Wk. 4 At My Church (Using EasyWorship)

The journey continues. Today was week 4 of “the switch”. Remember 2 Sundays ago, I trained 2 people on EasyWorship. One ran it last week and the other ran it today. I just came in for about 10 minutes before the first service for a “refresher” with Amy. She rememebered well from 2 weeks before and ran both services alone today. I was in a Sunday School class during one service, then sat with a friend and my wife during the second service.

I also popped by the church this past Friday afternoon to train two new people. One of the people I trained is the person who had been creating the slides each week in PowerPoint – she was a crucial one to train so that myself or the Technical Director, Brian, don’t have to set up the slides each week. Now she can continue to prepare the slides (which is part of her job), but now on EasyWorship, instead of PowerPoint. I showed her how easy it was to connect to CCLI’s SongSelect Lyric Service and import songs into the EasyWorship database. It really is simple and impressive. She caught on quick and will now begin preparing the EasyWorship slides each week during the week.

A SIDE NOTE OR MINI-LESSON:

In my conferences on “Beginning and Developing a Media Ministry”, I talk about two teams:

1. The PREPARATION team – A person(s) who creates the slides each week (that’s who I trained Friday)
2. The PRESENTATION team – These are the people who come in on Sunday morning and just run what has already been created for them.

PERSONAL THOUGHT:

This was an especially cool and out of the ordinary Sunday for my church. The theme/focus was “worship”. If you know me, you know I was a happy camper. The pastor wove his message throughout the entire service. He actually started the message before we even sang our first song (that really blew people’s minds). He pretty much magnified God and said why we worship, which led into a time of worship. We would sing 2 to 3 songs, then he would come back up and teach some more. The pattern repeated a few times. It was a great worship experience and a nice break from the norm.

 

Good Conference, Bad Trip Home

Anthony and I left this afternoon and had a wild trip home. It’s 12:30am and I’m just now home. I was supposed to be back around 9pm. We missed our flight and had to switch airlines and take a later flight. When we finally arrived in Dallas, wouldn’t you know it: my bag didn’t make it!

Other than the trip home, it was a great conference. I met some great people and got to see some friends that I haven’t seen in a while. Anthony and I were able to get some interviews for our new podcast, which launches very soon.

Look for upcoming interviews with:

Kem Meyer (Granger Community Church)

Mark Batterson (Theater Church)

Brad Abare (Church Marketing Sucks)

Shawn Wood (Seacoast Church)

 

Back in Good ‘Ol Dallas!

I was on the road (or “in the air” would be more appropriate) the past 2 weeks. It’s so good to be back home with my family after 2 trips back to back.

1. Two weeks ago I taught some classes at Church Music Oklahoma, which takes place in Oklahoma City. Like I did last year when I taught at the same conference, I stayed over to visit LifeChurch.tv on Saturday night and Charlie Hall’s church, Bridgeway, on Sunday morning.

• My friend, Don Chapman (www.WorshipIdeas.com) was with me and got to join me on our whirlwind tour of churches. On Saturday night, we attended LifeChuches’s South Oklahoma City campus for their first Saturday night service, then went to the main OKC campus for their 2nd Saturday night service. They both have 4 services on Sunday, too – keep in mind that LifeChurch.tv has 9 campuses, including an “Internet Campus”. Sunday morning we saw Charlie Hall (not leading worship, but he was there) at Bridgeway, the church he helped plant. Their service lasted ’til noon and wouldn’t you know it – we had enough time to make it back to the main LifeChurch.tv campus to catch a little of their 1pm service.

• We drove from OKC back to Dallas from 1:30pm to 4:45pm, so Don could experience Irving Bible Church’s 5pm service. We had hung out earlier in the week with Russ Ware, worship pastor at IBC, so Don really wanted to attend one of their 4 services. We made it just in time to be there for the entire 5pm service and then went home exhausted. Don went back to his home in Greenville, SC and blogged about his experience at LifeChurch.tv (including pictures).

2. This past week I spoke at the Christian Supply Choral Festival in SC, which brought together over 1200 worship leaders from around the country. The cool thing for me is that the conference takes place about 10 minutes from my family/where I grew up, so I got to see my mom and sister and her family. Two things worth mention from this conference (I didn’t get to visit any churches on this trip – I left Saturday afternoon, so I could attend my home church with my family on Sunday):

• The first thing to mention from this 2nd conference is the new movie “Facing the Giants“, which hits theaters next month. Back in February I sat on a panel at NRB with Alex Kendrick, Media Pastor at Sherwood Baptist in Albany, GA. Alex is the writer, director and lead actor in “Facing the Giants”. You may recognize the name from all the media hype. “Facing the Giants” is the movie that the Motion Picture Association rated PG instead of G, because it is so evangelistic. Personally, I’m glad that it got a PG rating (I think more people will attend the movie), but I don’t agree with the reasoning behind the decision.
• When I was with Alex back in February he was discussing a movie that his church had produced called “Flywheel“, which Blockbuster picked up and carries nation-wide!
• At this conference they showed a powerfully moving promo and teaser produced for Church leaders about their new movie, “Facing the Giants”. Now I love sports movies anyway, so I was getting pretty pumped up just watching it. What do you need to know? Go see this movie and tell others to see it. Besides being produced and shot very impressively, it represents Christ and His Church very well.
• The second thing to mention from the SC conference was a 2 hour conversation I had with Rick Muchow, worship pastor at Saddleback. We discused media in worship, my class on multi-sensory worship and a city-wide worship project that I’m currently working on and you’ll hear more about soon. I was surprised to learn that Saddleback has multiple venues and worship styles on their campus. I was intrigued and fascinated as he was telling me about them. Keep in mind, these are all on the same campus. They are also launching their first off-site video venue and are pretty excited about it’s potential.
• For me (and I told him this), it was extremely encouraging to hear one of the main leaders at the 2nd largest church in the country talking about how they can improve and what they think they can do better and more effectively. There’s a lesson there for us all.

Well, that was my most recent roadtrip. Next month I’m teaching at the National MinistyCOM conference in Phoenix. If you haven’t already, sign up and plan on attending this event. I’ve invited 2 friends of mine to share in my class with me on “Creative Synergy”. Shawn Wood, Communications Pastor at Seacoast Church and Anthony Coppedge from Anthony Coppedge Consulting will be around and sharing in our discussion of creative synergy, which, by the way, is the name of my new weekly podcast “Creative Synergy“, featuring Anthony Coppedge and myself (more to come on that in the near future).