So, we’re in this series “House Rules.” One of the rules at my house was, if you make a mess you clean it up. BP has made quite a mess. My momma would not be pleased. So, we want to help them in the idea process. This Sunday, during the welcome, we are doing a Top 10 Ways To Stop The Oil Leak. Some of the ones people have come up with are hilarious. If you were to write “Top 10 Ways To Stop The Oil Leak,” what would you put on this list?
Make ‘em funny people. you can send them tojason(at)forefront(dot)org.
Watched the Apple WWDC Keynote yesterday with Steve Jobs presenting the new iPhone 4, and he had some trouble. In the church production world, the guy running things behind the scenes would have been called out, asked why he let that happen, and then told when he messes up- there are souls at stake (I used to think this way, not so much anymore). Why is that? Jon Acuff wrote a funny post about how to get out of troubles like this when they happen at church. Check it out here.
I know we shoot for excellence on Sundays @ Forefront- But, what if something goes wrong? Is it really the end of the world? Some of the most impacting messages have been the ones I thought bombed. The times I talk about from things I thought were funny at church, are drum shields falling on drummers, feedback that sounded like a the space ship from Close Encounters landing, people tripping on cords on the stage and turning it into a silly dance, etc.
It’s those moments that many production teams and leaders cringe over, that I say we embrace. Things happen. We mess up. Things don’t always work out. 9 times out of 10, it’s an accident. From the stage I tell people “God’s got this.” The big stuff. The small stuff. The stuff you wreck. The stuff that’s a total accident.
I would contend that the church is simply an extension of our personal lives. We come together broken and wrecked, to worship a perfect God, and things will happen. Good or bad- God has the power over it in the end. For me it’s a trust issue. Do I trust that God can move in spite of a light failure or a botched transition? Can he break the hearts of people without smooth sermon slides or when someone messes up the words to a song? Yes. Yes He can, and He does.
I love the illustration Jon used in his post about the early followers of Jesus and if they held to this production debacle type of thinking:
“I can’t imagine Peter ever leaning over and telling one of the other disciples, ‘I’ve got to be honest with you, the acoustics of this particular hill Jesus is speaking from are lousy. And I don’t know how we’re going to feed everyone here. The production values of this event are horrible. Amateur hour.’”
I’m learning more and more to trust Jesus in the little things. I used to put a huge emphasis on the “production debacle.” Personally and professionally. I didn’t want to appear unprepared. I never wanted people to think excellence wasn’t important to me. But, in the process I started serving excellence instead of Jesus. I focused on being perfect instead of being His.
It’s a fine line, but I challenge you- don’t get so caught up in the details of life, having everything perfect and in line, that you miss the point of this…
We’re forgiven.
He loves us.
Let’s love others- even through our fumbles and screw ups.
Our set-up would take no time at all.
And our set-up crew would throw a party if our gear was this tiny. Ha.
What is the future of the portable church? How will it adapt to the new technology coming out?
There are all kinds of tech ideas out there waiting to be used in their fullness.
It’s a very cool time to be a portable church.
Even cooler to be a part of Forefront.
If money was no object…
“What creative ideas could you think of that would help engage people at church to communicate God’s message?”
So, we get asked on occasion how things happen here at Forefront.
Small Groups. Community Events. Reaching People Far From God. Music. Video & Design. Etc.
Well, recently someone visited and asked how we got our pre-service stuff “looking so smooth and connecting with people who need the info?” Great question! We focus a great amount of energy not only on making sure people feel comfortable and welcome during our service, but before it ever starts. The lobby has music playing with a party type vibe, people who volunteer are encouraged to be friendly & available, but not stalkers (the difference between the people at Target and walking onto a car dealership parking lot and getting attacked… ya get it?!). Along with that, we have slides that roll with announcements & funny stuff. Then, a few minutes before service begins, we play this:
The song is one edited from some work we did w/ Verve in Las Vegas, and the slides were created for Forefront and Verve, with color differences (their color is red, obviously we roll with green). But, if you don’t have super cool, video editing magic- and you don’t have the money to pay someone to use After Effects, Final Cut, or Adobe Premiere. Here is how to make something like this for your church…
Unfortunately, you need an Apple computer to do this. Many churches have at least one of these laying around, so you should be in good shape. Other things you need to get this done: iMovie, Keynote, a photo editor (either Photoshop-or a free program called Gimp).
Step One: Create Each Image (in parts):
- Make your image in your photo editor in layers.
- Now, save each layer you want to move around in your video, as a PNG file with a transparency (that means there is no background, just the image).
- To make it easier, for each batch of layers that create one whole image, create a folder and number them in the order they appear (i.e. 001.png, 002.png, 003.png, and they are all in folder “Missions Announcement”).
- Once you have all of your layers saved from your photo editor, jump over to Keynote.
Step Two: Create The Raw Video File:
- Keynote is a better quality version of Power Point. You want to create your template size as 1280 x 720 (this is the HD size for our screen, if you shoot 4:3, you can make it 720 x 540).
- Now that you are in your template, you begin to add each layer and with the “Inspector” tool, you can animate the way each item comes in, time it, etc.
- Continue doing that until all your layers are in and you have the animation style you want.
- Next, you want to record your slide show. Click, “File” and “Record Slideshow” and go through your show until it’s finished.
- Once recorded, you go to “File” and “Export.” You will export it as a Quicktime file and the default setting should work just fine unless you want to tweak something, you decide (I just left it as is).
- Then save it into the appropriate folder.
- Repeat steps one and two until you have all the parts to your intro video.
Step Three: Make Your Movie:
- Now, open iMovie and make a 16:9 new project.
- Import all of your videos into one Event.
- Move each of your movies into the project one by one in the order you think they look best.
- Make sure to go into each of the individual video settings and change the Saturation from 100% to somewhere around 135-145%. When exporting out of Keynote, the color goes a little pale compared to what the image actually was.
- Once all the videos are in place, drop your track* in there, export as a Quicktime HD file, and Viola! An opening video that will inform people, get them into service, and get things rolling.
When I came on at Forefront 3 years ago, the website, design and branding was dated (all the staff agreed on this one). Everything looked like the mid 90′s and some even earlier looking by design. Now, you might wonder, “Why does a church care about design? Isn’t it about the gospel? Why are we ‘branding’ ourselves?” Great questions. As a church, we don’t brand the gospel. God has done a great job of that and there is nothing in His amazing story telling that we can make better. He’s done a perfect job with it, so no need to mess with what isn’t broke. As a church, we do want people to remember us. Remember the loving message, kind faces, acts of service, moving in the community, etc. So logos, colors, websites, fliers, and more help us break through the noise & chaos people see and hear everyday and they remember us. And, if we’re living like Jesus, they’ll remember Jesus in the process which is our ultimate goal.
So, being remembered and leaving a mark, whether it’s via the web, a flier, serving, sharing life in community, is a huge deal.
So a little over a year ago Forefront went with Clover for our website hosting/design. Now I cannot say enough how impressed we’ve been with the ease of use, mobile interface, and clean design. It just works. The traffic on our website has increased dramatically and part of that is because people feel more than comfortable sending their friends to an easy to use site.
Going into 2010, we wanted to make an even clearer mark and update our look & feel across the board. So, we contacted Clover about a template design that would fit our new look & feel well. We couldn’t be more pleased with the way it turned out. Also, we reformatted our weekly program to reflect the changes on our site. Our online giving interface will also mirror the same look in the coming days. Now, some might say these things are silly, trivial, not kingdom related. But, when a first time person visits the website, we want them to be spurred on to come on a Sunday. Currently, 65% of first time people each week come because of the website. Also, when they pick up a program, we want it to feel just as comfortable as the site they visited earlier in the week.
When it comes to the program, we’ve made a few changes. It is still in the two sided, tri-fold format, but the color scheme & design has changed. The area for the Weekly Study is bigger with a bigger font, the space for serving opportunities & ways to get plugged in is larger, and we changed around the connection card to reflect a more tech-savy generation. Many of the people who are first-timers visit because of Facebook, Google Search for churches, or the website. We want to keep better track of that and so those minor changes reflect it. Very interesting to see the culture shift in how people connect with churches for the first time.
Below is a snapshot of the website & new program design. If you’re a church looking to check this program design out or get it in an editable Photoshop PSD, please email us at info@forefront.org and we can send you the file. Now, the things here are small in the grand scheme of ministry, but they really aid in our impact of changing lives. So glad Forefront is a place that can hold strong the the essentials, yet change organically with things that need to change to reach people.
We moved our offices awhile ago and since that time we simply had an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet with our logo on the door. Well, that’s changed in the last week. Our friends at the UPS Store hooked us up with a GREAT deal on printing these graphics (our office space spans 3 offices, and these graphics look great across the whole front of the space). Thanks to @allenj for designing the graphics and Steve @theupsstore for giving us such a great deal (they also do our weekly program).
If you ever have any printing needs here in Va Beach. Head to the UPS store at Lynnhaven & Princess Anne Rd and ask for Steve (he’s a super nice guy).
I don’t not have the means, know how, or time to do something like this…
But I will note that I think about ridiculous ideas & concepts like this all the time.
Waiting for a private donor to show up and explain all my ideas. The church would be turned on it’s head (in a good way).
What have you been dreaming that needs to come to reality?
About six months ago I was cleaning out some boxes and found a regrettable disc buried deep in the clutter. I’m sorry Bobby Brown, but I’ve now since thrown away your CD, “Don’t Be Cruel.” It wasn’t cruel to me back then, but now- my ears just can’t take it. I’ve grown, my music catalog has grown. I’m not the same love drunk teenager I once was. I had to lay you to rest (and I’m better for it).
I brought this unfortunate incident up to some friends and began the dialog of “If our personal music changes, evolves, and gets refreshed over time… Do you think our worship to God in song also changes?” I think this is a great thought. I would answer yes. If you are singing the same thing to God you sang to him 20 years ago- it’s time to move on.
Yeah, you can revisit it from time to time, but it’s time to get a new song. The Bible even talks about this idea… In Psalm 33, verse 3, the writer encourages us to, “Sing to Him a new song, play skillfully, shout for joy.” The play skillfully idea of being excellent and having great musicians is another post entirely, but let’s embrace this encouragement to “sing to Him a new song.”
The musicians that have been at God’s church at Forefront have composed some GREAT songs. Songs that fit our culture and our journey with God. But, we’re not always able to write out exactly how we feel and put it to music. But not having the time or availability doesn’t give us the excuse to ignore the “new song” premise. So we’ve looked high and low, listened, researched, explored, and found a ton of music that speaks to the heart of God and the reason why his church here at Forefront exists.
So each week at Forefront we’ll be working through some new music and updating the catalog. We started a little over a year ago and the response has been great. Below is the set list from yesterday. I had multiple Facebook & text messages asking who wrote the “Amazing, Because It Is” song. It’s located below for your listening pleasure.
So we’ve been doing this series Guerilla Lovers for the past couple of weeks and just wanted to follow along some videos we’ve been doing. Paco, our mascot and fun-loving, disco dancing gorilla friend wanted to share some Guerilla Love. When Paco asks, we respond.
Check out two of the three videos we’ve been showing during the series. And, note to self, that is not a thong, just my boxers showing a little bit laying down all 1,000 plus cups. One more video on the way soon…
We wrapped up our “Broken People” series with an unusual message. I struggled to figure out if it was supposed to be drama, story tellers, straight forward message, or what. In the end it was a hybrid of the 3-4 different versions God had led me to write.
Normally we judge a message’s strength by how many people seem to be engaged and impacted. We decided this series wasn’t the case. We wanted to count it simply by the number of cards, decisions, and correspondence we had with people as God moved them through this series.
I was amazed at what God did! He moved people who had been coming from 2 weeks to 10 years. He prompted them to deal with some deep rooted brokenness. In a way I think this series changed my life just as much as it did theirs. I embedded the last message of the series for your viewing pleasure.
(Note: The video starts at 8 seconds. We have an area of black for our tech team at our second campus so they have time to cue it.)
