New Links

I have added several new links to blogs in the Media/Technology Blogs list in the right hand column. Check them out!

Church Safety

A good article from last week was Texas Minister’s Death Prompts New Safety Concerns on Sound & Video Contractor. The death of Pastor Kyle Lake does not need to be easily forgotten. We all need to learn from the mistakes of others as well as the successes. I did not ever hear the final cause of the electrocution of Pastor Kyle Lake but I had my suspicions. If you get nothing else out of this article please heed the words of Chuck Wilson, executive director of the NSCA;

Some users, he notes, have even cut the grounding third prong
off plugs as a means of avoiding buzz. “Lifting that safety ground is an absolute no-no, no matter how the
system buzzes,” he says.

Unfortunately this practice was occurring at my own church. When I came to lead the media ministry I found that every drop cord had the ground prong cut off. I immediately disposed of all of those and purchased new cords. I have also written before about the dangers of overloading circuits and also protecting yourself from over current, lightening and ground faults. (See This Caught My Attention…)

We have to think about the safety of our ministers, musicians and members. In this season of so many Christmas productions it is tempting to bypass and shortcut in some areas because you want to make something work. There are many great creative minds out there that have a certain atmosphere they are envisioning. Many times safety is not on their list of priorities. It is not that they want to be unsafe, they just don’t think of it. That is where we come in. If you have the means to bring that vision to fruition then by all means do so but on the other hand if you can’t do it right and follow all safety procedures then be ready to take a stand and say no.

I challenge all of you involved in technical ministry to examine your equipment this coming year. Some things to look for are of course circuit loading, speaker and lighting rigging, cables and power cords. Also make sure that your team is well trained in electrical safety.
Remember the laws of physics were written by God. They are non-negotiable. Please keep the Lake family and the University Baptist Church family in your prayers.

Giving Thanks

I give thanks to God for all of my fellow bloggers that I enjoy reading. I won’t list them here because they are all listed in the right hand column anyway. A special thanks to Todd Rhoades and Gary Lamb for infecting me with this blogging bug.
I'm thankful for the dedicated guys and gals that are out there giving their best in media ministry for the glory of the Lord.

Now for some favorite scripture passages of thanksgiving.

I will give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness, and I will sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High. Psalm 7:17

I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. Psalm 9:1

Sing praises to the Lord, O you his saints, and give thanks to his holy name.
Psalm 30:4

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High,
Psalm 50:14

With a freewill offering I will sacrifice to you; I will give thanks to your name, O Lord, for it is good. Psalm 54:6

I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing praises to you among the nations. Psalm 57:9

But we your people, the sheep of your pasture, will give thanks to you forever; from generation to generation we will recount your praise. Psalm 79:13

I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart, and I will glorify your name forever. Psalm 86:12

Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name!
For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations. Psalm 100:4-5

Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!
Psalm 118:1

Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. Ephesians 5:4

17Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, 19addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart, 20giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Ephesians 5:17-20

6Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 7rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
Colossians 2:6-7

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Colossians 3:15-17

give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
1 Thessalonians 5:18

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, 2for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.
1 Timothy 2:1-2

“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
Revelation 7:12

Awesome Weekend Experience

What a great, worshipful, wonderful, experience this past weekend, November 19 & 20. Our church hosted our first annual worship conference on Saturday. We hope and pray that it will be the first of many to come. The turn out was light but what do you expect in the heart of USC Gamecock and Clemson Tiger land on the day these two rivals met. People have their priorities and for many it seemed to be football over conference. But God still loves them all and so do we. Next year I think we will plan a more open date.

Our keynote speaker for the conference was Travis Cottrell. Travis is best known for being the worship leader for the Beth Moore conferences. Naturally I had never been to a Beth Moore conference so to be honest I do not believe that I had heard of Travis Cottrell until our Worship Pastor told us who was going to be the keynote speaker. After an opening song by our own Surrender, Travis spoke to the group in the first session. One of the major points that spoke to me was when Travis said “Worship is what we offer God with our lives”. That is absolutely true. Our worship is not in song alone or prayer or listening to a sermon. Those are elements of corporate worship, yes, but how we live our lives and how we offer of ourselves is our true worship to God. A key passage of scripture is Romans 12:1,2. I do not recall what version that Travis used but I have decided to use the English Standard Version here;

Romans 12:1,2 1I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

We are to present ourselves as a living sacrifice. I believe that means that we sacrifice any of our own desires to live as God wants us. We are to surrender to His will so that we may be holy and acceptable. That is accomplished in part by the renewal of our minds. We renew our minds by reading, studying and meditating on the Word of God. Also by spending time with God in prayer and listening. We also renew our minds by lifting up praise and thanksgiving to our Heavenly Father in personal time and corporately.

Our breakout sessions consisted of the Theology of Worship, The Arts as Worship, and the Philosophy of Using Media in Worship. I, of course, attended the latter. We invited Mark Rodenhauser of Digital Lighthouse Media to speak. Mark has had an interesting life including 12 years playing in the NFL and then after retiring he started producing professional media content for Fortune 500 companies. He is now obeying the call of the Lord on his life to teach, train, equip and enhance the body of Christ by enabling churches, ministries, organizations and Christian businesses to communicate more clearly and effectively. Mark is a no nonsense, tell it like it is, kind of guy. I like that. He speaks from his heart and his heart is for the Lord. Thanks Mark!
Let’s face it; society is not turning back from the technological advances it has made. People are becoming more visual and kinesthetic learners than ever before. That is a major reason for using media in our worship services and throughout the church. But Mark made an excellent point when he said “No media at all is better than bad media”. I agree. If you can’t do something well for the glory of God then you should not do it all. The Lord deserves our very best in all that we do.

The final session of our worship conference was once again led by Travis Cottrell. Travis challenged worship leaders to be real and made some great points about how to build a worship team consisting of choir, musicians and vocalist. As I listened I realized that most of the points he was making should be the criteria for any team’s ministry partners. Like, ongoing relationship with Christ, willingness to serve or servant’s heart, joyful attitude and desire to learn to share the vision; to name a few.

Overall, I believe the conference was very beneficial to all that attended. We had a great time of fellowship and it was a good networking event also. I met others that are involved in media ministry and what they are facing in their churches. It renewed in me a desire to develop a technical fellowship in this area so that all of us involved in a technical ministry can learn from each other, train together and share resources when applicable. I’m really starting to see a coming together of churches in this area to do Kingdom work instead of denominational work. I pray that we will become the body of Christ instead of different congregations of worshipers. A technical fellowship could be a step in that direction.

Saturday night we offered a FREE concert to the community in the local school district auditorium featuring Travis Cottrell. I set up video over there and then had to take care of family business so I was unable to attend. I heard that it was a great time of worship and that everyone enjoyed it immensely.


Sunday morning we combined our morning services into one. Unfortunately our sanctuary is not large enough to accommodate having both groups there at the same time. That is why we have two morning worship services of course. We had to use our gymatorium venue. It is a very acoustically live space. It took me a couple of years to work out all of the equipment issues and learn how to mix in that room. Now it sounds great. Travis was our guest worship leader and was absolutely phenomenal. His voice was weakened from the concert the night before in which he must have really let it loose. He still sounded awesome. I learned that day that Travis Cottrell is of the same ilk as Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman and Paul Baloche. As he said after one of the songs we “almost got our praise groove on”. The house was rocking to say the least. That is saying something for this fairly conservative Southern Baptist church. I haven’t received any complaints yet. The week is still young though.
I’m glad that I had purchased all new Shure SM58 & 57s microphones a couple of weeks ago. What a difference in the vocals from last time we used this venue. These microphones are a vast improvement over the Behringer mics that I had inherited. The frequency response was outstanding. The fidelity was astonishing and gain before feedback was maximized tremendously. I’m still amazed at how well some of the other equipment is still operating. God wants to use it and that is all there is to it.

Sunday night we baptized two young ladies and praised God for bringing them into the body of Christ. We also were thrilled to hear a mission report from one of our own. A couple that we have come to love and admire. They put everything down in their lives to obey the call of the Lord to the mission field and are now serving Him in Mozambique. They had an awesome presentation and it was great to hear how the Lord is working through them to bring villagers into His kingdom. I was also tasked to build a photo slide show for the reception following the service. I used 491 photos that they had and built the slide show in SongShow Plus. I really didn’t think that SongShow would handle it because we have been having issues in that area here lately. Like I said before though; God wanted to use it so it worked. We had another great time of fellowship that night too.

As you can now see it was a great, wonderful, worshipful experience. I pray that God raises up gifted, talented, willing people to serve so that experiences like this would become commonplace in churches everywhere.

I thank God for Travis Cottrell, Daniel, Mark Rodenhauser, Roger Patterson, RachelAnne Fleming, Rusty Fleming our worship pastor, Dave Stanford our senior pastor, our family from Africa and last but not least our choir. I didn’t catch Daniel’s last name but he was with Travis and played guitar. All of you were used of God to bring people to a place of authentic worship including myself. THANK YOU!


Ok, Travis was that nice enough for you? :>

Photo #1 - Our own praise group Surrender
Photo #2 - Me with Travis Cottrell
Photo #3 - Travis Cottrell with Roger Patterson
Photo #4 - Travis & Daniel at sound check

New Shure Web Feature

Shure has a new web feature called Build Your Band. With Build Your Band you select the instrument or vocalist that you want in your band. The feature recommends what mic to use whether you want wired or wireless and if you want the basic or a higher tier microphone. You can name your band members and when you are all finished you can print out the recommendations for future reference. The feature also provides links for subscribing to all of Shure’s free online and printed publications, dealer locator and the awesome solution database. A vast majority of Shure’s publications are written by Tim Vear who is one of their senior application engineers and is an absolute genius when it comes to the science of sound.
This new interactive feature at Shure is educational and fun. Check it out!

Thankful for Anthony Coppedge & ChurchNerd

Many times I have made reference to Anthony Coppedge and his blog posts because they speak to me in this ministry.  I also want you to know of another great blog that I frequent and that is Church Nerd.  Whereas Anthony speaks to the human element often, Church Nerd speaks to the technical side more.  I’m fairly proficient on the technical side (media) but I’m weak on the people side (ministry).  I have learned a great deal from Anthony but I have also learned some great things from Church Nerd as well.  For example Anthony recently posted about building Tech Teams and Church Nerd turned me onto offering e-mail subscriptions through Feedblitz which you will see to the right.  (Sign up now):>)

One of the reasons I started this blog was to be able to write about my experiences and hopefully growth in this ministry.  I also wanted to help others along the way and be able to network with the people that are getting the job done.  Anthony and Church Nerd blogs are getting the job done by aiding me in technical ministry and by ministering to me with their knowledge and understanding.  

In this season of giving thanks I must say that I thank God for these two blogs.

I think I will post of more things that I’m thankful for in this ministry in the days to follow.  Let me know what you are thankful for in media ministry or in general.

THANKS!  

Veterans Day

I sincerely thank those of you that are carrying on in the tradition of character, fortitude and honor of defending our freedom.





To those of you that I served with; I will never forget you! Although I don't know where most of you are now I still think of you and pray for you.





To the families of those we lost along the way; I still carry that regret but I want you to know that they will always be in my memory. I pray for you also.

Posts on Worship Leaders & Music

A ran across a couple of excellent posts this morning about worship leading and music.

Check out Drawing Musicians by Gary Lamb the Mad Babbling Church Planter.

Also check out American Idol: Three Lessons for Worship Leaders by Phil Christensen who is worship pastor at Cedar Hills Evangelical Free Church (CHEF) in Cedar Rapids, Iowa This article was posted by Todd Rhoades on his Monday Morning Insight blog.

Nooooooo! It's Budget Time!

It is that time of the year that most of us in a technical ministry dread.  At least I know that I do.  It is time to propose a budget for next year.  That budget proposal will be submitted to the stewardship committee or board of directors or the staff.  We will be asked a bunch of questions about that budget.  Most of the people asking the questions will not have any idea what we are talking about.  That budget will be slashed to a maintaining budget in which there will be no room for any of the significant changes (equipment purchases) that need to be made.  Once again most of the budget will have to be reserved for the year for the “just in case” emergency that arises from time to time.  Does this sound familiar to you?  I believe that this is the case in most churches across this nation that uses some kind of media in their worship services.  How do we effectively communicate the needs of media or technical ministry?  If you have a board or staff led church then I think that task is much simpler than the committee run church.  With a board or with staff you have a much easier time educating and showing and relaying the needs.  I know in my own personal experience that the staff is usually sold because they have first hand knowledge of just how much goes into providing quality in audio, video and lighting.  But how do you effectively communicate and educate an entire church?  I mean every year you have a new stewardship committee that you start all over with.  I’m afraid that I don’t have the answer to educating an entire church but I do take every opportunity to be open about what the media ministry team does and how much time it takes and what all goes into building the media program for a service.  I also open up training to anyone in the church that is interested in audio, video and lighting.  I guess you could say that I’m chipping away at it one member at a time.  
I believe that the only other way to educate your members is to invite professionals and experts to your church to speak on the issue of using media and technology.  This year we are starting a worship conference for our area with key note speaker and worship leader Travis Cottrell.  One of our break-out sessions will be about using media in worship.  We have invited Mark Rodenhauser of Digital Lighthouse Media to share what the Lord has laid on his heart about using media for God’s glory.  I hope in years to come to invite others such as Anthony Coppedge, Brad Herring and/or Kent Morris who have been instrumental in teaching me how to be more effective in what God has called me to do in a technical ministry.

Now when talking about a budget of course you are talking about how the church is going to spend the money that God has entrusted to us.  To tell you the truth I hate talking about money.  I have never been comfortable asking for money especially for ministry or myself.  I guess I have seen too many examples of money being abused and never want to give the impression that I’m greedy or do not take stewardship seriously.  Unfortunately the reality in a media or technical ministry is you get what you pay for.  I could easily rattle off $25,000 of equipment that could be purchased and used effectively in the church but in the overall operating budget of a church is that feasible?  Not in most churches.  So what is the magic percentage of the total budget that media and/or technical ministries should occupy?  I really don’t believe that you can give a concrete answer on that question.  I believe it depends on the needs of your media and technical ministries.  Your needs should be based on the overall vision of your church.  What are the goals of the church?  Who are you trying to reach?  What is the style of your worship?  You must be clear on the vision of your church to understand what you need in media to help accomplish that vision.  
You ultimately leave it in the hands of those who will develop the budget.  This is a job that I do not envy.  I ask for you to pray for those who will be developing and presenting your budget.  I can tell you right now that they are under pressure from everyone.  Pray that your whole church will be good stewards of the time, money and resources that God gives you to use.

I most certainly have a lot to learn.  I know equipment but it is the intangible things in which I must gain knowledge to become effective in ministry.  Like leading a team, teaching others, budgeting and issues about pay and becoming full time.  I will continue to learn and seek God’s will for answers to all of these.  What more can I do?  


I’ve been prompted to post on these subjects once again by what I have read posted by Anthony Coppedge on his blog.  Please check out A New Change for Anthony Coppedge and Poll: Church Technology Budgets.