FusionLife

Wednesday I got the privilege of hanging out with the guys from House Blend Cafe from Ocoee, FL and serving coffee to all the church planters here. It’s really cool to think of all the people they will impact for God.

As I look around though and see all the displays and booths I’m reminded of what a guy said during product tour yesterday (more on that another time), he said that being relevant is just keeping up with what is cool today. Now he was talking about how his product was different from others like it, but what about the church what are we trying to be as relevant as? As MTV or myspace, as the church next door? Should there be any elements of innovation, which is the opposite of relevant right? How can the church be different and do more that is innovative, more to be different?

I have more questions than answers at his point but feel free to chime in and give your thoughts.

We finally bought a new computer for worship. We were running Media Shout 3 on a HP laptop with a Celeron M processor. It has only been by the grace of God that we have been able to get through our gatherings with all the media that we use on Sunday Mornings. This week on new Dell Dimension 5151 with a free 19in LCD arrived. This bad boy is stocked its a P4 3Gzh, 1GB RAM, 259GB SATA HD, 256MB ATI Dual Head Video Card. It should have no problem running Media Shout now, plus it looks pretty bad (which is saying a lot from me a Mac guy).

Does anyone work with Media Shout 3 for Windows and edit video on a Mac?  What program(s) do you use and what are the settings that you use for exporting it?

I know the easy answer is burning a dvd, my laptop doesn’t currently have a dvd-rw but I found an internal one for $160 and I’m going to work on getting it.

We used a great intro clip from the Skit Guys leading into our message about temptation.  It would have been great the way it came but it was made for youth ministry settings.  We took the giggling part out to make it a little more adult friendly.  I edited it in iMovie HD since it was just an easy cut job but couldn’t get my export to play in Media Shout 3 at all.  It might be the computer we are using (I’m working on that problem also).

Not just getting situated into a new job its also mobile job. So I have devised a folder system breaking up my responsibilities into three folders (for now). One for Chrildren’s Ministry, one for design work and one for general stuff. The best part is what’s on the folders.

With Sunday Morning being the big push for a new church plant we focus 3 or so days a week brain storming and talking through ideas video, audio, props and other elements for the one service. I want to start a discussion in where do you start when brain storming for your main pushes whether they are Sunday morning or a mid week youth service? Do you go looking at certain resources, websites, other places?

Being my first week on staff for a 6 month old church plant is great. I’m loving it! It is kind of funny to be living out what I have been reading for the better part of a year on other church planter’s blogs about office space and issues that arise daily that you have to deal with. Like Gary Lamb’s office troubles over the last year, there are three of us in one office inside a insurance office that is owned my a guy that is apart of Beachside. There are good and bad parts. Its fun to joke around and not have to go to someone’s office to bounce ideas off of them. In my last ministry my first office was all in the farthest away part of our building total away from the rest of the staff and printer and copier. And being a part of an established church with their own facility you don’t have to deal with certain things, but meeting in an elementry school you have to think different about how you word or the things that you do and publicize. This weekend we are starting a series call Desperate Sex Lives and sent out some 5,000 postcards with the title in big letters on the front and the name and address of the elementry school on the back for directions to our gathering. Well alot of people aren’t happen with the postcard and have call the main campus of Tomoka Christian Churhc and the school to let their unhappiness be know and we are having to do damage control. Poor Robbie was on the phone most of the morning with different people and is meeting with the principle today to let them know we want to take all the heat of them and let them know we have put disclaimers on the website that neither the school or the school board have anything to do with our message content. You learn as you go. It’s definatly a message series that needs to be heard so we aren’t backing down but we will think more about the ramifications of messge series and publicity while we are meeting in the school (hopefully only through June or July).