The WHM Blog

Check out the great motions from this producer HERE and get to know Josh, who is behind OpenArms TV in our interview below!

WHM: How did you get involved in digital art and motion graphics?

OATV: When I was about 13, my dad bought us a Tandy PC from Radio Shack for Christmas. He spent his whole vacation check on that thing! I started playing with Paint and some other software to make cartoons and drawings. They were horrible, to be honest, but I loved it. I absolutely despised art class in Junior High, but always had a creative side. I loved to make things my own way and break all of the rules.

I studied Graphic Design and Television Production when i went to Liberty University, and worked in their Digital Media Center for awhile, training professors how to use digital media in their classrooms. When the lab was empty, I got paid to play around with the software and equipment so that I could learn how to do more of it. That was really where I learned techniques involved in making the things in my head visible to the rest of the world. It’s taken about 12 years to really master what I’m doing. It’s the kind of thing you can really never learn in school, you have to learn it just doing it.

WHM: What programs do you work in to create your motions?

OATV: I use Adobe Photoshop and Final Cut Express pretty much exclusively. 

WHM: Where did the name open arms tv come from?

OATV: Open Arms Community Church in Bradford, PA is my church. We started OpenArms.tv as a business that sells resources and design services to non-profits at affordable rates. We named our church Open Arms because we wanted our community to know that they are welcome and loved by us. We kept that name for our business, because we want our customers to know that the principles we use to operate our church are the same for our business. The media we create is usually originally created for use at our church, and we hope that by sharing our media, we can help other churches communicate to the people in their community that God loves them, and is waiting to recieve them with open arms.

WHM: What is your favorite type of church media to use?

OATV: I love grungy motion backgrounds.  Aesthetically, what appeals to me is real life. Worship is not meant to be something you do for half an hour on the weekends. It’s meant to be something that gets carried out into real life. The guys on the oil rig, or at the factory, or the people stuck in traffic need to worship there too. Personally, I like to see those lines of sacred and secular blurred… bringing real life into “the sanctuary” so that people can connect with it both inside and outside of the worship service.

The community I live in has this pristine natural quality to it. Mountains. Streams. Sunsets.
but it’s also an industrial community, with an oil refinery, and train tracks, and graffiti. I like to see that grit and grunge of everyday life combined with the majesty of God’s creation. 

WHM: What would you say to a church who isn’t yet using media about its value?

OATV: I fully appreciate the value of tradition, and I understand why singing from a hymnal holds a lot of sentiment and beautiful memories for a lot of people, but I’m a firm believer that as the communicators of the most important message of all time, our presentation needs to be fresh and relevant.

We know from the statistics that church attendance among the younger generations is tapering off, and as our congregations get older, that it’s dying off all together.

It can be a huge expense for churches that want to update, and I think that often, it means they just give up on it. But I really believe that in modernizing your presentation to appeal to a younger crowd, you are making an investment in the kingdom. God rewards those kinds of investments.

Yes. I know what you are thinking. Shouldn’t it be about Jesus? Shouldn’t people come to church for the message, and not the media? Yep. It should be. But they don’t. Our culture rejects things they don’t understand.

Those who study communication know that it’s NOT communication unless there is a transmitter and a receiver. As my father used to say, “Do you think I’m talking just to hear my head rattle?” We can try our best to communicate the gospel the way it has been done for the past 20 decades, but if no one is listening… it’s not really communication.

Younger generations are more and more shaped by television, film, and the internet. This is how they have learned to communicate. We didn’t just sit in classrooms when we were younger. We learned with computers, videos, books with pictures, and with conversations.

Generations ago, the church understood this. They used stained glass and paintings in their churches to help people relate with and understand the gospel. Why is it that we’ve allowed art to take such a backseat to the message, when for more than a thousand years it was at the very forefront?

We need to rethink this “one way” model of communication and re-evaluate it to enhance it in a way that is understood and appreciated by the younger generation.

WHM: What is your favorite movie(s)?

OATV: Blood Diamond. It’s about the civil war in Sierra Leone, and the boy soldiers that were conscripted to do horrendous acts.The story in this film has changed my life. It’s a phenomenal tale of redemption. God really touched me and burdened me for the people of Sierra Leone and the refugees in Guinea as I watched the movie. For six weeks I privately prayed for God to show me how to help them. Then at random, I received an email from a Pastor of a refugee church in Conakry, Guinea. We’ve become good friends, and I went over to visit them in March. I produced a motion video called “African Driving” that shows a stretch of roadway in Conakry as we drove to visit an orphanage on the outskirts of the city. It’s a great video to use if you want to inspire your church regarding missions.