Distributed. What does it mean to be “A Church Distributed?”
About 12 years ago, Northland’s name was changed from Northland Community Church to Northland, A Church Distributed simply meaning that church is not about gathering in a single building or a single community. The Distributed Church is all about people “being the church,” everywhere, every day. That, as the church, we gather to worship God and then respond to Him by distributing ourselves to serve others where they are so that God may be glorified.

It also means that, in recognition of how God distributes different gifts among different people (1 Corinthians 12:11), we connect with individuals and organizations outside our four walls for long-term support and effectiveness—without losing sight of our unique distinctions, we partner with others for the sake of others and the Kingdom.

Changing our name to something so unique has caused many people to ask what we are all about and opened doors for hundreds of local and global partnerships. The vision for being a church distributed drives everything we do from satellite venues to church online and beyond.

What’s your approach to planning a service at Northland?
Our approach is that everything we are and everything we are created to be begins in worship. When we look at who God is and what He has done, we can’t help but respond in worship to Him. So our planning process begins with looking at the message that Dr. Hunter is going to preach and extracting from that an attribute of God that becomes the focus of our worship for that weekend. The attribute may be God’s grace or His holiness or that He is the Creator.

Everything from beginning to end in our worship service is planned around that attribute of God. All the extensive amounts of production and technology that we use are there to help create an environment for worship centered around that attribute. We believe we are following God’s example from Genesis, when He created a beautiful environment in which for us to worship Him.

I’m a big proponent of churches merging their worship, production, and media teams because it really serves to unify the different groups of people who work on our weekend services. You guys don’t do that and yet you’re still really successful, how do you make that work?
Actually, I think you would be surprised how much we actually do the very thing you’re talking about. We do have the Media Design team separate from Worship as part of our corporate structure, but we are constantly working in tandem together. Our delineations only exist because of the sheer size of the teams and needing to delegate leadership based upon strengths. But the value of unified effort is a vital part of our DNA.

In fact, our worship planning meetings are attended not only by the worship and media staff, but we have people from all areas of the church (Local and Global Service, Equipping, Congregational Services, etc) there to bring their voice to the big picture planning as well.

I LOVE the way you guys incorporate scripture into your worship at Northland. Can you talk a bit about the concept and execution behind that?
We strive to blend the modern movement and style of worship with the foundations of the ancient church, so we incorporate a lot of scripture and creed into our modern worship service. The ancient and the future are part of our liturgy.

For many, the scripture and ancient creeds that we integrate are a means of connecting the dots between the song that they are singing and the truth of the Word. I think is also helps the worship service not just be an emotional experience (which I love) but also a deeply intellectual experience as well.

You guys are doing some pretty unique stuff with streaming your services, can you talk about that?
Northland has been a multi-site church for many years (our first site distributed site began in 2001). The unique thing about our other sites is that they are a fully real-time connection for the entire service. Everyone, at all locations, is participating in a unified worship service. We have local musicians and singers at each site. The music from our original location in Longwood is sub-mixed into to various parts (drums, guitars, keys, etc.) and mixed live at each site with the local musicians. We also change the origination point of the sermon from time to time to come from one of our other locations, not just our main campus.

We have been also been doing live online streaming of all our services (currently 5 each weekend) for several years as well. We have expanded that to a fully interactive community site with a live online minister each service and last year added the first ever live worship environment in Facebook. For us, this was a natural extension of being a distributed church by taking worship to a place where people were already gathering for community.

Many of our online worshipers have begun to form small communities together in homes around the country. We began looking for ways to make their connection better and easier. Just a couple of months ago, we launched a live channel on Roku, a small set-top box designed for on-demand streaming of Netflix, Hulu, and other content. This channel allows our home churches an easy, inexpensive means to connect to a high quality feed of the worship service, as well as several on-demand options like classes and Bible studies for their community.

Since the Roku channel is available to anyone, many people have added the Northland channel to their Roku channel line-up. So far, over 2000 people have made that connection. Our hope is that many people will discover Christ through discovering this channel.

There is definitely a world of global possibility for connection and evangelism through streaming technology and we continue to pursue how we can maximize that potential. We also hope to freely share all these technologies with any church who wishes to use them.

Describe for me a creative meeting at Northland. How long is it? Who’s involved? Who comes up with all the good ideas?
We are in a unique position at Northland that our pastor plans his messages several weeks in advance. This allows us to have several opportunities to review the goals of the service and shape what we hope will be the best means to connect our congregation to the attribute of God that we are focusing on in that weekend.

We begin by meeting with Dr. Hunter to get a summary of the message content about 3 weeks in advance. We initially walk away from that first meeting with a title, the core scripture, and a 2-3 paragraph summary. We determine from that our attribute focus for the weekend and begin meeting as a planning team. This team meets at least a couple times a week and focuses on 2-4 weeks at a time, with greater detail as the weekend gets closer. We continue to meet with our Pastor each week to get additional detail on the message and application as he refines where he is going.

The core planning team is about 7 people from the worship and media teams, but the discussion expands to the full team as we get closer to the weekend itself. The lighting, video, and audio teams take the order of service and create a visual and audio design for the environment of that service.

It all comes together in a full rehearsal each Wednesday where we continue to refine the plan before our first service on Saturday. Even following that service, we debrief and make changes as needed for the rest of the weekend.

One of the things that surprised me, when we visited on the phone, was that your day off is Sunday of all days! How do you make that work?
My being off on Sundays is the greatest testament to the quality of our team that I can imagine! So much work is put into the services in advance that by the time we debrief the service on Saturday, my job as the leader of the visual team is done. The rest of the weekend is then in the very capable hands of our technicians and volunteers to execute and they do a great job. I feel blessed to be able to attend service on Sunday night with my family without any worry about what is happening in the control rooms.

Besides that, the success of failure of all our planning is ultimately up to the work of the Holy Spirit anyway, so I just try to get out of the way.

Who’s inspiring the team at Northland these days?
Creatively, we draw inspiration from all around us. The world is full of story, both in what you can hear from others, or simply in what you experience or see in God’s creation. When you seek to see who God is and what He has done in the world around you, you can more easily find ways to lead people into worship around the story of God.

I can also say that our team is inspired by seeing much more collaboration between churches for the sake of the Kingdom of God as a whole. We are so much more affective when we stop guarding our ideas and plans and freely share and learn from one another. That’s one of the things I love so much about what Church on the Move is doing with Seeds. By giving away and sharing what you have freely with others, you are creating Kingdom impact beyond a venue in Tulsa. That is truly inspiring.

Northland is a BIG church, what would you say to leaders in smaller churches?
Simply…don’t get hung up on what you don’t have. The story of God and what He has done is all the inspiration you need to lead someone into meaningful worship and connection with Him. Everything else is simply a tool to help create an environment to do it…just like air conditioning or a comfortable chair. The philosophy of worship at Northland is the same as it was years ago when we met in a 50-year old roller skating rink and didn’t have a single video projector or moving light. Content and story are now and will always be the most important tool you have. Without it, your loud music, lights, and video are just disco.

Well this has been a long time coming, but today, we’re super excited to announce our first ever Seeds Conference! It’s all going down March 2-4, 2011 and we can’t wait! Seeds Conference is for people who are just as passionate about reaching the next generation as we are. It’s for youth pastors, children’s pastors, and creative leaders in the church.

The idea behind the conference is that it’s really 3 conferences in 1. We’ll have 3 streams. One for youth ministry, one for kid’s ministry, and one for creative leaders. 3 conferences for 1 purpose: Reaching the next generation.

Each of those streams will be packed with workshops full of practical info. In fact there are over 40 different workshops you and your team will have the opportunity to attend. But here’s the coolest part - you can bounce between the streams as much as you like. So if you want to hear about “Secrets to Success in Your Junior High Program” in one session and “Making Killer Videos On The Cheap” in the next session, you’ll be able to. Our goal is to make this thing super flexible so you can use it however you like.

The other idea that makes Seeds Conference pretty unique is that everything we make for the conference, from the audio of the sessions to videos we produce will be absolutely free. Our goal is to equip the church so if you come to the conference we’re going to load you up with stuff you can use, for free.

Now, to be fair, we will have some speakers and vendors who will no doubt be bringing in some of their books and materials that you can buy if you like, but all of our stuff will be completely free and I can tell you the stuff we’ll be giving away won’t be small.

Last but not least we’re opening up registration for the Seeds Conference in just 9 days on October 15th, and for the first two weeks of registration (until Nov. 1) we’re going to be reducing the price of the conference by $60. So if you want to come you’ll be able to save a ton of money if you register early.

We’re really looking forward to this conference. We’ve been talking about it in house for years now and it feels good to finally launch it. We’d love your help spreading the word so tweet about it, blog about it, Facebook your friends because this thing is going to be a blast. Hope to see all of you there!

This is my first blog, so I just feel the overwhelming need to say hello before we jump into business! I have so enjoyed reading all the interaction that’s taking place here on Seeds and it’s just a pleasure to jump in on the conversation with you guys!

In keeping with our “behind the announcements” vibe here, I thought I’d share a few thoughts on how the writing comes together.

Announcements are typically made up of one thing: information. The problem is, information alone can be really boring. So when we decided to try our hand at video announcements a couple months back, I started looking for a way to wrap my head around what it is specifically that makes an announcement effective. Over time, I realized that a really good pitch, one that stands out, always has three key elements to it: the story, the info, and the ask.

THE STORY
The story is the heart behind the event. It’s the answer to the question WHY? Why are we doing this event? Why does it even exist? If you don’t know the answer to this question then you need to find out because when you answer this question, it casts vision and inspires people to take action. This is probably the easiest thing to overlook but I spend most of my writing time right here. If you fail to find the story, you won’t connect with people.

THE INFO
Information is important but you have to learn how to determine which bits and pieces are necessary. We try to keep the nitty gritty details to a bare minimum in our announcements. We say ONLY what’s needed, let graphics say what can be read on the screen, and point people to the website or Guest Services in the lobby for the rest. Info is great but it doesn’t inspire people and too much of it always gets lost in the shuffle.

THE ASK
The Ask is the part of the announcement where you change gears from storytelling and info in order to call people to action. This is no time to be shy! When I deliver the ask myself, I try to think about changing gears in every way I can. I may change my body language with a specific movement or adjust the tone of my voice slightly. This may sound a little silly, but your eyes have a lot to do with how boldly the ask comes across on video. I genuinely try to look deeper into the camera lens during the ask. I want to connect. I want to grab the audience and ask them to DO something. It’s not enough to just inspire and inform them, you must call them to action and that’s what the ask is all about.

Now that you know how we approach the writing on our announcement videos, I thought I’d include a few pieces for you to browse through along with the original text. Just for kicks, see if you can identify the story, the info, and the ask in each one.

I’d love to hear about your victories and struggles when it comes to video announcements! Drop me an email anytime!

Mother’s Day 2010 Promo
Well, next weekend is Mother’s Day, and moms, I gotta tell you, what we have planned for you is more than your average Mother’s Day service with carnations and a round of applause for all the moms. If you are a mom, you deserve a fantastic day and that’s exactly what we have planned for you! Right when you walk through the doors, you’re going to be so glad you came because every moment of our time together next weekend has been thought through with you in mind! Plus Joe McGee is going to be here and we’re going to have a lot of fun!

So call your mom, call all of your friends who are moms! This is a perfect weekend for you to invite them to be with us at Church on the Move. We want to pack out that parking lot with nothing but mini-vans and it won’t be the same if you’re not here to celebrate with us. Oh, and don’t be late! You cannot miss what we have for you at the very top of the service. In fact, husbands, why don’t you help your wives get the kids ready for church next weekend so you can be here on… wait, nope… that’ll make you late. Moms, do what you gotta do. We’ll see you next weekend!

Bus Drivers
We are getting ready for some of the biggest outreaches we do as a church and one of the teams that we’re working to build right now is our Transportation Team! I’m talking about Bus Drivers, folks! Oneighty buses in students every Wednesday from around the city and Christmas Train will be here before you know it and it takes a lot of bus drivers to help all of our volunteers get to Dry Gulch every night!

Our bus drivers have a great time together and this is an awesome way for you to be a part of the work that God is doing in our church! If you are somebody who is interested in driving for us, we have a table set up in the lobby this weekend. We can help you earn your CDL if you don’t have one and get you all the training you need! So swing by and meet us today after service! You will love being a part of the transportation team!

Service Etiquette
At COTM it’s important to us that everyone who comes through our doors has a great worship experience and our goal is to eliminate as many distractions during our service as possible.

When you get up and leave early, it does create a distraction at a time in the service when people are considering a relationship with Christ.

We ask that you would be considerate of the people around you and not leave the auditorium until service has been dismissed. Thank you for helping us make COTM a great place to worship!

Girls Get Away
Girls Get Away is an event for all the ladies of Church on the Move. These weekends are about getting away from the norm and taking some time to relax with the girls and here’s what’s great, if you don’t know a lot of women at Church on the Move yet, this is a perfect way to connect with some amazing COTM ladies!

In fact, guys, if you are sitting next to your wife or girlfriend who has been wanting to meet some new friends at church, you need to elbow her right now…and then get her registered online! Ladies, don’t be shy, don’t be scared! We’re going to have a blast!

We are going to be sipping espresso, toasting s’mores over the fire, stopping in for manicures at the Dry Gulch Spa and enjoying an outdoor chick flick by the lake, just to name a few!

It doesn’t matter if you are married or single, a student or career woman, a super model or a super mom! We believe something amazing happens when women gather to worship, gro,w and spend time together. So go online and get registered! And if you have some questions about the event, you can stop by the Girls Get Away table in the lobby today!

Here’s a quick look at how we shoot our video announcements.

When you look at something successful - a business, a church, a band, whatever - from the outside it can be easy to only see the finished product and never know just how much work went into getting that something to the place that you see now in front of you. Where we are now as a church has been the result of years of work, study, and intense evaluation. We’re not perfect, but I feel really good about the place that we’re at. We’ve successfully created a culture of fluidity at our church where we’re comfortable with constant change. It keeps us fresh and it keeps our environments interesting and engaging. The journey to this point has been a long one and for some time now I’ve wanted to blog about it in the hopes that our journey would be of some inspiration to anyone else out there going through the same thing!

Before I begin it needs to be said that we wouldn’t be where we are as church without the people that came before us. None of this “old school” footage is intended to mock or laugh at any of the people who have served here over the years. I merely post it to show the process and the journey of change.

1987 - 2002
This is what our church was like before we made the decision to change things up. Basically, we were on autopilot. We’d show up to church every weekend with no real plan other than to follow the same format we’d been using for 15 years. We didn’t teach in series, it was just everybody show up and do what you do and then go home.

October 2003
In the fall of 2003, my dad and I visited Fellowship Church in Dallas and were blown away. I don’t think either one of us ever thought church could be anything other than the same old same old. When we came back we made some changes. We adjusted our stage lighting and darkened the house lights during worship (I know, I know, we were CRAZY!!! The next thing you know we’ll be running with scissors!). We relaxed our dress code on the stage just a little. I’m not sure what we were thinking having everyone wear black - it looks like we’re all headed to a funeral!

At this point, our worship & audio department was still separated from our media department and there wasn’t much coordination between the two. We gave some much needed visual polish to the service by adding some pre-service slides, a service countdown, a worship guide, and a few dramas here and there but we were a long way off from where we would eventually end up.

Fall 2005
After the big changes in 2003 we spent the next two years pretty much on cruise control. Honestly, I thought that we had made all the changes we were gonna make as a church but in the summer of 2005 my dad surprised me by making some pretty big organizational shifts within the church. He hired a new worship pastor in Andy Chrisman and new audio/production guy in Andrew Stone and created a new department that he wanted me to head up called Performing Arts. I was thrilled. For the first time the visual artists, musicians, and production people were all under the same roof, so to speak, and this really set the wheels of change in motion.

If you look closely at the videos you’ll notice the subtle shifts in stage décor and lighting design. We were learning, testing, and changing all the time. This was really where the whole “culture of change” thing began. Now that I had control of everything in our services, we were free to adjust it as we saw fit, within certain parameters of course, but that freedom allowed us to try some new things and it really was huge in the development of our team.

Fall 2006
At some point in 2006 a few of our people started to get mad about the changes we had made. I guess in their minds they had tolerated it for long enough and it was time to let us know about it. Oh well, you can’t please everybody. Got to keep moving forward.

Fall 2007
The last four years had seen a lot of positive changes and things were going well but so much of what we wanted to do was limited by the room we were in. We were improving things, but there was only so much we could do. Our IMAG setup was awful. We had a couple of old boardroom quality projectors and the screens they projected on were 50 feet above the audience’s head. It was a bad setup, but we tried our best.

Spring 2009
After years of making improvements little by little it seemed like it was time to shift things again. In February of 2009 I went to the C3 conference at Fellowship Church, and in visiting with some of the guys down there it became so clear to me that we didn’t involve enough younger people in what we were doing - everyone on our stage was 35+. There’s nothing wrong with being 35+ (I’m 34 myself!) but I knew that it would be so easy for all of us on the creative team to just sort of get older together without adding in any new blood. I knew we had to change again.

I started getting involved in our music pretty heavily around this time. We totally revamped our arsenal of songs and started incorporating as many young people as we had access to. Rehearsals were brutal. We would spend 7-8 hours on a Thursday night/evening just dialing in our songs and sounds for the weekend. We knew it wouldn’t be perfect overnight but we knew we had to do it. It’s paid off in a big way.

2010
When we moved into our new room things took such a HUGE step forward for us. We finally had a setup that could accommodate all of our biggest ideas. No more crummy video screens, no more PA on the fritz, things just work like they’re supposed to.

We now live in a place where change is celebrated and our church loves it. We’re obviously not perfect but I’m so happy with the strides we’ve made as a church and you can really see just how far we’ve come when you look back through the years. God is good.

I own a lot of books. Unfortunately, I am not a very avid reader. The trouble is, reading puts me to sleep, so I buy a lot of books with good intentions but it takes me a while to get through them. When I can, I buy audiobooks because, as it turns out, I’m much better at listening than I am at reading.

All that said, I’ve finally got around to reading/listening to Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Blink. It’s an amazing book and I can’t recommend it enough, and in listening to it I came across an idea that has been kicking around in my head for quite some time.

In the book, Gladwell tells the story of two women who do nothing but taste test food for a living, and they’ve become so good at it that they can taste a bit of cookie and tell you what factory that cookie came from! It’s pretty unbelievable.

They can do this, not because they’re freaks of nature, although I’m sure that they have some sort of natural gift to do what they do, but they can do it because over the years they’ve trained their minds and their tongues to look for things in food that you and I would never consider looking for. Why would we? But for these ladies, this is their job.

As it turns out, there’s a whole vocabulary of terms and categories that have been developed to describe the foods they’re tasting. For instance, when they’re taste testing mayonnaise they grade it across 6 dimensions of color, 10 dimensions of texture, and 14 dimensions of flavor. And each of those 30 different dimensions are evaluated on a 15-point scale.

When you and I taste mayonnaise we may rate it across only a couple of unconscious categories because we haven’t trained our minds to look for these things. But, with some training and practice, I’m sure we could begin to rapidly improve our ability to taste.

Creativity works the same way.

I can do what I do at Church on the Move not because I’m some super-creative dude, although I have no doubt that to some degree I’m naturally gifted to do what I do, but I believe that I can see and hear things in our services that most people don’t see or hear primarily because I’ve trained my mind to do it over the last 15 years.

Your mind is a muscle and you can train it.

That’s why simply making time to be creative is SO IMPORTANT! You’re giving your mind a workout and the more you work it out with creative thought, the more creative you will become.

You can do this by brainstorming with friends, but brainstorming by itself isn’t enough - you also need to start evaluating your services regularly. And don’t just be general in your evaluations, look at the nitty gritty details.

When most people take in a service at Church on the Move, they don’t see what I see. The average person may lump a service into one of three categories: Great, Average and Bad. But, I see so much more than they do because I’ve trained myself to look for things that most people don’t see.

When we evaluate a service we look at every single detail, from the tone of voice that each presenter on stage used, to each camera shot and everything in between. We look at all of it in great detail because the details matter! The difference between good and great isn’t 50%, it’s 5%, so we put a lot of effort into that last 5% and we’ve found that it’s worth it.

A famous architect once said “God is in the details” and I believe that wholeheartedly. The more you look at the details, the more your mind becomes adept at taking them all in and processing them, and the more your mind processes them, the faster it becomes, thus making you better at what you do.

If you’re in ministry, I’d love to connect with you through Twitter or Facebook. I love talking church so feel free to message me anytime and I’ll respond as soon as I can.

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Thanks and I look forward to connecting with you guys!

This last week I was asked to an interview for the blog at ShareFaith. I don’t do many interviews so I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, but this one was a lot of fun, primarily because the questions were really good (big thanks to Daniel at ShareFaith for that!). I’ve posted most of the interview below but if you’d like to check out the official version you can click here.

First, can you tell me just a little bit about yourself? How you got into the position you’re in now?
Wow… long, long story that I’m not sure anyone is interested in! The short version is that I hated school, so when I graduated in 1994 I knew college wasn’t for me and I went to work for my dad [pastor of COTM]. I started at the VERY bottom laying sod around the campus for minimum wage which lasted for all of about two weeks, at which point my dad transferred me into our TV/Media department.

Again, I started at the bottom. Sweeping the studio, running camera. I had minimal creative input but I really loved what I was doing. From there I started doing graphic design. I had no formal training in it so I taught myself and with a little help from some friends I got pretty good at it. I won a few advertising awards here locally and was promoted to leading a team of graphic designers here at the church.

Somewhere around 2003, me and my dad visited Fellowship Church in Dallas and we came back bursting with creative ideas about how we could update what we were doing in our church. We didn’t exactly know how we would pull it all off but we knew we had to do something so it was decided that we would merge our TV and graphics departments into a new department called creative arts and that I would lead it. After a few twists and turns, including me doing a short stint as the youth pastor up at Oneighty, our department has finally evolved over the years to what it is today, the Performing Arts department, which basically includes worship, video, graphic design, drama, marketing, audio, lighting, production, and a bit more here and there.

So, what is a creative director anyway (if that’s what you call yourself)? What do you do in the church? Are you a pastor? A deacon? An in-between?
We have a saying around here that “it’s not about getting it done, it’s about getting it right.” For us, being a creative director means taking whatever project that you’re working on, whether it’s a ladies event or weekend service or a simple promo, and making sure that it’s done right. So that’s what I do. I oversee all the meetings, all the brainstorming, all the planning that goes into the events, brochures, promos, etc. and to make sure that they’re not just done, but that they’re done right.

As for the church, I am a pastor and I also serve on the church’s executive leadership team.

Creative. That’s a big word. What do you focus on? If you have help or assistance, what do your helpers/assistants do?
The funny thing is I don’t “do” much. I don’t create the videos, I don’t sing the songs, I don’t write the scripts, I don’t stage the interviews. I’m not really a doer. I guess my job is sort of like that of a conductor. I set the tempo and provide guidance. Honestly, we have a lot of talented and creative people around here and my job isn’t to tell them how to do what they do, my job is to bring focus to what they’re already doing. Sometimes I start the creative ball rolling, sometimes I don’t, but I’m always the guy to steer the ship.

As for assistants, I really only have one. He just helps me to keep up with all the crazy stuff going on around the church. He’s a detail guy, I’m definitely not! Other than that I would consider the people on my team to be more like partners than assistants. I don’t think the creative genius surrounded by his minions is really an approach that works anymore.

Where do you find creative inspiration to do what you do?
I guess I’m just like everyone else in that I find inspiration in good creative work, whether that be another church or something I found online or on TV or whatever, but ideally I’m inspired by the very work that I’m doing. In other words, I try to find inspiration in the core of the project we’re working on. An example would be Dad Life. We were inspired by the very notion of Father’s Day. I mean when you boil it down, we’re honoring guys who have chosen their family over their image, so that right there is pretty inspiring. From there you just look for a vehicle to carry your idea and having recently seen Swagger Wagon we were pretty sure that a rap video would work. You never sit down with the idea to just “make something cool” that your message will fit into, you always start with your core message and let the idea and inspiration come from that.

Do you see any exciting trends in church media or arts today? Any not-so-exciting trends?
I’m not really someone who follows a lot of global church trends. Honestly, for me it just leads to comparisons and I’m not interested in that. I’m glad that the church has embraced the power of the arts and I see a lot of great work being done out there.

What’s one of the most common misconceptions about your job?
I say this as humbly as I know how, but I think the most common misconception is that to do what I do, you have to be some sort of genius. I’m not a genius, I’m just called. If you’re called, then you’re also graced and equipped to do what God has called you to do. Trust in your call, serve the church, don’t promote yourself, and you’ll be fine.

Talk to us about relevance, especially as it relates to your role.
Relevance isn’t really a word I spend a lot of time thinking about. I just try to serve the message in a way that moves me. I’m pretty cynical so if I’m moved, then I feel good about how it’ll impact our congregation. The only other thing I would add to that is that I avoid being cheesy. Our message isn’t a cute one full of nice sayings that would go nicely on a motivational poster. It’s real and it’s raw and it’s powerful and I don’t think we do it any favors by making it cute.

Can you briefly describe a normal day (if there is one) in your life as a creative director?
I’m pretty much meeting with different people all day every day. Often we’ll start the day with one big brainstorming meeting and then from there I’ll meet with smaller groups of people about specific parts of specific projects.

How do you do the cool stuff? The cool graphics, videos, etc.?
I don’t! Gary Hornstien, our motion designer, does all that stuff. You can read his two blog posts on our resource site, Seeds, about the equipment that we use.

How should other churches, especially churches with a teeny budget or limited resources, get involved in media–if at all?
I like to think of creativity like a muscle, when you exercise it, it gets stronger. So make time every week, every day, to intentionally be creative. Involve other people if possible. Even if they’re not “creative” you never know what the accountant or secretary might be able to contribute, plus, I hate working alone so I think building a team, whether they’re staff or volunteers, is essential. I guess it depends on the church. This is our calling so it’s what we’re supposed to be doing, but I wouldn’t presume that everybody everywhere should do things just exactly like we do. If you were wanting to transition your church into this kind of thing, you could start just by making time to be creative on purpose. If you don’t create on purpose you’ll also never create by accident. It’s a practice, a habit, that you have to develop.

What is one of the best ways of using art in the church? (Besides, obviously, using a sound system to make sure people hear the speaker?)
Well I think art really allows us to connect people to God on an emotional level which I think is important. I can’t think of a better place to be “moved” than church. We have the greatest message and I think we have an opportunity every week to create moments where people can feel God even on an emotional level. Additionally, art is a perfect medium for telling stories and I think that’s a huge part of our calling as creative directors in our churches. We are charged with the great responsibility of taking the stories of what God has done and what He is doing across our communities and making those stories come to life.

What is one thing that every creative director needs besides a good cup of coffee?
You have to know what you want. If you constantly waffle and question yourself, chances are you’re not a creative leader. You may be a great contributor, but you’re not the leader and these are very different roles. The leader HAS to know what direction the team needs to head in. It isn’t that you can never allow yourself to be challenged or questioned, but there comes a point where you have to have a certain sense, a certain knowing that the group must head in a particular direction. If you don’t know where you’re headed, your team will either be hijacked by someone else or you’ll waffle around in no man’s land never really accomplishing anything.

What advice would you give to small churches regarding creative arts, media, etc.?
I would say recognize your advantages. I may be in a position where I have a larger team and a larger budget but larger doesn’t always equal better. Our size affords us some awesome opportunities but it also presents us with some disadvantages too. We can’t be as relational or intimate in our creative approach as a smaller church can be. When I saw U2 in Arrowhead stadium in 1997 for their Popmart tour it was HUGE in every way. That tour cost a fortune and it was amazing to see, but just as awesome as that was seeing Sigur Ros play a small venue with 1% of the budget of U2. So recognize your strengths and play off those instead of dwelling on what you don’t have and you’ll go a lot further.

Here’s a quick list of everything you might have already assumed that we use in our post-production workflow. Let me add that all of this stuff won’t make your stories and ideas better - they’ll just make it easier to produce/convey them.

We have two edit rooms. Really these rooms are just me and Chris’ offices, but for the sake of sounding professional, let’s go with Edit Room for the remainder of this post. Each of our rooms are about identical in hardware and software. Here’s my not-too-technical rundown:

HARDWARE

• Mac Pro with 4TB eSata external drive for Time Machine backups
• M-Audio Studiophile CX5 monitors connected by an M-Audio USB FastTrack
• Two comfy chairs and a lamp

We shoot everything on P2 cards so we have no tape back up. It’s very important to have a backup of all our current projects in case a drive goes down or I hit the “delete important files” shortcut on my keyboard. We have a few 1TB internal drives (which means three I just found out) inside our Mac Pro. One is used as the OS X System and the other two are RAID 0, which means they are connected and files are split between the two drives for extra performance. Do not ever do this unless you have a constant backup of that drive. That’s what our 4TB drive does - backs up all of our current work.

SOFTWARE

• Apple Final Cut Suite (all that we use in the suite is Final Cut, Compressor, and DVD Studio Pro)
• Adobe Production Premium (we only use After Effects, Illustrator, and Photoshop)

FINAL CUT PLUG-INS

• Magic Bullet Looks. We color grade everything with this. They’re great presets that we usually use as a starting place and make tweaks to the exact feel we’re going after.
• The Foundry: Furnace Core. The frame blending for slow-motion in Final Cut is terrible to say the least. This plugin allows us to dramatically change the speed of clips while maintaining smoothness between frames.

AFTER EFFECTS PLUG-INS

• Magic Bullet Looks. Same as what we use in Final Cut.
• Trapcode Particular. Very cool particle generator and simple to use. If you’ve ever seen stars or flying Christmas ornaments in our services, this has been its creator.
• Videocopilot Optical Flares. We got this when we started working on this years easter service opener. Very simple to use and creates lens flares JJ Abrams would be proud of.
• AEScripts.com. Click here for a few time-saving scripts. Specifically LayerChain and Magnum. I use LayerChain for parenting a ton of layers to the layer right above itself when creating that faux 3D look. Magnum - The Edit Detector is used when I bring in the edited video announcements. It analyzes the video and separates it into layers automatically.

If you’re using something you love that’s not on my list, I’d like to hear about it and maybe add it to my list. Just drop it in the comment box.

“A man may show himself to be a wise man, by the good temper of his mind, and by the good government of his tongue. He is careful when he does speak, to speak to the purpose. God knows his heart, and the folly that is bound there; therefore he cannot be deceived in his judgment as men may be.” — Matthew Henry Commentary on Proverbs 17:27, 28

First off, let me say, I love the church. Not just our church, but THE Church, at large, and I know that our way of doing things isn’t always THE way to do things for every church. I get that. I also get that no two churches are alike and so we shouldn’t be inbreeding with each other, but we should be different and diverse. That’s a good thing.

That said, when I browse the web I spend a lot time checking out other churches. I watch service videos of big churches and small churches to pick up ideas and see how different churches do different things. And one thing I see across a lot of different churches, both big and small, that drives me is NUTS is people getting on the stage and just “wingin’ it.”

I’m not just talking about the pastor who’s giving the message, I’m talking about the announcement guy/girl, the person who’s doing the offering, the worship leader, basically, anybody who’s on the stage.

If you look at the scripture you can’t help but see a plan, a design. Every word has meaning, every verse has a purpose. In the Jewish tradition it was said that God gave Moses the Torah not just verse by verse, or even word by word, but letter by letter. That’s God being VERY intentional, and yet for many of us, when we address our church families, we’ve put little to no thought into what we might say. Sure, it may only be an announcement or a welcome, but when there’s no purpose or design we tend to ramble on and throw out tons of corny Christian phrases that really have no meaning and only serve to alienate those who aren’t familiar with our christianese.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting you don’t speak from your heart. I’m not suggesting that you memorize every word or that the Spirit doesn’t prompt you to say certain things from time to time when the moment arises but I’m simply suggesting that you spend a little time crafting your words so that when you hit the stage you are concise and purposeful.

You only have so much time with your church family every week so every second counts. Let’s stop wasting it with aimless speech.

“Say it clearly and you make it beautiful no matter what.” — Bruce Weigl

Here are some classic church time wasters that we could all stand to eliminate from our services.

• Constantly asking the crowd “how many of you know… (fill in the blank)” looking for a response from your congregation.
• Using Amen as a question frequently.
• Using Amen / Hallelujah / Glory to God / Praise God, etc. as punctuation to every sentence.
• Telling people to “turn to their neighbor and (insert a corny joke here).”
• Constantly asking to people to repeat every other phrase you say.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and some the time-wasters you deal with in your church.

Sometimes it’s good to be reminded that we aren’t the ones holding this whole thing together. This weekend we had an incredible service and we really didn’t spend much time putting it together. We weren’t lazy, we were just working on that whole getting ahead thing! Anyway, it just reminded me that although God uses us, we’re not the ones making this whole thing go, and that’s a good thing!

On a practical note, we tweaked a couple of our camera positions and slightly adjusted our approach to shooting each service and I think it made a huge impact. If you watch our stuff regularly you’ll notice the difference. Would love your thoughts.

A couple of weeks ago I posted about choosing involvement or excellence and how that we at Church on the Move have chosen excellence over involvement. To be clear, we’re not against involving new people, but as priorities go, we’re more concerned with being excellent at what we do than involving everyone everywhere. If you’d like to read that post you can catch it here.

Another side of that coin however is the process of developing talented people. Clearly, not everyone can be involved in everything, but I firmly believe that people are our GREATEST resource and if that’s true, then a great deal of my time should be invested in developing people. We’re doing a reasonable job of that now but we could do better.

Jim Collins said in his book “Good to Great” that great companies “get the wrong people off the bus, the right people on the bus, and the right people in the right seats BEFORE deciding which way the bus should go.” If you haven’t taken the time to read his book, you really should, it’s shaped a lot of our thinking around here.

If that whole wrong people off the bus, right people on the bus thing is true, and if that process is necessary to successfully determining which direction you should go then developing the right people becomes HUGE!

One of our challenges and I suspect it’s the same for many of you as well, is making time for developing people. I recently heard Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar talk about his job, which is essentially managing the health and chemistry of the many different teams working at Pixar. You can watch that interview here.

Jack Welch said this, “My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people. Of course, I had to pull up some weeds too.”

I love this because time and time again we have seen this to be true. Surrounding yourself with the right people is paramount to finding success in whatever field you work in. So people really are our greatest resource. The challenge is lifting up your head long enough from the “doing” of church work to begin developing the up and comers around you.

I’ve got much to chew on.

One of the big challenges we’re facing lately is learning to work ahead. We put so much effort into each weekend that when a big project comes along that isn’t a weekend, we struggle.

This became really clear a couple of weeks ago during a special women’s event we did here called Romance. Angie said it like this:

Romance 20:10
For God so loved the woman, that He tortured the creative team…

Don’t get me wrong, the event came off great and everyone was pleased. The trouble was that this was one of the more stressful events we’ve done recently and honestly, it wasn’t very much fun for us (the people who put it together) to experience. We were on edge because we were working on it right up until the very last minute and we weren’t exactly sure that it was all going to connect or even work and that’s not a fun place to be in. We felt unsatisfied with what we had created because it was unfinished and untested. When the event was over we all said to each other, let’s not do that again!

BTW, If you haven’t seen our Romance event you can watch it here:

Now to be clear, I realize that these events aren’t all about us, and I also know that many challenges we face are stressful and that’s just part of life, but I also believe in being prepared and doing all that you can do to eliminate stressful situations because we do our best work when we’re relaxed and enjoying ourselves.

So how do you pull this off? How do you work toward HUGE events in the future (Christmas, Easter, Conferences, etc) and still put the desired emphasis into every weekend? That’s our big question right now.

Here are the solutions we’ve arrived at.

1) Hire a bunch of new people to work the weekend so we can concentrate on the future.
Hahaha yeah right. Let’s hear option #2.

2) Slightly pull back on the weekend and use volunteers and other contract laborers within the church to maintain the weekly status quo, while we work to get ahead.
So far this is our best idea. We figure that if we can take a slight step back we can shuffle some weekend projects to other people. If we don’t have to be as involved this will at least allow us to create a plan for Christmas and then conferences so that we can take a look at the work required to pull those events off at which point we’ll find a way to get it done.

One of the principles we live by around here is that God doesn’t always provide all the details, but He always provides a way, and if we’ll just trust Him enough to take that first step, then the next step will become clear. If you wait for all the details to come into focus before you make your move, you’ll be waiting forever. It’s a ready, shoot, aim, approach. So for us, solution #2 is a good first step. We’ll know how we’re gonna cross the Red Sea when we get there, and when we do, I’ll blog about it.

Last week I posted a video of our creative meeting. In it we focused on creating a weekend service for July 17-18. In case you didn’t catch it here it is again. It’s about 75 minutes long and it’s pretty boring in places but you’ll get a chance to see how we put a weekend together.

For us, often times what we develop in a creative meeting doesn’t get realized in a service but on this particular weekend things worked out just about like we had planned. So here’s the video of the weekend that we planned the Tuesday before. Enjoy and if you have any questions, fire away!

I believe that if you want to up the quality of anything you’re doing, you must also up the level of control.

I’m not so much saying that YOU personally have to make all the decisions, but rather that each decision must be carefully thought through. 

We have a saying around here that goes: It’s not about getting it done, it’s about getting it right.

Getting it right means focusing on the small decisions that come together to have a big impact. 

Here’s a practical application. In our weekend worship experience we’ve made a decision that getting it right is the most important thing behind Godly character. Therefore we cannot include everyone who wants to be a part of the worship team. That doesn’t mean they can’t be involved anywhere, it just means they can’t be involved in this area. High quality = high control. Everybody can’t be good at everything but conversely there’s something everyone is good at and our goal is to get them into that area. 

Let me be clear, we don’t pick people because they’re young or beautiful or because they’re really cool, we pick people who love God and love our church and who are gifted to do what they do.

The key here is understanding that you can’t have both. You have to decide, what’s most important to us? Is it having EVERYONE involved, or is it having a high level of quality? The trap is shooting for both. Again, let me stress this doesn’t mean you don’t involve new people or develop people, it just means that some people, no matter how much they try, will ever be able to be a part of THIS particular team. (think American Idol auditions)

This is really just the principle of focus. It’s physically impossible for your eyes to focus on everything at once, so in order to focus on one thing you must by definition eliminate other things from your view. You can’t have both.

So what we’re looking for in a musician or a singer is not someone who wants to show the world their style and talent but rather someone who gets the mission of the whole. People who get their feelings hurt easily or act like divas don’t last long with us because to get better we have to critique everything we do. And that means critiquing you! 

Sometimes we’ll try a certain singer on a song and they just can’t pull it together. They may have practiced it for hours but if they can’t do it, we make a change. We’ve pulled musicians right out of rehearsal before because they didn’t come prepared. If that happens more than once we don’t have them back because for us, quality comes before involvement. 

We’re not mean about it, we’re serious about it. 

Another way we upped our quality was to control the instruments that are used on stage each week. We made a decision some time ago to purchase all the guitars, amps, pedal boards, drums, & keyboard equipment that we use on stage. This may sound excessive but it’s been a great way for us to ensure a consistent sound each week. Players change from time to time but the instruments do not and in the end we save time and sound better.

We were spending so much time trying to dial in a guy’s guitar rig that rehearsals for a weekend lasted 7-8 hours. Now they last 2-4 hours and the quality level has greatly risen.

I would say more here but I’m tired of typing this on my iPhone!

High quality = high control. Thoughts?

One of the questions I get asked a lot is, “How do you guys do your creative meetings? What do they look like? Who’s involved?”

So this last Tuesday we decided to set up a camera and record one of our meetings. The service that we’re planning in this meeting is for this weekend (July 17-18). As of right now we’re working to implement the ideas that we discussed in this video and I guess we’ll all get to see how they come together this weekend! Fingers crossed.

I’ll warn you, this video is pretty long and pretty boring in some places but we wanted to keep it as raw as possible. I should also point out that the “Romance” event we discuss in the meeting is a women’s event that we’re currently promoting here at Church on the Move.

With all that said, enjoy. Hope it’s helpful.

I think one of the callings of the creative team in the church is to tell stories. The Bible is full of stories. We learn from stories, we’re encouraged by stories, we’re drawn into stories.

Here’s an example of a recent story we did.

We’re always looking for an opportunity to tell a story at COTM. Here are some guiding principles when we sit down with someone to tell their story.

1) Pre-production is huge.
We always have a pre-interview over the phone and sometimes in person. It’s important that the person who’s going to be conducting the interview also do the pre-interview. This matters because it gets the interviewee relaxed and comfortable talking with the staff member who’s doing the interview and it gets them accustomed to telling their story, which is super useful when you go to shoot it.

In addition, it lets you know if you actually have a story. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve received a lead from someone in the church on a particular story only to sit down with them and find out their story isn’t that great or more often, they can’t speak well enough to deliver it. Don’t feel badly if you have to pull the plug on a story at ANY stage in its development. It’s part of the process and it happens to everybody.

2) Don’t have them rehearse some speech, actually “interview” them.
One of our mistakes early on is that we really tried working with these people to be able to tell their story in big pieces rather than just interviewing them. This was a mistake. People have a hard enough time talking in front of a camera and trying to get them to share their story in chronological sequence only adds to that nervousness. It leads to awkward moments and the video comes off as forced and disingenuous.

I would recommend shooting the video interview style. Ask them pre scripted questions. Have the interviewer sit RIGHT BESIDE the camera so that the interviewee’s eye line is close to the camera but not looking directly into it, that just feels awkward. The only time we ever have anyone look into the camera is when we’re wanting to address the audience. Most of the time, that’s not the case with interviews.

3) Frame your questions to get at the heart of the issue.
Ask them questions like: How did you feel when you were diagnosed with cancer? What was your life like before you met Christ? What was the breaking point that brought you to Christ? How did you feel after you gave your heart to Christ?

Many times details of the story are not as important as the emotions of the story. The audience wants to know how they felt, because many of them, at one point or another, have felt the exact same way. Look for the emotion.

Another trick to helping them frame their responses in a way that helps the audience understand what the heck is going on, is to have the interviewee repeat the question back when giving their answers. For example, answers to the questions above might look like this:

When I was diagnosed with cancer I was devastated. Life before Christ was an endless search for something I could never find. The breaking point in my life was… you get the idea.

4) If possible shoot the interview with more than 1 camera. It’s always best to shoot the interview with at least 2 cameras. This will help you avoid having to use “white flashes” or jump cuts to go between pieces of their story. With only one camera you’re really limited in how you can piece their story together. If you only have one camera you could rent one for the days that you’re shooting. This is a pretty cheap way to get 2 cameras working.

In addition, really mind your framing. Study other videos for how much room they allow over the subjects head and mimic their style until it starts to make sense to you.

5) Shoot your B-Roll (this is the footage of interview done when they’re not talking) after the interview is over. Have them give you looks of happiness and looks of sadness. These will come in really handy in edit. We may shoot 2 hours of an interview to get enough footage for 3 minutes, that means we will cut their story up A LOT! So having B-Roll allows you to cover awkward edits. Some sentences are things we crafted in the edit. In the interview the original sentence may have been 30 seconds long, but we’ll cut out the parts that were unnecessary and focus it. B-Roll is essential to making this possible otherwise the footage just jumps around and looks really weird.

6) Begin with the story. Don’t try to edit in all the B-Roll and stuff right away. Just start by piecing the story together. Don’t worry about how it looks just listen to the story, you’ll clean it up later. Start with a long version of the story and then make it shorter and shorter. The goal of any creative project is not to add until their is nothing left to add, the goal is to cut until you can’t afford to cut any more, so try to arrive at a version where the only thing the audience sees and hears is what is essential.

We just had a worship night this last Wednesday night. Had a lot of fun. Check it out:

Here’s a quick list/rant of what we can’t live without when we pack up for a video shoot.

I’ll start with the most important thing - the idea. We spend almost as much time thinking through our ideas as we do shooting them. If you know why you’re making the video and where it falls in your service, you might save yourself some time during the production. Talk it through and second guess yourself until someone tells you to stop.

Next: our mics. You can make bad video look pretty good (see Ronette’s story on Vimeo), but you’re stuck if you have crummy audio. Make it a priority to capture clean audio. We mostly use a Schoeps shotgun mic for studio shoots and a Sennheiser 416 shotgun mic for locations. We use a Lectrosonic wireless pack with a Tram lav and a Senneheiser ew G2 when we need to go wireless.

This is my favorite part: our camera. We use a Panasonic HPX170 and it’s awesome for the price. We also attach a Letus extreme lens adapter with a 50mm Zeiss lens. That dude will wear you out if you try going handheld, but it looks amazing. Is it too obvious to mention a lens cleaning kit?

To visually take your video to the next level you need some proper lighting equipment. We use a couple 5-in-1 reflector/diffusers anytime we light. If you have a few of those, you can get away with using your dad’s work lights.

Those are just the must-haves when we head out on a shoot. If all you have is a mobile phone and a cassette recorder to work with, focus on the idea and make it work for your setup.

I’ll be back with a note on our post-production gear and software soon. In the meantime, if you have any questions about how we did something or want to know what it was like to write this on an iPhone 4 retina display, email me at gary@churchonthemove.com.

When I get together with creative leaders at other churches, the conversation always works its way around to, “how many people are on your team and what do they do?”

So, I thought a good first blog from me would be to answer that question. At COTM, I head up what we call the Performing Arts department. What that basically covers is everything that happens in our weekend services: worship, lighting, audio, production, videos, graphic design, and probably more stuff that I’m forgetting. The bottom line is, if it happens in a weekend service, I’m responsible for it.

Our department is broken up into two pieces: the creative side and the production side. Our production side is led by Andrew Stone, who you’ll be hearing from on this blog in the near future. For the sake of keeping this post slightly shorter than the Bible, I’ll only talk about the creative side.

I’ll warn you, we don’t have job descriptions or job titles. We all do a little bit of everything so it’s hard to draw distinct line between who does what around here, but I’ll try.

Angie Woods//@angiewittywoods

Angie’s been with me for almost 6 years now. I love working with her because she thinks like I do and she gets things done. She’s basically a producer. We pass her projects and she develops them. She finds and interviews candidates for testimony videos. This is a real art and she’s learned it well.

Chris Munch//@cmunch78

Chris has been at COTM for an eternity. He started as a writer for us but has learned to be a really good editor. His best quality is that he’s a storyteller, so we put him on all our videos that require a story to be told, like interviews. He’s also an AMAZING actor. If you haven’t seen his work in Dad Life, you need to check it out.

Gary Hornstien//@ghornstien

Gary is our motion graphics guru. He takes the projects we work on and makes them look good. He’s the guy who shoots just about everything we do and he’s also the only technically savvy guy we have, so when we have problems we go to Gary.

Jesse Andersen//@jra3086

Jesse is the guy who makes things happen. He’s basically a project manager. He’s the checklist guy. The rest of us are pretty bad with details, but Jesse thrives on them so we hand him projects like creating a website or having some a banner printed and he gets it done.

Andy Chrisman//@andychrisman

Andy is our worship pastor so he oversees everybody that works on our worship team. A lot of his time is spent in rehearsals prepping for the weekends and other events that we do. When he’s not in rehearsal, he’s usually brainstorming with us about an upcoming event.

Marcos Cruz//@marcokeys1

Marcos has been at COTM longer than any of us. He’s the band director. He makes sure that musicians are scheduled and ready to play. He creates charts for all of our music and keeps our musicians sounding great.

Kenneth Weston//@kennethjweston

Kenneth has been at COTM since he was a kid. Now he’s a huge part of our team. He’s a co-leader with Andy on the weekends and he also writes music for our children’s environments.

Daniel Chrisman//@echoflyer

Daniel’s our lead guitar player for the weekends and he also leads worship in our Varsity services on Wednesday. He keeps our guitars sounding good by constantly tweaking sounds and adjusting pedals. In addition, he’s our go-to guy for new song arrangements.

Alright, so that’s most of us. We also have 3 current interns who help with various projects here and there, and we’ll have a couple more via NEXT. Hope this was helpful! If you have a more specific question about our team or how we work, just email me.

Hey, what’s up everybody, welcome to Seeds!

We’ve been hard at work on this site for the past few months and we’re super excited to finally get it launched. On the site you’ll find some of the best creative work from the team here at Church on the Move and the coolest part is, it’s all absolutely free. Our goal is that the resources we’ve created for Church on the Move will be a big help to you. The files are fully editable so take them, change them, and make them whatever you want them to be. Our hope is that these will be a jumping off point for your creativity.

We’re also starting this blog as a way of sharing the methods and practices that we use every day in our church, so stay tuned for a lot more content here.

Please feel free to email us any questions and check back often because we’re updating the site rapidly!