Greg Atkinson

This video from Central Christian Church moved me. Well done! You can get it HERE.

Do you have stories in your congregation that need to be told? Get after it!

In July of 2008 I was speaking to a group of Church leaders in Santa Cruz, California. I held my phone (this was just before I got my iPhone) up in my hand and I said, “This is the future.”

It’s been a year and a half and mobile technology is the “now”, not the future. My friend, Bobby Gruenwald, Innovation Pastor at LifeChurch.tv, constantly encourages his staff to think global and mobile – global and mobile.

I’m currently working with churches and organizations on helping them to create, dream and plan strategies around mobile technology. Your people are constantly becoming one with their phone (for good or bad) and it’s a reality that we need to be intentional about speaking their language. Again, as I’ve said before: we are digital missionaries.

As you know, I work often as a Secret Shopper/Mystery Worshiper. The first thing I check is the church’s website. The second thing I do is pull up their website on my iPhone. I have recommended several times that church’s follow the lead of Seacoast Church and get a mobile version of their website. I applaud and praise Seacoast for blazing a trail in this area. My hat’s off to my friend Shawn Wood and his team. Well done! If you have your phone handy (and I know you do) – pull up Seacoast’s website on it.

My church (and many others) send out text messages to attenders and members that opt in. My church also encourages you to text in questions and decisions that you may make as a response to the message. Many churches are utilizing text and SMS during services as an interactive piece. As I’ve blogged about before, many churches are using the free service from YouVersion Live.

I’ll be talking more in the near future about other mobile strategies and tools. In the meantime, if you and your church would like to strategize and put together a comprehensive plan that includes Web 2.0 tools, mobile technology, social media and social networking – give me a shout. My only goal is to help and equip you to speak the language of the people you’re trying to reach (digital missionaries).

After two years of creating quality content as eight20eight, they decided to change their name. Now known as Soul Refinery, they will continue to create quality media that they hope will ignite the heart and refine the soul.
To celebrate the change and launch of soulrefinery.com, they are giving away two free Christmas motion loops.

While you can find their content wherever quality videos are sold, they hope you’ll consider supporting us directly by visiting soulrefinery.com. There you’ll find their entire collection, including films that feature stars from hit TV shows as The Offce, Community, Reno 911, Saturday Night Life, and others.

They also now offer the entire motion loop and countdown library that they recently purchased from our friends at Eleven72 — revamped and available in HD!

Please visit their new site today and let them know if you have any questions or comments. CLICK HERE TO ADD FREE LOOPS TO YOUR CART

Tuesday we met with a surgeon at UT Southwestern and praise God, he doesn’t want to do surgery, yet. He wants to watch things for 3 months and then do more testing then. So for now, we’re not having surgery and there’s always still hope for healing.

IF YOU’RE IN DFW:
We’re having a prayer, worship and healing service this Friday night (tomorrow) at 7pm at Fellowship Dallas. If you’re in the Dallas area, you’re welcome to join us. If not, just pray from where you are. Thanks!

IN OTHER NEWS:

YouVersion launched http://onebillionminutes.com to celebrate people reading over a Billion minutes of the Bible on the JUST the YouVersion mobile apps. Pretty crazy to think how engaged people are in the Bible through their phone!

EVERYTHING you need – Christmas carol sheet music, keyboard underscores, chord charts, PowerPoint and narrations – all for your Christmas Eve Service.

*** 70 pages of sheet music, charts and narrations, 22 MP3s ***

My good friend and HymnCharts.com arranger Don Chapman has composed beautiful “movie score” type keyboard underscores for Scripture narrations that weave together his unique HymnCharts Christmas carols to create a worshipful Christmas Eve service unlike your congregation has ever experienced.

All you need is a capable pianist and a sermon from your pastor, and you’re ready for a musical highlight of your church’s Christmas season.

Download More Details About the Service Guide:

Click to download a PDF with more detailed instructions about the Christmas Eve Service Guide

My friend, Don Chapman, just shared about his experience of looking for an inexpensive video solution. Here’s his latest article:

Video is the wave of the future – and here’s how your church can inexpensively get in on the action.

Since YouTube and other video sites have exploded over the past few years I’ve wanted to try recording some videos for WorshipIdeas (if you’ve noticed I’ve put several up in the past few weeks.) Even in the past few months I’ve noticed more and more video clips turning up in Google search results and on news websites.

I started my research in late August. It seems there are two extremes in HD video records: $200 and under (inexpensive) and $800 and over (expensive.) Since I just wanted to dabble in video (and didn’t know if I’d even like it) I wanted to go cheap.

The little Flip cameras are popular, but I tend to shy away from the popular as experience has taught me there’s probably something out there not as well known but twice as good.

I learned that a key to great video is to have an external microphone for the best sound quality. Internal mics produce crummy sound with lots of room noise. Unfortunately all the mini, cheap HD video cameras have only internal mics – except one!

The newly released Kodak Zi8 is the only mini HD video camera with an external microphone jack. I overnighted it and started playing with it.

Most of the new WorshipIdeas videos (except for the Kristian Stanfill video) were created on the Zi8. And unbelievably, my latest clip of the Jamestown church was aired yesterday on CBN News!! Let me restate that: a cable news channel just broadcast my clip made from a $180 video camera!! Here’s the clip:

The possibilities are endless for a church – man on the street interviews, skits, website greetings, sermon illustrations… great, clear and crisp Hi-Def video at an affordable price.

The Kodak Zi8 is not hassle free. If you want to shoot videos of your cat dancing and upload them directly from the camera to YouTube, you’ll have no problem. If you want to edit video (on a PC,) you’ll have problems.

I spent an entire day bashing my head against the wall trying to figure out how to get video out of the Kodak into my editing software. Here’s the problem: the video shot is proprietary – it’s in a modified QuickTime MOV format. But even though I installed QuickTime I still couldn’t get the video to work in my Sony Vegas video editing software. The included MediaImpressions software has a lousy editing feature that makes Windows Movie Maker look high-end. So here are the hoops I jump through to make great videos and edit them with the Kodak Zi8:

I bought a $30 lapel mic from Radio Shack. Anything with an 1/8 inch plug (wireless, etc.) will work.

Buy memory. The Zi8 needs a memory card, purchased separately. I got a 16 gig SDHC card and have nowhere near filled it up yet.

Shoot video in 720p (the camera will shoot in 1080p but will not export in an editable form for Sony Vegas.)

Buy a “steadicam.” This is a contraption pros attach to their cameras to make the image steady so they can walk around and get action shots. Even though the Zi8 has image stabilization built in, you really need a steadicam if you’re going to move with the camera and want smooth and professional footage. I bought an amateur steadicam that works wonderfully – the Manfrotto ModoSteady is $99 and props the camera up against my chest for a very steady shot. Notice how I pan across the church in my video – that’s using the ModoSteady.

Once you have shot your video, plug the Zi8 into your computer’s USB slot and copy files to your hard drive. The first time you plug your camera into your computer it will ask you to install the proprietary software.

Convert to MP4. The camera’s videos are in the QuickTime MOV format. Even though I installed QuickTime the videos would play but without sound in Sony Vegas. Launch the MediaImpressions software you’ve installed from the camera and use it to open your videos (browse videos.) Select the videos you want to edit, then click “Media Converter” at the bottom of the screen. Convert settings: Manufacturer=Sony, Select Device Model= Sony PS3, click the edit button, resolution=1280×720, Audio Bitrate=128bps. The software will convert the MOV files into MP4 files.

Convert to AVI. Now that the videos are MP4, Vegas will play sound but not play video! So I found a weird little program, probably coded by some kid in his dorm room, that will strip something or other out of the file and turn it into an AVI file. Download MP4Cam2AVI Easy Converter here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mp4cam2avi/

Now, finally, the video is ready to edit! Sony Vegas works much like Sonar in that you have different tracks to play with – video, audio, music, etc. I create a little bumper graphic, pick the videos I want, fade them in and out, add some compression and EQ to the voice to make it stand out, and throw in a little background music.

If you want to upload your edited video to YouTube, that’s yet another step. A YouTube help page offers rendering suggestions (I render to MP4) and a Google search for “Sony Vegas YouTube” found several settings. I tried a few – one setting rendered fine but when I uploaded the clip to YouTube the sound was out of sync. I tried another and it worked fine.

Whew! If somebody ever figures out how to easily shoot video, edit it and upload it without the hassle of codecs and converting, they’ll be rich.

Bottom Line: The Kodak Zi8 has opened up the world of video to me. Did I mention that within a month of shooting my first video I had a clip on a cable news network? It’s an affordable HD video camera with knockout, broadcast-quality video at a rock-bottom price. It’s the only mini HD recorder with an external microphone jack. PC users will have to jump through hoops to edit videos, Mac users may not have as many issues.

As you know, I’m in the air (traveling) a lot. Lately I’ve been bringing some magazines with me to read during the flight. Magazines that I’m reading currently are:

• Outreach (I’ll talk more about articles from this tomorrow)
• Worship Leader (I was interviewed for a series called Worship 2.0)
• Church Production
• Wired
• Fast Company

What magazines are you reading?

As you know, I spend a lot of time coaching church planters. Some launched earlier this year, some are launching this Fall and some will launch in 2010.

One thing I love telling my church planters about is Casey Graham and the services of The Change Group. Now whether you’re a brand new church or an established, older church, Casey’s team can be a huge blessing to you. As he always says, “What you stay awake worrying about, we wake up thinking about!”

Casey and his team can do: quarterly CFO consulting, build monthly financial dashboards, and provide weekly bookkeeping for less than it cost to hire a part time staff member! I’d encourage you to get to know them. I’ve invited Casey to do a guest post on here.

Guest Post by Casey Graham:

Life Giving Finances

My name is Casey Graham and I am one of the Co-Founders of The Change Group.  Over the past year we have worked with so many churches to help them increase their operational revenue and manage their finances.  I believe everything we do should be LIFE GIVING (John 10:10) and that goes with our finances as well.  I just wanted to take a minute and talk about three things every church can do today that will make a big difference tomorrow.

1.  Personal Generosity

Nothing will increase your passion for helping people find life through generosity more than you modeling it.  Developing a culture is not rocket science!  Who you are is who your people will become.

2.  Life Giving Offerings

When you stand up to talk about the offering, don’t “beg” for dollars.  Help people understand that every dollar they give goes to change lives!  Help people connect their money to the different ministries.  People will want to give to that.

3.   Appreciate People

One of the most life giving things you can do financially is say thank you.  When it comes to the area of money in church we can’t show favoritism but we can appreciate what people do.  Have dinner night at your home and invite your top twenty donors to your home.  Give to them, cook for them, love on them and really believe in them.  Also, you can thank you first time givers with a hand written thank you card.  Appreciate anything and everything that people give!  You can’t do what you do without them!

*** Be sure to check out their free offer: http://thechangegroup.tv/freeoffer.html

Mind mapping is something that I learned and began to truly appreciate through my friend, Tony Steward (Online Community Pastor at LifeChurch.tv). Up until recently it was always done on paper (Moleskin). Yesterday he sent me an email introduction to MindMeister. I was instantly interested! I signed up and watched their helpful tutorial video (it’s brief).

There are a number of ways that you as a Church leader could use this new tool. Whether it be as a Senior Pastor, Executive Pastor, Worship Pastor (leading a creative team), Small Groups – you name it – there’s a way that this can be a great tool and resource for your ministry.

You can share your mind map with friends. Share instantly any mind map with friends and colleagues. Invitees will receive an email with a link and – depending on what access you give them – will be able to contribute or just read.

Real-time collaboration. When two or more users open the same mind map at the same time you are in brainstorming mode. Every change you make will be replicated instantly to your fellow editors’ screens via our server. Through colour-coded effects they will see what you did and vice versa, no reload necessary.

Summary: MindMeister brings the concept of mind mapping to the web, using its facilities for real-time collaboration to allow truly global brainstorming sessions. Users can create, manage and share mind maps online and access them anytime, from anywhere. In brainstorming mode, fellow MindMeisters from around the world (or just in different rooms) can simultaneously work on the same mind map and see each other’s changes as they happen.

There’s a free version and a premium version that only costs $4 a month. $4 bucks a month! Check it out and let me know if you have something you’d like to share. I may have something I’ll share soon with you.

PERSONAL:
Today is 9/11. We pause to remember what happen on that tragic day. 9/11 is also my mom’s birthday. Mom: Happy Birthday!

This came out recently on SermonCentral.com and I thought it was worth passing on. To read the 20 non-preaching websites for better preaching, go HERE.

I wrote a new article called “Lessons from a Secret Shopper” that will be coming out on SermonCentral.com in a couple of weeks.
I look forward to sharing it with you.

What are websites and resources that you use in message preparation?