Church | Media

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Wow! Last night I went to Irving Bible Church, here in Dallas, for the “A Collision” Tour, featuring Robbie Seay Band, Shane and Shane and the David Crowder Band. I had an amazing time and was able to worship God among 3000 people packed into a church that seats 2500. What an experience!

To see when this tour is coming to your town click here: http://www.davidcrowderband.com.

Interesting to note: they didn’t use any lyrics/visuals on the screens. I’m not sure why, I assume something went wrong and they were not able to make it work last night. I’d love to hear back from some of you that caught this tour in a different city. Did they use visuals on the screen in your city?

I’ve seen the David Crowder Band MANY times and they always have very cool media going on behind them. Don’t get me wrong, they did do a TON with lighting, had a lot of moving/intelligent lights – it wasn’t one of those “We’re stripping down to the bare necessities.” “Going Unplugged…” “We don’t like all that junk behind us…” No, actually, the lights were way more than what I had expected. I, honestly, think the reason there were no visuals was due to a technical glitch. Don’t know…anyone else catch this tour?

I must say, I was pretty excited to be invited to attend a “sneak peek” of the upcoming Narnia movie, “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe”. Yesterday I went to this first sneak peek, which happened to be at Chuck Swindol’s church here in the Dallas area.

Let me sum it up quickly for you:
The POSITIVE: Stephen Curtis Chapman was there and sang two songs with just him and his guitar – very cool. The trailers that we saw were awesome and the movie is going to be amazing!
The NEGATIVE: It was just that – trailers of the movie. I was disappointed that what was called a “sneak peek” and even a “pre-screening of the movie” was actually a program that featured various speakers and two movie trailers that you can see on the website (http://www.narniaresources.com).

Oh well, guess I’ll have to wait just like everyone else. 🙂

The past two Tuesday nights I’ve had the honor of leading worship at i55 (http://www.i55.org) here in Dallas – which is a young adult/college gathering, like 7:22 (http://www.722.org) in Atlanta.

i55 was started by a friend of mine, JP Findley, who is an awesome worship leader and a humble man. God is doing some great things through i55 and many other gatherings like it around the world. By the way, their CD (which is in my iTunes) is now available through IndependentBands.com (http://www.independentbands.com/cd/i55/i55.html) – check it out!

At i55, there is such a sweet spirit and anticipation for God to show up, the best the lead worshipper can do is get out of the way. Isn’t that what it’s all about; to simply point people to Christ and then disappear, letting the spotlight be on Him.

I should mention that i55 meets each week at Irving Bible Church (http://www.irvingbible.org). Here’s what I noticed about the media team, which serves both Irving Bible and i55 – they get “it”. They not only know that “less is more”, they demonstrate it.

They use SundayPlus as their presentation software. SundayPlus has the ability to put text over moving/motion backgrounds. Here’s what I teach at my conferences and am SO glad that they already do this: Don’t forget about still backgrounds! Just because we now have the ability to place our lyrics over motion backgrounds, doesn’t mean that we have to do it 100% of the time. Some of you may be thinking, “Duh!” But, believe me, I’ve seen countless churches get a presentation software like SundayPlus (or EasyWorship or MediaShout) and lose their mind. Motion backgrounds are wonderful – at WorshipHouse Media, we offer hundreds of them. But to me, the moving backgrounds add so much more and really stand out when used in contrast to still backgrounds.

Okay, I’m going to step down off my soapbox. You get the point. By the way, today is my last day in my 20s. Tomorrow I turn the big 30. I think I’m going to do like Kramer on Seinfeld and move to Florida for early retirement. 🙂

Roadtrip! Gotta love it. I just got back from visiting friends in Nashville, TN. We went to 4 churches in Nashville and 2 on the way home in Memphis. 6 churches in 2 days! How’s that possible:

We went to 2 churches on Saturday night: Bellevue Community Church at 5:30pm and Bethel World Outreach Center at 7pm. Sunday morning I went to my best friend’s church, Mosaic Nashville, where he leads worship. Monday night we went to “The Loop” – which meets at Brentwood United Methodist. The Loop is a city-wide, non-denominational gathering of young adults – kind of like i55 here in Dallas and 7:22 in Atlanta – both of which meet on Tuesday nights.

Tuesday night we drove through Memphis on the way home to Dallas and stopped off to check out the famous Beale Street. We also stopped in at Germantown Baptist Church to visit with some of their media team, which make up Flashlight Films (one of the producers that WorshipHouse will sell). On the way out of Memphis we popped in to Bellvue Baptist Church where Adrian Rodgers has pastored for over 30 years; however they now have a new Senior Pastor.

Anyway – glad to be back home for a day! I leave tomorrow to go to South Carolina, where my mom is getting remarried. How cool is that?