Digital Church

www.creativemyk.com

CreativeMYK is a number of things, but it is very useful t0 the Church design staff.

“Gallery – A place for anyone looking for free, quality Christian graphics and photos shared by Christian artists around the world.

It supports Artists – A place for Christian artists to show their creative talents, and allows Critique and Discuss – A place to network, discuss, and critique with other Christian artists from professional to amateur.”

This morning I am leading worship at our church. This is really difficult when you look after all the technical aspects of a service, as you can get easily distracted by what the tech team is up to, not what you are supposed to be doing! So this morning as I finish preparing for the service my prayer is that all the technical aspects will go very smoothly so that I don’t get distracted from leading God’s people in worsip.

It is school holidays here in Western Australia and it means that this week there will also be lots of people away (this is evident by the band this week, no keyboard, nearly no drummer), so I plan to try and give it a relaxed intimate holiday feel.

I’ve chosen some classic songs which people should know well:

• I know he rescued my soul
• Ancient of Days
• What a wonderful change (since Jesus came inot my heart)
• Lord I lift your name on high
• My Saviour Redeemer
• It’s the song of the Redeemed (He Reigns)

It’s going t be a great morning!

A new magazine for Church Geeks is just around the corner with the first issue due out in September. COLLIDE magazine promises such gems as:

• Seeing God’s fingerprints in Media
• The role of Media and the Church in Culture
• Media resources that communicate truth
• the creative use of media and technology in ministry

with regular departments such as Visual, Music, Technology and the Web it should keep Digital Churcher’s satiated!

An e-version is promised as well (great for those of us outside the US) but it is not free (sigh) there will be an as yet undisclosed subscription fee.

Life has been so unbelievable hectic lately…not even time to post a few quick thoughts!

Last night I preached at Parkerville Baptist Church, this is the first time I have preached in ages and I kinda forgot what a toll it takes on you.

Firstly whilst I am a trained educator and doing a stand and deliver is not a new experience, it’s the content and the context which are so important. The bible makes it quite clear that teaching in a biblical context is a privileged and important role with special consequences.

Secondly, I am not a trained biblical scholar! It takes me ages to prepare. I ahve kjnown about this for over a month and still it finally came together for me in a way I was happy on Sunday afternoon. I didn’t really procrastinate, but fitting in quality time preparing around family and work and other commitments was a real struggle.

Thirdly, it does generate a heap of adrenalin in you (well it does in me) I have put all this human stuff into the message, sought God’s guidance and asked for him to take it over and then its show time! For 30 odd minutes, you are talking to the congregation (mostly teenagers in this case) and attempting to keep them engaged. After you finish the relief is amazing and I sleep like a baby!

Lots and lots of kudos to those who do this week in week out, sometime 2-3 times a weekend!

If you are interested I’ll post a link when the team has uploaded the message.

On Tuesday here in Perth it was 42.5 degrees celcius. The hottest March day on record! This occurred about 4:30pm, just as I walking out the office door for a 20 minute walk to Perth Train Station. Once I arrived, suitably hot and sweaty, TransPerth announce that once the temperature hits 40 degrees all trains have to slow down by 20km/h as rails tend to buckle in extreme heat. During the afternoon peak there are normally trains every 7 minutes, but I waited for 25 without even seeing a train come through the station! Finally one arrived, but by this time the platform was full of people that would normally have been spread across 3 trains, are now packing themselves onto 1. They were all suitably hot and sweaty and basically it as extremely unpleasant being that close to lots of people that I don’t know!

In Rick Warren’s Ministry Toolbox # 301 he discusses Six Physical Factors which affect your Worship Service.

Personal space is highly valued in our society. This is why box seats are prized at stadiums. If people are forced to sit too close to each other, they get very uncomfortable. There should be at least 18 inches between people if you’re using chairs and 21 inches between people if you’re using pews.

I know that at my church once 80% of the seats are consistently filled then attendance tends to plateau because people are uncomfortable sitting next to people they don’t know very well, and as churches grow we tend to know the people we may sit next to less well than we used to.

We can have all the presentation technology in the world happening in a service, but if the person is uncomfortable, either physically or socially, will they hear the message? Just as I felt so uncomfortable on the train are we expecting people to cram into our churches?

Ok, further to the last post…if a church was looking to establish a service for the Generation X’ers, it would also need to be looking forward to the Generation Y’s and possibly the iGeneration. Is it unreasonable to expect that the Gen X’ers want to relate more to the Gen Y’s than the Baby Boomers?

We have been having a discussion recently regarding the late 20’s to late 30’s demographic (something that I fit into!) and what they expect or desire at a church service, especially if they are from a non-churched background.
I think that Generation X‘ers like myself have a few expectations of a public event like church.

IMPORTANT NOTE: these are my ramblings and are not based on any impirical evidence, except my own observations and thoughts!

• Excellence: many Gen X’ers are in business, where excellence is paramount. The atmosphere may be relaxed and informal, yet I beleive that all things need to be produced to a high standard. This standard should be transparent. It should just happen, without fuss or fanfare. Remember that many Gen X’ers are from the Star Wars time onwards. Thats the original Star Wars (now called “A New Hope“) released in 1977. Special effects and high quality productions have been a part of their life. So I beleive that they expect high production values and have little tolerance for amateurish events.
• Music: this is truely the iPod generation. Many believe that it is Generation Y which purchases most iPods and Mp3 music players, however the Pew Internet Research report indicates that it is more likely to be the Gen X’ers. Music plays an important role in these poieple’s lives. They expet high quality, often original music, they are perhaps past the popular radio tunes, yet not into the soft mellow stuff. I personally feel that the ongoing success of U2 is that they appeal to this generation. What am I trying to say? This generation values high quality well produced music. They want lyrics with a message and meaning, but quality.
• Relationships: Gen X’ers increasingly value realtionships and networks. With the busy-ness of family life, kids, increasing work pressures and hours, quality realtionships both inside and outside of the family home take a hammering. An environment in which relationships can develop, mateships can be formed, and networks established is really important

So what are your expectations? Add a comment…

A short time ago I was pondering the Digital Church and the possibilities for integrating ICT into the life of the church. Here are some of the ideas I came up with in a few moments of brainstorming for my church!

• Further develop the use of presentational technologies in the worship service (ie: using it more than an expensive overhead projector)
  

• Increase the use of video in the worship, interview real people, have real interactions.

• Web: informational site for people seeking a church as well as internal stuff for members. A community portal hosted by the church is also a great idea as the community can then come to own the church.

• Pastoral/small group blogs: keeping the congregation in touch with the church on a daily/mid week basis to keep them connected and build community.

• eLearning site to have study sessions which use discussion boards and chat etc

• pastoral staff use of IM clients and IP telephony (eg.Skype) in order to allow better/cheaper communication with people

• Pod Casting/video casting: this is only going to get bigger. Sermons are the obvious first place, but weekly shows, community events etc, also going deeper behind the 30 minute sermon, interviews with leaders and authors in the area of the sermon. Video will increase as well. Bandwidth is becoming cheaper and better and more people will have the resources not only to listen but watch on demand.

So those are my few, what are yours?

Comment and share your ideas with everyone and I’ll post a complete list.

Worship Together

Looking again at resources for the worship leader in the digital realm.

Worship Together comes from the EMI Christian Music Group and provides a range or resources for the worship leader.

Perhaps the biggest draw card here is the Free Song. Every week a new free song is posted which you can listen to and print out the lead sheet. (a plug in is required, but it is well worth installing, you’ll see why when you install it!)

Linking to the free song, Worship Together has New Song Cafe which provides a streaming video interview with the author of the song. Discussion centres around the background and history of the song. This is invaluable for worship leaders as they plan a service. Worship Together also has DVD’s for purchase with previous interviews. You could use these as part of your service to introduce a song (take an excerpt to bring the congregation to a deeper understanding of the song).

By the way Media Shout allows you to do this very easily…more on this in a later post! (something to look forward to)

The site also offers Bible study resources which you can use with your team on particular songs, which is a great way to start practice, as it really focuses the team on the mission of the worship team.

As always Worship Together offers a store where you can purchase lots of different music resources, so check it out, set a reminder for yourself to go and download the free song each week if nothing else!