Recently my church focused all our energies emphasizing our missions work in the church, in the community, and in the World. As a part of that emphasis, we decided to take a wall outside our sanctuary and make it a three display video feature, along with a touch screen attached to a computer for online sign ups and to collect email addresses, etc.
Challenges
We wanted the wall to be a plain wall the week before, then totally changed for Missions Sunday. So all the installation work had to be done in one week.
There was only about a 6 inch space behind the wall for running cables a good distance to the DVD players.
There was no blocking in the wall for hanging LCD’s
Prep Work
Our graphic artist designed a large scale image that would eventually become wallpaper, giving a context to our wall.
I got dimensions of the wall and mocked it up using Google Sketchup. As you can see, we went through a couple of versions of the graphics before we settled on one.
I purchased the three televisions, (42″), and the mounts, three high quality HDMI cables, and three Panasonic Blue Ray players. We considered using ProPresenter, or ProVideoPlayer, but ended up going with the Blue Rays to keep our costs down.
We got our church electrician on our schedule for helping us during the installation week.
I used a video monitor we had in storage and bought a source selector at radio shack for monitoring the DVD players without having to look at the televisions, since they are around a corner from the players.
Installation
The Wallpaper was delivered and installed on a Monday, and the installer told us we would need to wait until Wednesday before mounting any televisions.
Our electrician got our power and video cables tun on Wednesday.
We hung televisions on the wall, connected power and video cabling. Note – We measured everything several times, and checked each other for accurate measurements. Inaccurate measurements would mean nasty holes in the wallpaper.
On Friday, we got our cables run for the computer to capture data, and got the touch screen powered up and working.
Our process is fairly low tech. We’re feeding the televisions with three Blue Ray players.
Our video editor developed content and burned it to Blue Ray for us. None of the videos have sound, since they would compete with each other.
Results
The Missions wall made quite a buzz around the church and helped to make Missions Sunday a huge success.
Something that important to us, is that projects like this are scalable both in technology and in purpose. The cables are run so that in the future we can deliver videos from a computer rather than the Blue Ray players. Right now the plan is for this to be a missions wall only, but in the future, we could re-purpose the wall simply by changing the wallpaper and changing the content of the videos.
Here’s some video of the wall I shot with my Flip camera.
While our contemporary worship venue is being renovated, we are having to do portable church. So for six months we are setting sound, lights and video on Friday afternoons in our gym, then striking it right after church. My hat goes off to people who do this indefinitely. Here’s a video I made by using my time lapse program in my Iphone, then editing it in Final Cut Pro.
I’m always looking at other churches to see what they do well and what I can gain inspiration from. Here’s a list of a few churches across the country who are doing superb webcasts. Some of these inspire me because of the content, some by the simplicity of the player, some because of the beauty of the video, or the enhanced features of taking notes in the player. Some of these webcasts are the product of self hosted, in-house work. Others are the product of paid hosting services. I’d love your thoughts on these and others you may like.
Recently, our tech , I.T. and communications staff met with one of the members of our church to discuss social networking strategy. It was a good discussion ranging from Facebook, to Twitter, to blogs, to video sharing sites. Several of the ministries at our church are getting Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, but no-one is really keeping their eye on the larger picture of what we’re messaging, what kind of consistency we have, and whether we’re really maximizing our impact. A couple of highlights from the yesterday’s meeting:
1. Consistency is saying one voice saying the same thing across all avenues of communication, and it is also repetition.
2. You don’t need to look for additional work to start a social media strategy, just look for ways to share what you’re already doing. If you’re already capturing video, then it’s not that much more to go ahead and podcast or webcast it, for example. If you’re preparing a sermon, then why not blog about it to create buzz for the upcoming weekend. Why not give the weekend’s scripture in advance so your body will be more prepared to hear what God has given you to give them? In other words, it doesn’t need to be something ELSE to do, but rather AS I do, how can I share?
There are so many options out there for content delivery and for communicating your church’s message, it’s a good idea to get your staff, and also some internet users in your church to develop a strategy of how you position your church,what is said, and how it is said.
I’ll post more on this later as we develop our own strategy, but let me leave you with some links to good resources.
Greg Atkinson – Hosts Church 2.0 conferences all of the country. Please try to go one of these.
LifeChurch.tv – Innovators in applying web technologies to the mission of the church
Theater Church – As far as I know, these guys were some of the first to podcast a sermon. Led by Mark Batterson who says “If it’s worth preaching, it’s worth podcasting”.
Many of you know that I recently left the Bible Church I worked at for 14 years, and started a new job at a large Methodist Church here in Dallas. Since then, I have joked about becoming much more familiar with The Lord’s Prayer. I just found this video online of a three year old singing this prayer. No joking – this has to be music to God’s ears.
Recently, my friend Greg Atkinson experienced a total blog makeover. If you alredy read his site, but use a reader it’s worth your while to actually visit his site. Right now he’s giving away 30 social media icons, made by his friend and web developer Ben Jordan.
The other day I went to a friend’s church to help with their PA. Their FOH system was bi-amped, but the subs were not sourced from an aux buss. They were experiencing lots of problems with to much low end on everything. Enter the DBX Driverack PA. I have used the Driverack 260, and didn’t care much for it. The audio quality is good, but the computer GUI is lacking. The window is too small, and the software is not intuitive like the Ashley Protea, for example. But the Driverack PA doesn’t even have serial control, which surprised me – but it was not a handi-cap. As much as I disliked using the 260, I really enjoyed the PA version. Here’s what we did at my friend’s church:
1. We decided to source the subwoofer feed from an Aux buss. Since we had limited drive lines, we took the system from stereo (which they did not care about) to mono. So the left out was changed to the mono out of the Mackie TT24 console, and the right out was moved to Aux 12 out. We put a curve on the output of aux 12 with the on-board 6 band EQ of the console. The curve looked something like this:
It’s not the ideal curve – I’d like a steeper slope, and all I got was about 12dB per octave. 24 dB per octave would have been more like it, but we made do.
2. The DBX Driverack PA was installed in the amp rack. The Wizard feature on the driverack was very intuitive. We connected a reference mic to the front panel input, and followed the easy instructions in the quick start guide. The quick setup guide was all the documentation we used. So we EQ’d the room and set up some notch filters. I added a crossover filter to the the input to keep the very lows out of the mains.
I would not have done some of these things if we were putting in a new installation, but working with a limited budget and the need to be pragmatic informed the decisions we made.
There’s more work to be done, specifically with the monitoring system on stage. We’ll tackle that in the next couple of months.
I just used Tokbox today for the first time. I met with a couple of tech director friends. One lives here in Dallas where I live, and the other is in Minnesota. It was a very encouraging time, and we plan on doing it monthly. Sort of a small tech/ leadership forum.
With resources like Talkbox and Skype, I encourage you to find others in your network who you can get advice from, unload on, and pray with. Our jobs can tend to be pretty isolating, and having brothers and sisters to stand by you is not really optional. Ecclesiastes 4:9,10 says “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!”
Does your church play video announcements in your worship services? I was on Gateway’s site the other day and was reminded of just how good their video announcements are. If you do video announcements, or are thinking about it, take a look at these.
Here are some things that help me do things better, easier, or with more style . . .
Evernote
Notes, clippings and audio recordings that are shared between a mac application, website version, and Iphone client. I just ditched backpack for Evernote
nuevasync.com
Bi-Directional syncing of Google mail, calendar and contacts with mobile devices, including the iphone.
Warm Cards Produce better looking video in a variety of lighting conditions, including fliourescent lighting by lying to your camera.
Stock20.com Affordable buyout production music. Good underscores, solo pianos, etc. VERY reasonable pricing.
This information is not exactly new, but here’s a link with some information about the House of Representatives stopping the delay of the digital television transition. Read about it here . . .
The Senate has voted to postpone the digital television transition until June 12. The House still needs to pass it also, but it looks like that will happen. Here’s some links for you to read more about it. I’ll post more shortly when more information is available.
For years now, I have purchased all my alkaline batteries from one supplier, and it’s been a while since I checked prices. So here’s how I checked my prices. I twittered. I tweeted a question “Who do you use for battery supply?” Within half an hour I heard from several tech directors across the country. I double-check what they said, and indeed, everyone seemed to be in agreement. In fact, the responses were 100% in recommending the same company. Sure made my decision easy. The company? Medic Battery.
I spent New Year’s Eve mixing a band for a party. It’s the first year I haven’t spent it at home for quite some time. The band I was mixing consisted of my friend and worship leader, and a few others playing pop, dance, a little country, and some classic rock. They did all cover tunes. Here are some questions I was asking myself last night . . .
1. Why do people hire rock bands and think that it would be good dinner music?
2. Why did I bring Mackie SR 1530’s without anything to elevate them? Wouldn’t the 1521’s be just as effective, as well as being able to mount them on stands?
3. Why did I wear these boots when I knew I’d be standing all night?
EXTRA
I start my new job in less than a week. I’ll be at Highland Park United Methodist Church. My job title is Media Resources Manager. I’ll be responsible for all audio/video/live event-worship service production. Really looking forward to plugging in and getting back to work.
I hope you have a great start to your year, and I’ll soon be posting about my new church and new job. There are some pretty exciting things on my horizon that I’ll be talk about soon.
I recently gave notice to my co-workers and supervisors at Fellowship Dallas that I am taking a new position with another church in our city. January 6, I start at Highland Park United Methodist Church as the media resources manager. This change is after 14 years of service at Fellowship Bible Church Dallas. My wife works at Fellowship and she will be staying, as well as my children, who are pretty plugged into the student ministry. I’m leaving Fellowship well, and wish the very best for it’s continued ministry.
Change – even good change – is always stressfull, but I am eager to start this new position. I’ll still be blogging right here.
I was in a meeting today and we were planning our Christmas Eve services. Maybe it was because the meting didn’t start until 3:30 PM. Maybe we were all meeting’d out. Maybe we all had low blood sugar. But at one point, with six of us in the room, the motion sensor turned the lights out on us. That’s just pretty sad.
Yesterday I installed FrontPocket for Iphone. it’s a native Iphone interface to the popular 37signals product, Backpack.
It gives me access to my to do lists, notes and journal entries. It doesn’t seem to give me access to my writeboards. That’s okay – I’ll just use the notes feature of backpack. I don’t use it to collaborate with others, so that won’t be a big deal
This combination of website / iphone app gives me similar functionality to Evernote, with the fast syncing of my data.
If you use Backpack, you’ll probably like this app. It sells for $9.99 in the app store.
On the first day of our trip to Guadalajara, we installed a motorized screen and video projector in a small chapel. The lesson of the day – Be Willing to throw out the plan.
I was in communication with the church long before the trip, getting distances from the screen to the lens, heights of mounting points, etc. When we arrived and hung the screen, we realized the projector wasn’t nearly high enough. So we had to make a trip to the hardware store. I didn’t say Home Depot, I said hardware store, where the merchandise is lying in piles all over the floor. We needed a different way to mount our projector. We had to remove the nifty Chief I-beam clamp I brought, and go with 1.5″ pipe, with an elbow, and muffler clamps holding the pipe to the cement ledge. The new location for the projector mount was better as far as getting the projector higher, but it also brought a little too far forward. We’re not quite filling the screen with the image any more, but everyone is happy with the results nonetheless.
We had to surface mount the switch for the motorized screen. We didn’t have access to any double pole, triple throw switches, so we drilled holes and mounted the inline switch that came with the screen.
We surface mounted this inline switch, using a little silicone to secure it.
Another lesson – on jobs like these, let the local church members take some ownership in the process. One of the local guys who was helping us is an engineer, and loved the opportunity to devise a mounting solution using locally available parts. He and another member, were also very skilled with a drill. The walls in the church are 10″ thick and solid cement. They had to drill several locations in order to run cables. I fact, if it were not for these men, and their tools they made available, we would have had real trouble getting the job done.
I recently heard a report from the pastor of “The Little Chapel”, that everyone loved the projection. He used it for worship and sermon support. When I trained him, I said he should identify a few people who could be trained, buy he said he wanted to operate it himself. After one Sunday, he told me that he’s going to look for someone else to train.
The front of The Little Chapel, Lake Chapala, Mexico
Video projection in The Little Chapel
My next post will be about the rest of of my trip.
Posted by Brian Davis 
Posted by Brian Davis 
Posted by Brian Davis 
