Betlehemina Tangaliyalli Kannada Christmas Song

Shai Linne - Atonement Q+A (lyrics)

Make Your Testimony Videos Better

Many churches are starting to do some of their own video production, and often those videos take the form of testimonies or interviews.

Here's a couple quick tips for making those productions look even better:

1.  Place the camera at eye level or slightly lower.  Doing so will give you a better looking shot than if the camera is place up high.

2.  Frame your shot so that your subject is over to one side, not centered.  This 1) allows you to make better use of your background space and 2) makes for a more interesting looking shot.

3.  Try to separate your subject from the background.  Video tends to flatten your image, and you need to counter that, by:

• seating your subject at least 10ft in front of your background;
• lighting your subject and your background separately (possibly using colors or textures in your background lighting);
• back lighting your subject; and 
• positioning your camera so that your background is slightly out of focus.

4.  Do not allow your subject to look directly at the camera - they should be looking slightly to one side.  For your audience, this creates the feeling that they are listening in on a conversation between two people.

5.  One side of the subject's face (the side closest to the camera) should be better lit than the other.  The side that is not as well lit should be clearly visible but have subtle shadowing.

6.  Avoid too much empty space in the background.  Use bookcases, plants, or other objects to add interest and avoid the "prison wall" look.

Experiment with these techniques and see if they increase the quality of your videos.  And feel free to email us with your questions - we're always glad to help!      

Thoughts on Using IMAG

The use of IMAG (short for image magnification) has grown exponentially in churches across the US over the last several years.  The decision of whether or not to implement this concept should be weighed carefully.

By IMAG, we mean that one or more cameras are focused on a person or group of people (e.g., a teaching pastor or worship pastor), and the image from that camera is projected onto large screens in the sanctuary so that the congregation has a better view of that person or group.  It can be a great help to a church when used correctly.

But here are some random thoughts: 

1.   Make sure it fits the size and style of your church.  If the size of your church is not sufficient to necessitate its use, don't do it.  Also, anything that is projected should fit into the overall flow and style of the service.  So, for instance, if your church strives to create a 'big living room', homey-type feel, IMAG may not be the approach for you.
2.   Do not use the same video feed as you use for your broadcast ministry.  When selecting shots for broadcast, you generally will incorporate wide shots, and well as shots of the congregation.  These shots are not appropriate for IMAG (wide shots, because they would serve no purpose, and congregational shots, because they would be incredibly distracting.)  Side note:  NEVER turn a camera on the congregation during an invitation time - this can have a huge, unintended negative effect.
3.   Only attempt IMAG if you are able to do a good job with it.  If it is not done well, it can be more of a distraction than a help.  Do you have a competent director who can call the camera shots?  Do you have the cameras, tripods, lighting instruments, switcher, headsets, cabling, etc. that you need?  Take a good inventory before you get started to determine what pieces you might be missing.

For Pastors: What Your Tech Teams Wish You Knew

We have the privilege of traveling to different conferences every month and meeting a lot of great people involved in technical ministries.  As we do, we often hear stories that start like this:  “The thing is, I really wish my pastor understood…”  So what follows here is a sort of open letter to you, pastors, listing the things most often heard.  Please know that this is shared in humility from a heart that honors and respects your leadership, position and sacrifice, and believes wholeheartedly in serving under spiritual authority in the local church (which I gladly do!):

1. If your techies keep asking you to stick to a timetable for turning in sermon notes or getting sound checks or choosing videos, it’s only because they want to do the best that they can.  Some processes need to be done in sequence and require a certain amount of time to be done well.  When a task does not get done on time (and worse, when it is re-inserted later in the process), the chance of error increases dramatically, which is not fair to the people that show up early to see that everything will be working as it should.
2. Generally the more lead time your technical staff has from you, the better they can do for you.  Unique requirements, whether it’s mic placement or set design or videos, equate to extra time, and a high percentage of techies are perfectionists who get really frustrated when they don’t have the time to do their best.  So try to give them the time they need to do well.
3. When you ask someone to create a video, please be cognizant of the amount of time that is required to produce it.  A simple 3-minute testimony video can easily take 20 hours to produce.  Short projects with actors and costumes can take weeks. 
4. Your tech guys need you or someone on your staff to block for them before the service.  People are continually coming up to the sound booth or control room area asking for last-minute items to be projected or songs to be played – all at a time when the technicians need to be able to really focus.  It would help greatly if you would enforce a policy that says, in effect, last-minute requests cannot be honored, so please plan ahead.  As much as your technicians want to serve, these last-minute requests put undo stress on them, and often result in sub-par results.
5. Technicians need your positive feedback and encouragement.  Generally, we fail to notice the service of the folks in these positions until something goes very wrong – and then they hear from too many people.  Expressions of appreciation and recognition of excellence are two critical needs that your technical staff has.

Working as one team, from one playbook, is so key to having an awesome worship experience full of the presence of God.  May God bless your church with a great partnership between your technical staff and your pastoral team and worship teams!

Ideas for Tech Outreach

Many, if not most, readers of this newsletter would consider themselves church techies, and most church techies (including myself) often fall into the rut of getting trapped in the booth, and we tend to see that as our realm of ministry. But the truth is that every person who belongs to Christ is called to evangelize and disciple, and that requires us to get outside. So to that end, here's a short of list outreach ideas for techies:


Does your church have an outreach to an inner-city neighborhood? If so, tag along when they are in the neighborhood. Find a teenager that has audio-related interest, and ask him if he would be interested in learning how to run sound. Offer to pick him up and bring him to your next worship practice, and start teaching him. Get to know him and find out where he is coming from as you are driving back and forth. If he does not go to church, tell him you could use another guy on the sound crew and see if he wants to start coming on Sunday morning. In the meantime, you are finding out if he has any relationship with the Lord, and where you need to begin in the discipleship process.


Offer to start a media club at a local high school, teaching kids about sound, cameras, video editing, and lighting. Get them to the place that they can run tech for school events. In the meantime, again, get to know them and look for ways to expand your relationship with them. If you have decent camera guys and video editors, offer to make a short movie with them. Let them create the script, then use what they want to focus on to start a larger conversation.
Offer to run sound and/or projection for community events at no charge. It’s an easy way to use your gifts to love on your community, and it puts the church in the community in a highly visible way.


If your church is predominately of one ethnicity, try to form a relationship with the tech people at a new or small church that is predominately of a different ethnicity. Offer to help with tech training and sharing equipment that you are no longer using. Have your tech teams meet together to share ideas, and brainstorm possibilities of joint projects. Breaking down racial barriers in the body of Christ is, I believe, a critical component of our future effectiveness.
Host an outdoor movie night. This is the perfect time of year for this, when the nights are starting to get a little cooler. Set up your screen and projector and a good sound system, get any noise permits that you need to get and any licensing for the movie. Serve free popcorn or hot chocolate, and have blankets or chairs for people to sit on. It doesn’t have to be a movie with an overt salvation message, but you may want to consider having your pastor get up at the end and make a spiritual connection, and possibly even a salvation invitation, and invite people to your next church service.


Help your children’s pastor take their ministry into the community by offering tech support. Neighborhood parks are great places to set up kid’s ministry because you are going to where the kids are. But it can’t be done without the tech guys being involved. Sure, lugging sound stuff around is not fun, and you have to be careful about the wear and tear on the equipment. But there are so many neighborhoods out there where the kids are desperate for hope and attention, and they need to see that someone cares about them on a consistent basis. It will be worth the investment of your time and effort.
Document your church’s outreach efforts. If you have a video camera and can edit, go out and document what your church is doing around the city. Then bring the stories back and share them with your congregation. True stories about real impact encourage faith and inspire people to get involved, and being able to actually see real people that are being impacted makes a huge difference. One note of caution: Make sure that as you are videotaping, you are being discreet, and that you are respecting and honoring the people being helped. You never want them to feel like objects or feel used.

Builders Skit

Builder Skit.egg on Aviary.

What Video Cannot Do

Many churches over the last 7-10 years have rightly come to the conclusion that they need to tailor their communication styles on Sunday morning to the needs of the people filling the chairs (or pews). They have done this because, while not wanting to compromise the Gospel in any way, they want to be as effective as they can be in their communication. And of course, projection and media made for church services has been a huge part of that change in communication style.

However, as Sally Morgenthaler pointed out several years ago, there is a danger that comes with this change: we tend to start depending on the style to replace some of the big things the church is called to do, namely evangelize and disciple.

Videos can do a lot for you. They can bring practical application to a message. They can make a message point more memorable and stir the heart. They can enhance your worship time. They can help you communicate information in a way that grabs and keeps the attention of your audience. They are an important ministry tool.

But videos cannot go out and form a friendship with the guy who works in his yard on Sunday mornings. They cannot talk one-on-one with the woman who grew up being abused by a church member, and help her see that God really does love her. Videos cannot serve in the soup kitchen, or bring groceries to shut-ins.

Let’s face it: to have creative communication in your church service (videos, dramas, sets, object lessons) takes time and effort. So do evangelism and discipleship. A healthy church is a church that has found an effective way to do all of it.

And there is no short cut – the only way to do it all is for every member of the body of Christ to step up and do what they are called to do.

These are serious, sober times. We desperately need each other, whether we realize it or not, to be fully engaged in the cause of Christ. So this week, encourage your brother or sister who has been sitting on the sidelines to get back it the field. We need them!  

Tech Teams: 5 Questions for the New Church Year

This week marks the beginning of the new church year for most US churches.  With that in mind, it is a good time to take inventory of our tech teams, and make some plans for the new year.

To that end, here are 5 questions that can serve as discussion starters for your team:
Question #1:  Do we have the personnel we need, and are they properly trained?  Sub-questions:

• Do we have enough volunteers for rotation so that the same person isn't "working" every Sunday?
• Are our people cross-trained, so that they can cover staffing gaps in case of emergencies?
• Are our people in the right positions, so that they can best use the gifts God has given them?
• If we need to recruit, should we make a general appeal or make personal invitations?  And who will be responsible for training the new recruits?

Question #2:  What are our priorities for new equipment?  Sub-questions:

• Have we separated desired items into needs and wants, and needed items into critical and non-critical? How will each item help us further the mission of the church?
• Have we gotten responsible estimates of the costs of these items?  If not, who will be responsible for doing so?
• Once we have gotten cost estimates, have we organized them into an easily understandable proposal for the appropriate church government entity?

Question #3:  What can we as a team do this year to help each other grow spiritually?
Question #4:  Can we use our skills to help others? Sub-questions:

• Is there a new or small church in town that needs our help? Could we offer assistance in helping to train their technical volunteers or helping with equipment installs?
• Could we serve our community by offering to provide tech support for certain community events at no charge?
• Could we offer to teach local non-churched teens technical skills as an outreach?

Question #5:  Have we met with our senior pastor to discuss his vision for the new year, and how we might best support it?

I'm sure there are tons of other great questions we could discuss, but these will hopefully get us started in the direction of a technically better 2010 - 2011.     

Setting The Right Goals In Church Tech

It's been said that you have to know where you are trying to go if you are going to get there. In other words, we all need to know what the goal is, no matter what area of life we are talking about.

As church techies, I would argue that we need to have a unique set of goals.  Underneath the bigger goal of bringing glory to God in everything we do, here are several important ones:


Goal #1:  Don't be noticed. Our positions are support positions. They are not ones that garner attention.  If we are doing our jobs right, the congregation will not think about us doing our jobs - they will think about the message being delivered.  Tech people tend to be noticed when they do something that causes a distraction during the service, and that is not what we want.

Goal #2:  Reinforce the message without becoming the message.  If we work with sound, our job is to bring the clearest audio signal possible to the ear of each person in the congregation at the right volume level.  If we work with lighting, our job is help focus the attention of the congregation to the right area, and produce visual effects that will help to maintain that attention.  If we work with projection, our job is to project images, videos, and words that serve to reinforce what is being communicated.

Everything we do should be done in unity with and support of the decisions already made by the senior pastor and/or worship pastor regarding what is to be communicated that particular week. Anytime we do something outside of that, we run the risk of muddying the message.

Goal #3:  Love others while we serve.  As techies, we tend to be task-oriented and focused on excellent performance.  This can lead to us having a lack of patience with others when things don't go the way they should.  We need to always keep in mind that part of the reason we are there is to love and encourage others.  God can give us the grace and patience we need, if we ask Him.  While we need to aim for excellence, people are always more important than performance.

Goal #4:  Employ the gifts God has given us.  God has given us creativity.  He has given us the ability to see the answers to technical problems.  He has given us ideas to enhance a presentation so that the message is even more clear and impacting.  We need to employ those gifts with full confidence that it is God enabling us to fulfill our roles in the body.  Often, this requires extra hours and effort on our part.  And while everything has to be held in balance, we have to aim for making sure that we are being great stewards of the gifts we have been given.  If He gave us those giftings, it's because He intended us to use them fully to the benefit of others.

Healing Rain by Michael W. Smith

Holy, Holy, Holy - Michael A.Schmid

te_deum -Holy - Michael A Schmid.egg on Aviary.

Those who live Godly in Christ

It Happend to Me Session 6- Gripped by the Worship of God

Don Moen - Like Eagles

Bible Song - Go Fish

Music or Missions - Excellent Msg

Holy, Holy, Holy - Keith Green - Chords

Holy, Holy, Holy - Keith Green

Chords - easy version for - Create In Me A Clean Heart - Kieth Green

http://www.e-chords.com/chords/keith-green/create-in-me-a-clean-heart/easy-version

Create in me a CLEAN HEART - Keith Green

Your Grace Is Sufficient For Me

Jesus Beautiful Saviour - Song - Planet shakers

Jesus Beautiful Saviour - Lyrics - Planet shakers

Alternate Guitar Tuning Chart

Standard Guitar Tuning	E	A	D	G	B	E
Admiral	C	G	D	G	B	C
All Fourths	E	A	D	G	C	F
Aug Fourths	C	F#	C	F#	C	F#
Balalaika E	E	A	D	E	E	A
Baritone	B	E	A	D	F#	B
Buzzard	C	F	C	G	A#	F
C A D G B E	C	A	D	G	B	E
C 6	C	G	C	G	A	E
Charango	X	G	C	E	A	E
Cittern (1)	C	F	C	G	C	D
Cittern (2)	C	G	C	G	C	G
Collins	F	C	F	Ab	C	F
Cooder	Db	Ab	Db	F	Ab	Db
D A E A E E	D	A	E	A	E	E
D Minor	D	A	D	F	A	D
D Modal	D	A	D	D	A	D
DADGAD	D	A	D	G	A	D
Dobro	G	B	D	G	B	D
Dropped A	A	E	A	D	G	C
Drop D	D	A	D	G	B	E
Double Drop D	D	A	D	G	B	D
Face	C	G	D	G	A	D
Four & Twenty	D	A	D	D	A	D
Fourths	E	A	D	G	C	F
G 6	D	G	D	G	B	E
G Minor	D	G	D	G	Bb	D
Iris	B	D	D	D	D	D
Half Bent	F	Bb	Eb	Ab	C	F
Hendrix	Eb	Ab	Db	Gb	Bb	Eb
High Plain D	E	A	d	G	B	E
Hot Type	A	B	E	F#	A	D
Kaki King	C	G	D	G	A	D
Kottke	C#	F#	B	E	G#	C#
Layover	D	A	C	G	C	E
Leadbelly	B	E	A	D	F#	B
Lefty	E	B	G	D	A	E
Lute	E	A	D	F#	B	E
Magic Farmer	C	F	C	G	A	E
Major Sixth	C	A	F#	D#	C	A
Major Third	C	E	G#	C	E	G#
Mandoguitar	C	G	D	A	E	B
Mayfield	F#	A#	C#	F#	A#	F#
Minor Sixth	C	G#	E	C	G#	E
Minor Third	C	D#	F#	A	C#	D#
Modal D	D	A	D	G	A	D
Modal G	D	G	D	G	C	D
Nashville	e	a	d	G	B	E
Open A	E	A	C#	E	A	E
Open A	E	A	E	A	C#	E
Open C	C	G	C	G	C	E
Open C	C	G	C	G	C	E
Open D	D	A	D	F#	A
Open D	D	A	D	F#	A	D
Open D Minor	D	A	D	F	A	D
Open E	E	B	E	G#	B	E
Open G	D	G	D	G	B	D
Open G	D	G	D	G	B	D
Open G Minor	D	G	D	G	A#	d
Overtone	C	E	G	A#	C	D
Pelican	D	A	D	E	A	D
Pentatonic	A	C	D	E	G	A
Processional	D	G	D	F	A	A#
Slow Motion	D	G	D	F	C	D
Spirit	C#	A	C#	G#	A	E
Standard	E	A	D	G	B	E
Tarboulton	C	A#	C	F	A#	F
Toulouse	E	C	D	F	A	D
Triqueen	D	G	D	F#	A	B