Money is Not Equal to Value

There is a difference between "valuing church media" and "spending lots of money on church media." Just because a church spends loads of money on a bunch of media equipment, does not mean that church values media. A church can spend as much money as they want on equipment, but if they don't know how to use it effectively to communicate the gospel, then they are back at square one.

Hiring a full-time Media Arts Director is crucial for a church nowadays. It doesn't even have to be a media arts director, just someone who is paid to commit time to communicating the gospel effectively through media.

Yes, a church can say that their volunteers are great, and that they can run the show, but having a staff of volunteers doesn't always translate into effective communication.

All I'm saying is, if a church is willing to spend money on media, that is not equal to a church valuing media. Instead of a church wasting $60,000.00 on 2 video routers, and an AMX remote panel, why don't they use that money to hire someone to actually create good content. After all, isn't the content that we produce and communicate more important than the medium that we use to communicate it?

The Changing Face of Christianity

I've got some more Missions Conference love for you all.

During last night's session Dr. Soong-Chan Rah of North Park Seminary spoke. He talked about how the church is becoming more African and Asian and less American in its population. I haven't quite processed everything that he talked about yet, but here are my notes on what he talked about.

"The Next Evangelicalism"

Dr. Soong-Chan Rah

Acts 15

• Jerusalem Council
• Animosity towards Gentiles
• Changing demographics

The Changing Face of Christianity

By the year 2050 the church will be:

• Africa - 29%
• Asia - 20%
• Europe - 16%
• Lat. Am. - 22%
• N. Am. - 12%

Those are the end of his notes, and now here are my thoughts.

He also threw out some other crazy stats that made it clear that Christianity is becoming more and more minority in population in America, and less white American. What does that mean for us as Christians?

It means we may need change our strategy a bit. Maybe be a bit more sensitive to the African and Asian culture in our churches. 

He also talked about how he thinks the church in North America today are conforming to culture in their structure and formats, and especially in their buildings. He made an illustration by comparing an older colonial church with a church of today. This illustration seemed like a bit of a stretch to me, but if you take a picture of a ceiling in an older church and turn it upside-down it looks similar to the shape of an ark, and he made a play on words by saying "ark-itecture." But now today we build our churches to look more like shopping malls, or entertainment venues. His point was that in early history they did not build their churches to conform to culture, but today we want to appeal to the culture so much that we are conforming to it. The "ark-itecture" illustration was a bit of a stretch for me. But I somewhat understand what he's saying. 

More thoughts on this later. 

Do you agree with these thoughts? 

Do you think the American church today has conformed too much to culture?

Bathroom Stalls & Ministry Signs

So I spent most of my time yesterday at my church here in Chicago, Park Community Church because I was volunteering on the tech team and I worked for all 3 services.

So I was sitting in one of the bathroom stalls at Park doing my business and I hung my hoodie on the coat hook and sat down. When I looked up I saw a 8 1/2x11 sign for a ministry at Park for people who are just starting out in their faith journey, and I thought to myself "Hmm, thats a good idea, to put up signs about different ministries." But not only is it a good idea, but they were very intentional about it. So intentional that they moved the coat hook to the right side of the door so that they could put a sign directly in the middle. Most coat hooks on stall doors are directly in the middle, but people at Park had planned on putting those signs up so they moved the coat hooks.

Here is a nice little picture I took, cause I knew I was going to write a blog post about this as soon as I saw it.

I know you are probably thinking that this is a ridiculous thing to be writing about, but if you think about it, it is the small things that just put something over the top. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we should choose a church based on its convenience, or cultural relevance, or branding, but it is a small thing like that that makes people realize how intentional a church is about investing into people's lives and transforming their lives with its ministries.

Maybe you think I'm completely off on this one, but I don't think I am.

If you think I am, let me know.

There's an App for That...Even Church?

So it turns out that when you have a job that requires you to mostly sit behind a computer all day then you don't really feel like sitting behind a computer when you go home. Imagine that. So that is one reason my blog has been sparse lately. But I'm back with another fun-filled post.

Today I've been in the office working on an intro video for our Pastor's new live internet TV show that we are launching. My office is connected to our Youth Pastor's office, so we get to interact and talk alot during the day. He asked me what I was working on and I told him about Pastor's new show which he thought was really cool. He then proceeded to tell me about an iPhone app that he saw a commercial for last night from Nationwide Insurance. Apparently if you get in a car wreck then you can use the app to fill out a form, take pictures of the car and send it to your insurance company all in a matter of minutes. He was amazed by this.

He then asked me a very stimulating question. What is something that the church can do that no one else has done before? Something that is very simple and easy to use, but is very effective in helping people. It doesn't have to be an iPhone app, although the iPhone is the future, but anything that is very easy to use, and very effective.

This is interesting to think about. There are almost endless possibilities with the power of the iPhone so I think that writing an app for that would be a good place to start. But what else can be done? I think interactive text messaging is one of those things.

We also must think about our target audience. Obviously something like this is going to be targeted at the younger generation. Anyone age 60 and above probably isn't going to understand the purpose of these type of things, and might even end up getting upset over it.

Here at Calvary we must be very aware of this. It is definitely not right for people to get upset over such things, because they are definitely effective tools, but we must be able to reach out to all age groups. But sometimes we just need to forget about the people who might get upset and continue to use the tool, whatever it is.

What does your church do that is unique?

Do they use any effective tools that implement interesting technology?

sports ministry emphasis?

I had an interesting conversation with my roommate Kyle Isabelli tonight as we went on an adventure to buy some Chicago Cubs tickets from a guy in a parking lot. Yeah I know sounds kinda sketch, right? But it turned out to be legit and he got the tickets and we both made it out alive, so thats always good.

So back to the interesting conversation. We started talking about our futures after school. Kyle started talking about his home church (Grace Church) and how big of an emphasis they put on sports ministry. They have several sports leagues that they run almost year-round, and one of their biggest ministries is a Jr. High Upwards basketball league which has about 400 kids. Thats awesome!

The interesting thing is that they don't have a full-time Sports Ministry Pastor on staff, instead they just spread out the different sports ministry responsibilities to different pastors in the church. Apparently this has kept things running pretty well for a while, but Kyle said alot of times it takes away from the other ministries that these pastors are leading, which is not good. A full-time Sports Ministry Pastor would definitely fix this problem, and would most likely add even more to the Sports Ministries at the church.

Then I look at my church and see how what seems like little emphasis they put on sports ministry. I'm not sure how much stuff they do for adults in the church, such as basketball leagues, or other things, but I know its not a huge emphasis. I wonder how many more people we could bring into the church through sports who would otherwise never step foot into a church. I believe that it could be quite a few, and they would get a different perception of what the church is, compared to just coming in on a Sunday morning.

There are so many benefits to having sports ministry in your church. I think Calvary Baptist needs to do more of it.

What kind of an emphasis does your church put on sports ministry?

Do they do sports ministry at all?

Let me know, leave a comment.

I'm trying to get a feel for what other churches are doing in sports ministry.

adapting to the audience

It is interesting to visit different churches and to see how they're services are structured, and how much that structure has to do with the target audience. I just watched a bit of video from a friend's church (Harmony Christian Church) in Georgetown, KY, and apparently the church is bigger than I thought, which is awesome.

I've never heard this friend speak publicly, so initially it was interesting to here how he speaks to his church, but there are just alot of things that are done different in a church like that compared to a church like my home church. The Pastor and my friend, Dean, of Harmony Christian Church wears a t-shirt and jeans while speaking, and starts out his message by just talking to the people. He makes it very personal.

There are alot of things that this church does differently from my home church.

They have a table in the back of the auditorium with Bibles for those people who did not bring their Bibles or do not have one. This table does not exist without first encouragement that the people bring their own Bibles, but it is back there as a secondary resource.

Then there are other things. Much of the setting is very different, and more contemporary.

Many of these things are as such to adapt to the audience, and obviously Harmony Christian's audience is young, so the things that they do will draw that audience into the church.
The audience at my home church is for the most part adult and seniors. Over the past 10 years the audience has become somewhat younger, but the older audience still dominates, and therefore the setting and such must be adapted to suit the audience. But many times I fear that we are completely missing the present generation. And not only the present generation but more importantly those who are lost, or those who have never stepped foot into a church.

I fear that many times the suit and tie scare alot of people away. Not only the dress, but sometimes our attitudes toward people who have never stepped foot into a church, if they wreak of urine will an usher treat them like anyone else who comes into the church?

I hope so, but I can only speak for myself

I've learned alot since living in Chicago for the past 3 years, and it is alot that I will continue to build upon in my future experiences with the church, whether it is at home at Calvary, or here in Chicago, or somewhere else.

Geek Alert

Well I woke up on this morning of March 29, 2009 to find that it was absolutely pouring down snow outside, I couldn't believe it. Gotta love springtime in Chicago. I had some friends visiting this weekend Bill & Melody Dickens with their son and good friend of mine Joseph Dickens, and they were supposed to attend church with me this morning, but they called very disappointed to say that they were going to go ahead and drive home as to avoid the snow getting worse. So I attended the early service at Park Community alone.

WARNING: Geek Alert!
Since I went alone I decided to sit behind the media/tech booth and kinda see how their system operates, and dang is it sophisticated. When the church built their new building they just decided to go top-of-the-line with everything, and this included the media department. They had a top-of-the-line sound board, light system, and video/projection system.

It took me a while to figure out but they had an iMac and a Macbook Pro running, and it looked like all they were using the iMac for was playing ambiance music before the service and then recording the service audio. Then they were using the Macbook Pro for what at first looked like projecting and controlling the words on the screen for worship but after watching for a while I realized that they were using that machine for the sole purpose of controlling the backgrounds and videos that were projected behind the words. It looked as though they were using a completely different machine for controlling the words, but this machine was nowhere to be seen in the tech booth. So I still have yet to figure that one out, but I found it very interesting.

So anyways, I write all that to say this, I realized today that there are alot of dreams that I have for my church back home and for the media dept. but most of these dreams have come from watching my church here in Chicago, and these two churches are very different in setting and context, so maybe all of these ideas shouldn't be implemented at my church in KY.

Secondly, I realized that to do implement some of these ideas cost a very large amount of money for hardware and software, and that is money that I know my church would not be willing or able to spend for their media dept.

So I came away from the service today having learned much from the sermon about personal standards for our lives, as well as learning much about the way my church in Chicago does media. It made me want to start serving there in the media dept. so bad, and I still might, but there are just so many other commitments in my life right now. I don't think I could do it.

Anyways, I know this post might not have been beneficial for some of my readers who aren't as geeky as I, but I hope that it was beneficial for those who are interested in this area of media in the church.

How does your church do media? Do they put a big emphasis on it or not?

a good reminder

I had a great talk today with a good friend of mine who is also a mother of a good friend of mine. We talked about various different things, but one topic of discussion was the church that I visited this past weekend called Crosspoint Church. Out of this conversation spawned a conversation about media in the church.

Some of you know that I have many ideas about media in the church and how it should be used. I have a burden to implement these ideas in my home church. But something I was thinking about after that conversation took place today was that this burden was not so that I could be recognized or looked at for the things that I am doing in the church, but so that the church could become better at outreaching to those around it, and eventually bring glory to God through this.

I have never said that I want to be recognized for things that I do or am going to do in media in the church, but I have never said that I don't want to be recognized either.

Today I just realized the importance of giving all of the glory to God for the things we do for/in the church. All of these media ideas that I have, that I would like to implement in the church should all come with purpose of glorifying God, and they all do, but I think I need to think more consciously about this purpose.

Just a good reminder