I had to get this down, a confessional of sorts. Confessing that I think negatively of people. Right or wrong. Forgive the jumbled quality as well. I’m trying to get this down. I felt like I needed to.

So tonight, at around 11pm, I was 99% asleep in my recliner, 1% watching the World Series when I hear an unfamiliar car engine sound. You know how you know the cars around your house you are used to hearing. I didn’t recognize this one and assumed it was a neighbor’s house. A few seconds later my dog begins going nuts and then someone knocks on my door. (Yeah, Ruby is a good guard dog, she heard them coming to the porch.) I stumbled to the door, now about 15% awake, and look out the window to see a woman looking up at me. She asked me for something, I said what, she asked again, I said what again, I opened the door with one hand, held my dog with the other and asked what again. Now 20% awake, I was only able to determine only that I was not clearly thinking enough operate the machinery that is my brain. My wife took over the thinking part since she was still fully awake and on the internet at the time of the surprise…

Tonight a woman and a young child ended up in my driveway in their car and ultimately at my door, asking for help. Not sure what she wanted really. First it was a phone, then it was cash for food or gas to get home. She lives about an hour away and had been stuck in town all day with car trouble. We, as usual, had no cash on hand (and I wouldn’t have wanted to give it anyway). But, my wife volunteered me to go to the gas station around the corner with her to fill her tank up. She asked for cash again for food. My wife invited her into the dining room to give her a few snacks for her little boy. I then told her where the gas station was and followed her there. I filled her tank up and talked barely as I stood there, I was tired and foggy still having been asleep only 10 minutes prior. She commented about how cold it had gotten outside and how her car still wasn’t running smooth. She then said “can I wash your car or something for $10 just in case something bad happens on the way home and I need money?” I reminded her again that I had no cash. I put $30 in gas in her tank, she thanked me for the gas, hopped in her car, and drove away very quickly. I got in my car and drove home wondering why that happened so fast. Should I have said Jesus loves her? Was I so quiet, “asleep” and short with her that she wanted to leave me alone as soon as possible?

Now I sit at home, wide awake, 90 minutes later. I just don’t trust people. I assume the worse sometimes. I’m trying to figure out what her ulterior motive was (as if she HAD to have one). Was she casing us? Was she really wanting money for drugs? She said multiple times how embarrassed/ashamed she was while she talked to my wife. Certainly she didn’t want to wash my car at 11pm on a cold night. Was she just trying to get cash any way she could? Of all the places… how did she end up at our house? Had she been turned away at others? Was ours the first in the neighborhood with enough lights on to think she could get someone awake?

I’m sitting here now with my senses heightened. Every sound I here makes me pause and listen. Its just dumb that I am even nervous/suspicious now isn’t it? I really do hope that what she really needed was gas and a somewhat healthy snack for her little boy, she got that. I really do hope that she wasn’t really fishing for cash and taking anything else she got as spoils. I know that Jesus said to help people, that I think we did. Did we do enough? I am certainly not worried about “losing” $30 and some food even if it WAS dishonest, if it cares for someone. I just sit here wondering why I feel the way I feel. I am half on guard for… something, and half feeling guilty for thinking everything I’ve thought. I’m praying for peace from God so that I can sleep.

Can anyone identify with me? Help me process this.

… or ears in this situation. Some discussions I’ve been in and around over the past few weeks have been dealing with “less than ideal” results in a few of our live environments, including the one I oversee primarily. This is in no way a “shot” at anyone who is working in those environments any more than it is taking one at myself. Disclaimer aside…

How often do you have someone else with trustworthy ears come into your worship service and evaluate how it sounds and is mixed? How well do you take criticism from that person/those people? I know sometimes it isn’t packaged well and you have to sift through the arrows and find the nuggets of truth, but how well do you take it?

Our worship director at SSCC is now trying to schedule himself off stage about once a month. He will mix maybe once every 2-3 months and just be in the room for the services on other weeks. It gives him a fresh perspective of what happens in the room and what it sounds like. I HAVE to listen to him for instance because it is a “production” that he orchestrates normally, but regardless, I WANT to hear his thoughts. There are also two other tech guys on staff with me and I always like to hear what they liked or disliked about a mix. Some times the insight is more preference than right/wrong but much of the time I get great insight. Often times I ask myself “why didn’t I hear that or think of that?” Sometimes they tweak a knob that I’m somewhat embarrassed to have missed. It is part of the gig.

So, get some fresh ears on your mix and in your room. If you don’t have those extra ears in your church, get some from another church or venue for a rehearsal and do the same for them in return. I think the more challenging of a mix situation you engineer in, the more important this might be. Our ears are super-adaptable devices and this is both a blessing and sometimes a hindrance to mixing. Let someone else come in without any preconceived notions about the challenges of your mixing situation. They may hear things that your ears have grown accustomed to. (Be ready for some suggestions that you will take too personally. Think about how opinionated you are about a mix and know that they are too.) Make notes and try the changes.

Constantly find ways to get fresh eyes on your mixing. You will get better and your audience will hear better.

Win – win.

What about you, whether you are on stage or in the booth what things keep your ears fresh? If audio is not your thing, what about video or your designs?

How far ahead do you plan for Easter & Christmas services? How far ahead do you normally plan services? If the “normal” time is different, why?

Ok, now that the questions are out there, you know why you are here, so let me set them up better.

Over the past couple of months, thanks in large to Twitter (@tpaulding), I have been in communication with a large number of media/producer/tech people as well as pastors & worship leaders. At times I have become discouraged as I hear people share, as much as two months out, that they are finalizing Easter plans. We work on being ahead at SSCC, two weeks out is the normal deadline for any media project but with some sermon series we are only a few days ahead. We try to be 4-6 weeks ahead on sermon topics and base content but it takes effort. We are working to push these things closer to 8-10 weeks ahead. This gets frustrating to me mostly because rush, short deadlines and last minute planning all very negativly effect what we have the ability to produce and even worse it negatively effects creativity. I can run sound on short notice but don’t expect solid graphics or video projects.

So, at first, I got frustrated at our being “comparatively behind.” I realize we can’t all do things the same way for a lot of reasons, but it still makes me think. I also wonder if it is “wrong” of the church to put more effort on 1-2 services a year. Some churches may have the philosophy and means to always be months ahead. Honestly, I crave that.

But I currently (but not always) am bothered by putting markedly more effort into one to two services a year and then not “trying as hard” for the other 50 or so. When I set up our planning calendar for this year I definitely noted Easter, Christmas and about 6 other “high attendance” weekends for us. I think it is super-important to be ready for what is coming and aware of reasons that might bring people to your church on any given Sunday. I really just wish the Church “put that much effort” into every week.

So again, how far ahead do you plan?

Do you plan for Easter services more in advance than others?

Do you have any planning resources you use?

Share your thoughts, tell your friends… just don’t look back to my last post unless you have a time machine.

I wear a lot of hats here at St. Simons Community Church and at the Gathering Place where I volunteer regularly. My job title is Technology Director. My role is WAY more complicated. I am involved with everything audio, video, lighting, IT, software, graphic design, video production, event production, service planning, content planning, and a few other things I am missing. I like the multitasking, I like the every-day-is-different, I like the freedom & responsibility. (This is where I must mention the two guys I work closely with: Bo and Chris, they share an equal load in tech direction in the church and I/we couldn’t come close to doing it without them.) What I don’t like is how it has fostered a critical nature in me.

I am responsible for what happens in our live services for instance. So whether I am running front of house, producing, or making sure that our awesome volunteers are taken care of, I still find myself generally somewhere in the back of the room or video booth critiquing. It seems that without it being specified in my job description anywhere, I am constantly identifying problems, errors, oversights and just things we could have done better. This is bad for people in my postion or similar ones because we will become generally negative pretty quick. It is the nature of the beast I think. We just have to tame that.

I don’t want to be the guy that only points out the bad things and neither should you. People will quickly discount what we say if all we ever have is a bad thing to say. Even worse probably, it will frustrate us quickly. If all we do is focus on the bad stuff we will stop seeing any good stuff. I had a real gut check this past week when running sound at a youth event in our community. We have had some technically frustrating nights this summer and followed that up with a few nights that SEEMED spiritually frustrating as well. This past week everything went pretty smoothly, which is nice, but the big thing for me was SEEING life change. People responded to a clear message and call from God through our speaker. I stood at the console in the back of the room while two people behind me wept and prayed out loud.

There are about 1000 students a week there and lives have been being changed all summer, I just hadn’t really even attempted to put myself in a place to notice. Actually, lives have been being changed by God long before I offered Him my amazing services. Lives were being changed before you jumped on board at your place too. Here is the kicker, God doesn’t need perfect pitch, flawless transitions, the right SPL and hyped up videos to move. He uses them to move and thankfully allows us to be a part of that. We need to remind ourselves of that fact.

So here is the take home on this, and yes, it will be on the test. Have you heard of a compliment sandwich? You should try one, they are delectable. I must confess that Stewie Griffin set the example for me. Anyway, KEEP CRITIQUING. It is important to always work to honor God by doing the best you can with what He has given you. However, every time you notice a negative, find two positive things about the event, service or whatever to report on as well. Sandwich that criticism between some positive review. Trust me, the people you work closely with will greatly appreciate it and they will PROBABLY start listening to what you have to say too.

So, anyone else feel me? Chime in with your thoughts and experiences.

I figured I would share a video from church with the small portion of the internet world that visits here. This is a testimony intro video we played in church on our opening weekend in the new building. I edited it in Adobe After Effects with the chair being hand drawn, scanned & cut in Adobe Illustrator before I imported it to be ‘drawn’ in the video. Our new projection system is widescreen, that is why the video looks cut off on the top and bottom. YouTube automatically letterboxes it. Also, there is no sound. Fred, our worship director, played piano live during the video.

The point of the video I think is pretty self-explanatory when you see it. It set up David Wilkin’s testimony pretty well. Even though there is not much to it, it turned out to be super-effective.

Enjoy! And let me know what you think.

This is a blog post I came across earlier. I think it should spark interesting discussion. Chime in with your two cents.

What do we do in our churches that would anger Jesus if He visited this Sunday? Do we ever turn parts of His Father’s house into something other than a place of worship?

-Travis

This is a soap box that I hop on every so often. I am not sure what sparks the passion when it happens, but regardless, I get frustrated and vent.

I am not even sure what first made me start thinking about this today, I guess it was “Christian Musician” magazine at Barnes & Noble, or something like that. I just remember it had Casting Crowns on the cover and was crowded in with the rest of the music magazines I had intended on thumbing through. Anyway, what is it with ‘Christian Alternatives’ anyway? I regularly find myself incredibly bothered by them. Godtube and Shoutlife are big names in the Christian rip off category. Yeah, I called it a rip off, it is what it is. HaHa. It seems like every time there is a vehicle for easily spreading light in the darkness, someone does something to pull the light OUT of the darkness. And, in my not-so-expert opinion, it is usually a poor variation of the original.

YouTube and MySpace are really amazing technological developments. These two things draw astonishing amounts of people to their respective pages and allow them to spend way to many hours there. There is unlimited potential for viewership and influence on the personal pages and posts of these two communities. Obviously, they got huge, they got a lot of press and they got a lot of content (of all moral standards) uploaded to them. So what is the Church’s response? “Let’s make our own!” I understand the reason, I think. ShoutLife, for instance, allows a MySpace type community without the questionable ads on the pages. Godtube provides the same searchable video library as YouTube with the addition of content screening and control.

The way I see it, they are saying, “hey, all you good intentioned users out there, lets do this somewhere else.” Consequentially, removing light from the midst of apparent darkness. I tend to LIKE the idea of a funny Christian video getting bounced around YouTubers. I think it is great when someone who faithfully follows Christ talks about it in the middle of MySpace or Facebook and I HOPE they are connected to hundreds of friends that will see it too. Shoutlife can provide a ’safer’ environment for teens to roam on the internet but I am not sure what would prevent sickos from going there too. Godtube’s mission is to ultimately advance the Gospel, but I don’t see how well it will work. I don’t think entitling something “God…” will attract the average unbeliever to its pages. Yes, I recognize that seekers will go there and all that, but I’m considering the norm, not the exceptions.

I just wonder if all these Christian alternatives aren’t counter productive to the advance of the Gospel? A Google search of “Christian Web Alternatives” will reveal a myriad of these things. I just learned that there is even a Christian alternative to the Girl Scouts, wow.

Are we piling up our salt and putting our lit candles under a bowl? What do you think?

Here is a video that we did a few months ago. I have had a few friends ask for me to put this on the web so they could see the interfaces we did. The sermon series we were in at the time was called “iReach: Changed Lives.” It was kind of a vision casting/clarification time for our church. It was a four week series, week one was “Changed Lives,” week two was “Reach Up,” week three was “Reach In,” and week four was “Reach Out.” It really was a great series, you can check out the messages and more here at the church media page. We are finally starting to get release permission from folks so we can put this stuff on the web. The testimony about the Home Group being a pillar in the time of need is pretty awesome.

In addition to the message of this video, the production was pretty cool too. This video was filmed and edited almost entirely by two high school students. (One of which is the son of the couple in the video.) I helped them set up the cameras and capture the footage. They did all the editing, audio sweetening and most of the color correction. (I didn’t check the color balance on the second camera, oops. It needed more color correction than time allowed for.)The interface at the beginning was created in house. I made an iTunes knockoff look. I redrew the basic layout and a different color scheme in Adobe Illustrator. We then set the order for the 4 week series and the videos in each service and animated the Illustrator file in Adobe After Effects. This helped to create the illusion of a camera zooming in and out on the iReach interface, showing the previous videos and the next one to be played. To top off the project, our worship director, Fred McKinnon, scored the soundtrack for all of the videos we did in this series.

Well, enough talky.Here is the video. Let me know what you think. We were pretty proud of the whole series look once it was finished. I think it really made people evaluate their own roles in God’s plan. The “i-theme” was used in the print materials and on screen as well. We believe it helped them to personalize things, not to mention it is culturally relevant. If for some reason anyone wants it, I can supply the After Effects CS3 and Illustrator CS3 files that we used if you want to do something similar. Just let me know.

-Travis

Click here to play.

I have had trouble with this video playback some, be sure to harass me about it if it plays in fastforward or anything.

I learned this week that Kevin, they guy in the testimony video I shared earlier this week, brought a friend with him to church this week. After hearing Kevin’s testimony in the video and a great word from our pastor, the Lord moved in his heart and he accepted Christ.¬† I know it must have been super encouraging for Kevin to walk through that with his friend as well.

What an awesome opportunity to be a part of another changed life! It makes the hours put into that video seem like nothing. Not that Christ NEEDED the video, but He used it on multiple levels. Yay for technology! And yay for Kevin and his friend.

-Travis

Holy cow. I have to share this video I stumbled upon. I confess I LOVE seeing technology used in big ways in worship settings. I think that music and media are the languages of the people. I know it isn’t a MUST have, and I know that I do not represent everyone’s opinion here. I have some good friends that I would label ‘anti-production’ when it comes to ‘doing church.’ I just agree to disagree, Ron Burgandy would be proud.

There is more to worship than big sound, big screens and big lights. The heart has to be there, the passion, all that stuff that I guess I need to acknowledge. That being said, I KNOW that when I have more senses engaged, I am more engaged. When I get wrapped up by the sounds and all that ‘good stuff’ I love it. I focus in, I can get lost in worship in that moment. The flip side is how distracting it can be for me. I have to watch myself. I will end up spending the first 10 minutes of a big event evaluating equipment and production value. The next 10 minutes I will critique the front of house mix. After about 20 minutes I am in though. HaHa. I also believe that good production value helps the Church.

I know, I KNOW, I KNOW that Jesus doesn’t need me or my computer. However I am pretty confident he chooses to let me minister along side of him. I LOVE when a worship experience excels in technical production. I think this shows the world that the church can be an exciting and engaging experience. One possibly worth even giving a shot if you can get that 16 year old away from MTV and the movie theater. I consider it a modern time mission trip type of cultural relevance. So be it fortunate or unfortunate, the culture I minister in is overwhelmed with media. I think Jesus likes being in that media. And a last disclaimer… I think Jesus likes to be in the calm quiet, other-than-the-world stuff too. I just don’t think ‘we’ need much help and encouragement going there.

So without further delay, the AMAZING 12 minute intro to the Hillsong Conference. Let me know what you think of that Amazing Grace when you get done.