How to Set a Stage in Thirty Seconds

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.

Digital Transition Update

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 . . .

Digital Television Transition Most Likely Delayed

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.

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/16679.cfm

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090127/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/digital_transition_delay

http://www.churchtecharts.org/Blog/archives/621

Happy New Year

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.

New Chapter in My Life

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.

How Lively Are Your Meetings?

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.

A Few Things I am Thankful for

• For my wife, Julie.  This March will be 20 years with this woman who has shown me the meaning of selflessness.
• For the saving work of Jesus.
• For my kids.  Good kids.
• For my friends Sammy and Julie, for their influence in my life, and their constant example to me and Julie.
• For God’s constant care and provision for my family.
• For my mother-in law, Beth, who is an example of grace and courage in extreme difficulty.
• For God again, proving to me that the most difficult circumstances are not out of His reach, or too hard for Him to handle.
• For a great group of local tech directors, and some that are not so local.  Guys who really love God, love what they’re doing, and who are willing to come together in a spirit of cooperation to build the Kingdom.
• For technology and the arts.
• For a great group of volunteers who serve without a trace of ego
• For repentance, for change, and for the love of so many in my life, and in the life of my family

Finally Headed to Mexico

My wife and I have had a trip to Guadalajara, Mexico on the schedule for several months now. The first time we were supposed to go we discovered shortly before we were to leave that Continental Airlines had an excess baggage embargo in effect. We were planning on packing a lot of the equipment we’re going to install as extra baggage. So our trip got bumped. We rescheduled our trip, were ready to go, and Hurricane Ike cancelled our flight for us. Back to the drawing board and trying to get everyone’s schedule together. So now we’re set to go this Sunday after church. Me, my wife, my good friend and worship leader with his wife, and another couple will head to Guadalajara.

We’ll be installing multimedia equipment in church just south of the city. We’ll also install a paging system at an orphanage.

This is what I call a missional vacation. Plenty of hang-out time, but spending a good deal of the time putting these tech systems in and training on their operation. I’m not really sure what kind of internet access I’ll have while there so I may have to resume blogging on my return.

Behind the Mixer

Behindthemixer.com is a church audio blog featuring training articles, videos, product reviews and interviews with church sound techs. Recently they interviewed me and you can read it here.

Friday at WFX – Wireless Issues

Last Friday I sat in on a presentation about the future of wireless mics, white spaces, 700 MHz, etc. Here are some bullets from the presentation . . .

• We will indeed have to leave the 700 MHz range – it’s just a matter of time. (We really have known that for a while)
• Most cities will have two channels within the digital TV range reserved for wireless mics, and top twenty markets (by size) will have an additional 1-2 channels as well.
• The FCC will rely on two technologies for whitespace device compatibility: 1. Geolocation (GPS) and the use of a Database. Users can register their wireless mics in a database, and the whitespace devices are supposed to check the database before allowed to operate in a specific area. 2. The whitespace devices are supposed to employ spectrum sensing, and not operate where wireless mics are already operating. The people from Shure and Sennheiser were optimistic that even though the spectrum sensing has not been overwhelmingly successful, that they will get there in time.

Here’s how it impacts me and my church so far:

1. More than likely the FCC will not require all users in the 700 MHz range to vacate immediately, so I;m not panicked about replacing the 17 or cso channels that I have. I am going to replace them sooner than later, but I’m going to take my time and work this smart, not fast.
2. I have decide to purchase the best systems we possibly can, because those are the ones that are the most tunable, tune over the widest range, and in some cases can actually be retuned to new frequencies altogether.
3. I am going to get our entire campus on locked into one manufacturer. I haven’t decided which one yet. Currently we have a mixed bag od Sennheiser, Telex, AKG, and Audio-Technica from years and years of people giving us mics, new tech directors buying different systems, etc.
4. I am going to have a competent RF specialist come to our facility, do a frequency scan, recommend antennas, antenna placement, frequencies, etc. I will have either the vendor or manufacturer commission our wireless systems throughout the campus.
5. I am going to re-evaluate how much wireless we actually use. Certainly our pastor will want to preach with one, and we’ll need a few for dramas, and misc use. But all my BGV’s and maybe even our lead vocal will go with a wired mic. I may be able to drop a few channels. It going to hurt enough just to buy what we need.

Wednesday Evening at WFX

My main purpose at WFX is to hit the exhibit floor and check out the new products and technologies. Tonight I attended a tour of the newly remodeled First Baptist Church of Houston. What I saw was very inspiring. They have completely remodeled and re-equipped their Sanctuary. But the part I was most interested in was the video projection. Camron Ware, visual arts director at Irving Bible Church (Sorry, Camron if I didn’t get your title just right) spent some time down here a while back and shared what he’s ben doing at Irving Bible for some time. I could go on, but let me instead just send you to his blog. Camron is a very talented and humble servant who is passionate about sharing his ideas and helping the local church.

Large Scale Video Projection at First Baptist Church, Houston

After the tour, I was able to grab some dinner with Kirk Longhofer. Check out his blog at Technopraxis.org. I had met Kirk briefly at NAB and again at the Echo Conference, but was really glad to sit down with him for a couple of hours and talk about, well, everything.  Kirk is covering the show as a guest bloger, so be sure to check out his site for news from this year’s show.

Kim Hill Leading Worship at Fellowship Dallas

This Sunday, Kim Hill is leading worship at my church. Kim is a cool person and a really genuine worship leader. If you’re in Dallas, come worship with us this Sunday. 9:30 and 11:00 AM.

VisualHub and AudialHub Have Been Discontinued

Techspansion, the makers of VisualHub, has closed it doors.  I have used VisualHub for some time now and am very disappointed to see it go away.  AudialHub, another product from Techspansion has been discontinued as well.  There are online instructions to back up your software should you need to switch computers in the future.

The author of the software has left source code for a couple of new products developed and available (hopfefully soon) at sourceforge.net

Student Ministry Live CD

Recently our high school ministry recorded a live concert they called “Hands Up”. They’ve been in the studio overdubbing and mixing for the last couple of weeks. My summer intern, Matt, recently updated his Facebook status with: “Mixing like Hell to bring glory to Heaven“. Here’s Matt in the studio. He recently went back to School at the University of Texas.

Echo Conference and Propresenter

I’ve been looking forward to the Echo Conference for a while now.  Knowing that ProPresenter would represented there, I was going to make a point of asking when they’ll be officialy supporting their new support for the Decklink Blackmagic card and the alpha keying it enables.  Just in time for the conference, I got an email from Renewed Vision announcing the new update (v3.4) that officially supports this functionality.

Remote Video Baptism

When my church remodeled a movie theater a few years ago for our new church home, we did it without baptistry. There just wasn’t a place to put one. So we put a swimming pool set in our parking lot and baptize 2-3 times a year. But when we designed our AVL systems we did include audio, video and intercom drops on the main parking lot side of our building. Every time we talk about baptisms we throw around the idea of doing them remotely and showing it live in our worship service, but the leadership has always opted to go with an all outdoor event after church.

So today I set audio and a video camera outside to line check and make sure we are good to go with live outdoor baptism in our worship service. Having sound systems on both ends requires a mix minus in order to avoid feedback. Lake Pointe Church does this with excellence, and if you live in the Dallas area it’s worth a trip out there to see it. I’m sure Jason Cole would show you around.

I’ve got two lines of coax video, two cat 5’s, and 6 audio pairs to work with. We tested today with a Canon XL2 using just the coax, and running composite video to our control room. I’m astounded by how good the video looked just using the composite video. I may try some baluns on the Cat 5 and see how much of a difference I see. Looking forward to actually doing this in a worship service.

Church Visit

Today I was able to visit a friend’s church. I went to Bent Tree Bible Fellowship, where my friend Greg Atkinson is the Creative Parts Director (Yes, it’s a typo – see comments). It’s so good for me to step out of what we do every week and get some fresh perspective from others. My goal is to do this quarterly. I saw some fresh backgrounds that I’ll definitely be purchasing this week. Here’s a few links . . .

http://www.sermonvideos.com/FileCloseup.html?&ID=26170

http://www.sermonvideos.com/FileCloseup.html?&ID=25974

http://www.sermonvideos.com/FileCloseup.html?&ID=26144

http://www.sermonvideos.com/FileCloseup.html?&ID=26147

http://www.sermonvideos.com/FileCloseup.html?&ID=26045

http://www.sermonvideos.com/FileCloseup.html?&ID=25874

Getting Ready for Mexico

In a week and a half I will be going to Mexico to install some multimedia gear in a church. We’re putting in a motorized screen, data projector, and a laptop with Easy Worship. Then we’re putting in an indoor/outdoor paging system for an orphanage that the church supports.

This will be basically a “missional” vacation. It’s an English speaking congregation, and they’re flying us down there, and paying for the equipment. So we’ll be there to install and train, then also hang out when we’re not busy with the church and orphanage. My wife is going with me, and we’re joining two other couples – we’re really looking forward to it.

Here’s a list of what we’re taking . . .

Da-lite slimline motorized screen

Sharp 3,000 lumen data projector

Cat 5 VGA baluns (kramer pico series)

Laptop with Easy Worship pre-installed.

Outdoor paging horns, paging mic, speaker cable, TOA paging amplifier

Back from Germany and Back in the Saddle

I returned from Germany yesterday and am at church today.  We had a great trip.  My oldest son went with me and we spent time with to new churches in Muenster and Munich.  I shot and edited a couple of pieces for the churches to use on their websites.  I’ll post those videos later.

While I was gone I missed two services (which I had planned on) and also a memorial service for a staff member who passed away the day before we left.  One of our team members worked particularly close with that staff member and stayed in Dallas.

A GREAT BIG THANK YOU to my crew.  I love being gone and knowing things are taken care of.

Thanks, guys.

Brian

Hang Up Your Cape

A while back I was visiting with the vice president of a very successful audio/video/lighting design/build firm. He was telling me how they had their employees working at levels that were simply not sustainable. They were getting a lot of work done, but when something came up requiring more than they were already producing, they could not meet the challenge. Or maybe they could meet the challenge, but at a great personal cost. I’m talking about personal margin, or emotional and physical capital.

When they realized what they were doing to their employees, they made some changes. Now they have a saying – “No one gets to were a cape around here”. Now they have employees who enjoy their work more and do a better job. As my friend explained to me, “Now when we really need for someone to put the cape on, we let them, but we make sure it goes right back into the closet”.

My friend told me that now they actually turn down work if they don’t think they can do it without totally stressing out their staff.

This story is especially poignant for us in the worship technology field. usually there is on-one around to tell us to go home. Couple that with the fact that most of us really love what we do, and you have the makings of a superhero mentality – Here we are to save the day! But we need to hang up our capes. Recently I was at a gathering of technical directors, and some brought up the question -”What do you do when you’re being overworked and no-one sees it? How do you make it know if they’re not hearing you?”. For me it has been a matter of letting people live with disappointment. Obviously, I have to carefully weigh who I’m disappointing and how often, but the fact is I can’t do everything. I wasn’t designed by God to do everything. I have had to prioritize my job, and do my core job first, then when I can I get around to to some of the other projects that aren’t mission critical.

I also have to recognize that a lot of my dilemma has been self inflicted. Most of the time I stay late, it’s not because I have to. it’s usually because I’m not at a stopping point, and I don’t want to leave something unfinished. As I get older, I have to look at this as a matter of maturity, and be willing to walk away, and come back to it the next day or the next week.

Hanging up the cape is not easy. But if you do I really think you’ll like your job more, be more productive, less stressed, and happier. I know your family will be.