A Church Consultation in Lufkin, TX

I grew up playing with legos all the time!  The fascinating part about the experience for me was the opportunity to create a multitude of different things out of the pieces you already had in front of you.  Church consultation is the exact same thing for me.  Every church has resources of equipment and people, but often there are two things that stand in their way:  A universal tech language/system and an understanding of what is possible.

Old Downtown Lufkin

This past weekend I had the great privilege to work with First United Methodist (FUMC) in Lufkin, TX.  This area of the state is incredibly beautiful and the town embraces a history centered around the forestry mills while projecting a vision for tomorrow with modern traveling conveniences, entertainment, and restaurants.  But maybe I’m too easy to please.  After all, once I see a Cheddar’s restaurant sign, I pretty much lose all bias

My good friend and worship pastor Chuck Harris picked me up on that cold Saturday morning to take me to FUMC, a staple in the community for over 130 years.  I remember walking through their doors to the contemporary worship hall and being taken in by the fact room had very few “anchors”.  Anchors are immovable fixtures within the architecture of setting.  There were no wooden pews, pulpits, paintings, art, or permanent displays (not that those items are a bad thing by any means, they are just used differently).  This fact immediately communicates that flexibility and change are incredibly important to this worship experience.

After getting a brief overview of there equipment, stage use, and presentation priorities, I sat down with FUMC’s strongest asset: their volunteers.  I honestly think they enriched my life more than I did theirs!  The goal for the consultation was to improve their broadcast .  With the tech teams open hearts and eagerness to learn, I could tell this would be a simple task.  I began by passing out a written set of language that we use in my church for doing a broadcast that labeled specific actions and qualifications into one or two word phrases.  This provided a common set of words for communication that keeps everyone on the same page.  Standard broadcast words like pan, zoom, medium-shot, but also unique words such as “2 shot”, or “smooth”.

Another goal for the weekend was to retool the lighting in their room.  FUMC uses standard ellipsoidals and  par cans as well as LED based flood lights.  Instead of me just creating a new design from their equipment, I taught them some principles of three point lighting and that lighting isn’t about making an area bright, but is about controlling shadows.  Shadows are good!  They give depth and contrast.  And as a lighting technician, one has the great ability to control everyone’s attention by simple raising and lowering the lighting in different areas of the stage.  The FUMC really took this to heart and within 2 hours they had totally redesigned their entire system on paper with plans to implement it very soon.  Now they have the ability to respond to any future stage designs or needs by learning some fundamentals!

Thank you to all of my new friends out in Lufkin.  I am incredibly proud of you all and I certainly hope I helped you half as much as you blessed me.  I am excited to see how God will use you to reach his community!

Ask Anything

Every year January marks the beginning of questions.  Often these questions center around one’s reflection of how their life is developing.  And for most, January marks a psychological “Fresh Start” towards personal growth.

Knowing that, we decided to begin the year with a stand-alone weekend entitled, “Ask Anything”. I can certainly tell you that people took full advantage of the opportunity!  From questions about Captain Crunch’s lack of promotion to Admiral, to questioning God in the midst of the loss of a young child, people came with hearts wide open to catch a glimpse of our Father.

But answering the questions was the easy part (Haha, don’t tell our pastors that , so I will tell you how we did it technologically through text messaging.  If you can afford it, the easiest way to gather audience text for live presentation is to use a service like JarbyCo.  It is a on-line program that allows an audience to vote, ask questions, and post comments live using text messaging.  After a text is sent to a specific number, the program allows a moderator, who is on a computer, to approve and decline incoming texts.  The approved texts are then moved into a live rotation seen by the audience.  It is easy to use but it also costs money and since our services are spread over two days, that meant double the cost.  So it was time for plan “B”.

During our welcome time, we provided a cell phone number of a staff member as a lower 3rd graphic over our IMag.  After a setup song that followed the welcome time, we again placed the phone number on the screens and left it up the entire time of the Q&A period.  Our two pastors proceeded to speak about how the presentation would work for about three minutes and by the time they were done with their setup, we had already received dozens of texts.

These texts went to the staff members cell phone and we had designated a volunteer with the task of typing the questions on to an on-line write board that could be refreshed and read nearly instantaneously by other users that were logged in. Think of it as an on-line word document that can be seen by others on different computers.  The next role was done by our Communications Director who would select 3 questions to be displayed for the congregation and pastors.  The communications Director would post these three questions on another write board, correct the grammar, leaving me the task of quickly building the slides for presentation (we use the program Mediashout).

Our pastors had no idea what was coming and truly answered the queries as they came.  They would quickly poll the audience, either by applause or a show of hands, and answer the favored question from the congregation.  We had pre-programmed a 3 minute countdown that was started at the beginning of each answer and the countdown was viewable to the room, setting a rough limit as to how long the pastors would have to speak on the particular topic.  This didn’t allow for too much depth but did create an opportunity to truly get to as many questions possible from the audience.  It was very similar to the television ESPN show, “Pardon the Interruption”.

Things went really well and we certainly learned some things for the next time we do this presentation.  First, 3 minutes is a great time limit (Just don’t end it with a Family Fued type buzzer like we did the first service before changing to a simple bell).  Another is that out of three services, each audience had different types of questions.  Our first had many personal situational questions while our second was primarily apologetics.  The third service was fairly heavy on doctrine but also had some personal situation questions as well.

Also, personal questions never get the majority vote when combined with other theological questions.  Questions like understanding the loss of a love one, breaking an addiction, or redemption from immorality, isn’t going to be voted for due to the fact the people who ask are fearful of being judged and discovered by supporting their questions.  We got around this by placing these type of questions together and notifying our pastors through the confidence monitor that the next set of questions were personal ones that did not need to be voted on by the audience.

Overall, the services were an incredible success and everyone seemed to be brimming with energy.  As the final service concluded, we got one last text, “I don’t have a question, but i just wanted to say that this is my first time at Preston Trail and I will be back every weekend”.  That text seemed to truly be an answer to our prayers.

Beautiful Disaster

This is my largest production to date for the church.  It was incredibly challenging, yet rewarding.  A very, very special thank you to the many people who helped make this vision come to life.  Enjoy!  And feel free to forward it on.

 

Blindness

We first saw the concept for this video at Granger Community Church during their “Innovate 2007″ Conference.  They had gotten the idea from a foreign political ad (unfortunately I can’t remember what it was or where to find it!).  Allison Harrell wrote the script and Markus Lloyd gave some fantastic narration to the piece.

The script is quite mind blowing when you realized it can be read both backwards and forwards.  Believe it or not, the challenge of writing such a piece doesn’t seem as daunting when you realize there is a pattern to it.  It goes something like this:

State a negative fact

Phrase with a negative implication (not a full sentence)

State a positive fact

State a negative fact

Phrase with negative implication (not a full sentence)

State a positive fact (and repeat as necessary)

Stating a fact in this piece would be something like “I am lost in Blindness” or “Simple grace triumphs over utter darkness”.  The negative phrases are things like “I refuse to believe that” or “There is no truth in the saying” and are never complete sentences.  The reason this works out is because on the way down they come before a positive fact, which make the sentence negative.  But when read backwards, the negative phrases are canceling out the negative facts, leaving the positive sentences to stand on their own.

Give it a shot!  I would love to see what you come up with!

Color Grading

Ever flip through the channels, when you get hooked into watching “The A-Team” build a tank out of coffee cans and duct tape?  I was always disappointed that Mr. T, with all that bling,  never gave up a medallion as a hood ornament for it.  But that disappointment is nothing compared to the blandness of the video from the Technicolor era.  Colors were dull with little contrast , making plot the most important aspect of the show.  Wow,  how did we watch 98 episodes of this?

Enter color grading.  Color grading is THE television tool of the 21st century.  With computers today, the manipulation of video and images is incredibly simple and readily available.  It allows you to garnish amazing film looks or that special style you need for your video masterpiece.  Want colors vibrant enough to make Willy Wonka seizure?  Click, done.  Want the intense blacks of CSI?  Click, done.  Want to black and white the scene, but leave those baby blue eyes in the shot?  Click, done.  Ok, maybe two clicks

Regardless of whatever video you are making, or image you’re manipulating, don’t be afraid to take it one step further!  The image you shot does not have to be the final product!  And you don’t have to break the bank to do it either.  I use Apple Color that comes combined with the Final Cut Pro Suite.  For some looking for a cheaper solution, or a product for windows,  I couldn’t locate a cheaper solution than Magic Bullet “Quick Looks”.  It cost $99 but your videos and images will take tremendous steps forward in their presentation.  It is simple to use and can also make videos that had poor quality to begin with look their best.  Even “The A-Team” can’t produce these results!

Below are some snapshots from my latest production.  I think I got a little black crazy, but I really wanted that dark look since it is a dramatic video piece.

 

“Use your imagination! Or you can borrow mine.”
A-Team episode “Harder Than It Looks”

 

Picture Imperfect

Written by Douglas Hoffschwelle,  “Picture Imperfect” sparked a wonderful beginning to defining our marriage series.  Hope you enjoy the piece!