So many things in a start up church are overwhelming. By it’s very definition, a start up church is creating something where there was nothing. And converting a school/movie theater/pub/living room in to a church service, and then back again can be daunting. Producing fresh sermons + music + creative media + topics + children’s’ curriculum + print materials + web content EVERY WEEK for the foreseeable future can be very intimidating.

This is why learning to scope a task or problem is imperative for a start up church.

For instance, finding a new topic to teach every Sunday is a huge challenge. How do you come up with something fresh all the time? The way is to break the issue of “What to talk about” into scopes.
#1 – What do we need to communicate on a regular basis? (relationships, spiritual disciplines, authentic faith, finances, etc.) and how often do these need to be communicated? (Annually? Every 2 years?). Figure these out as a team.
#2 – Map out the year ahead. In October 2010, map out all of 2011. This isn’t setting anything in stone, but giving you a direction. e.g.. January = spiritual disciplines, with a corporate fast, and Bible reading plan. February = relationships, with something “surprise & delight” for Valentine’s day….
#3 – Six to eight weeks before the series begins, start branding it. Come up with a name and a theme for the series over all. What big idea are you hoping to communicate through this series? What media can you use that will help tie everything in?
#4) Schedule the services in the series. If it’s a 4 week series, what 4 points do you want to get across? Are these stand-alone messages, or do you want them to build on each other each week? List out the sermons: Jan 2, 2011 – Fasting. Jan 9, 2011 – Praying. Jan 16, 2011 – Reading The Bible. Jan 23, 2011 – Evangelism. This will give the creative types ample time to develop dramas, videos, slideshows, websites, print material, performance songs, etc. to reinforce the message.
#5) Plan each service. 1 to 2 weeks before the service, have a sermon outline, and service layout ready, to give everybody time to internalize the message that you are collectively presenting.

Scoping is also a key element when it comes to dealing with problems. It’s easy for an issue to blow out of proportion if you can’t keep it in it’s proper perspective. If the computerized children’s church check in system is bottlenecking the process of getting kid’s in to the service, it’s time to evaluate the problem. But is it a matter of needing a faster computer/internet connection? Or does the entire system need to be scrapped for the sake of speed? “Pencil & Paper” may not be fancy, but it seldom crashes. Who needs to be involved in the discussion and resolution of the issue? Can a given problem be broken down in to smaller, bite sized problems, that different people can solve?

I believe scope is also imperative when you look at how much of a topic do you cover in a 35 minute sermon? If you’re talking about Spiritual Authority are you going to try to cram 5 key principles in to one sermon? Or are you going to neglect 2, and put the other 3 principles in to 3 separate sermons?

And finally, a HUGE temptation for a start up church is the “If you want a job done right, you have to do it yourself” mentality. Ultimately, the buck stops with the lead pastor, but what is the scope of pastoral responsibility? It’s important to break down the jobs that need doing, and figure out who’s responsible to get it done. The pastor’s “scope” may be to provide a direction for the arts department, but it’s up to the director to organize the creative media.

Whenever we encounter something that seems big, complicated and daunting, we’ve come to realize that by breaking the task in to multiple issues, and addressing them individually at different times, everything runs a lot smoother. When you’re planning out the year, you don’t have to know what 3 points you want to make in a sermon 11 months from now, but you can set a direction for all the teams to be excited about.

Every year, Las Vegas hosts the National Association of Broadcasters, a conference for 180,000 tech nerds. Many churches might have a problem paying for a staff person to go to Las Vegas for 4 days, but I’m blessed to have attended three times now in the past 6 years.
The NAB covers a broad spectrum of industries, TV stations, recording studios, news rooms, custom antenna builders, podcasters, indie film makers, and churches, to name just a few. This year “Technologies For Worship Magazine” hosted 4 days of seminars and workshops right on the showroom floor for free. I took as many of the classes and workshops as I was able, and really, all I could do was take copious amounts of notes, and process it later. Having said that, here are my thoughts from this past week:
1) The bell curve on return on investment for ministry tech is frustrating!!! My job, when I was hired at Shoreline, was to take us to another level technologically, spending as little as possible, preferably using what we already have available. We were able to implement live video in the service using equipment we already owned. Granted, it wasn’t great, but it was acceptable. Then we upgraded the system piece by piece. So for zero expenditure were able to go from slides during the message to live video. For a small amount of money we were able to increase the quality of that system 1000%. The problem now is that then next level will cost in the tens of thousands of dollars, for only a slight visual improvement. The same with sound. The next level is so expensive, but for minimal return. Lighting, ditto. There’s entry level (eg. Camcorder), which is cheap ($400), then there’s prosumer (Canon XL2, HDV, etc.), which is expensive ($4,000) for a startup church, then there’s pro (Ikegami studio camera), which is expensive ($40,000) for anyone!
2) A LOT of church tech/creative people seem to have been thrown in the deep end. Of the sessions I attended at the NAB, 70% of my fellow attenders had stories like, “I’m the church secretary, but my pastor told me he needs me to design his powerpoint slides.” or “My dad’s the pastor, and so now I have to figure out how to run sound.” The other 30% were being paid to do tech/creativity. I think there’s a lack of teaching of very basic church tech, for complete beginners. I think a lot of people feel totally out of their depth.
3) A lot of church staff are frustrated by their employers! So much of the feedback at the NAB was from church tech people trying to figure out how to convince their pastor that what he was asking was unreasonable. Or complaints that they were being micromanaged on every decision. Or that they were overloaded, and overworked, with very little support, help, or funding. I thank God for my job. My boss has never once micromanaged any of my projects, never once vetoed any creative direction we’ve taken, and has always trusted me to research, and find the best deal on all tech purchases. I also thank God for a solid team of volunteers that do the lion’s share of the hard work, allowing me to manage, and be creative, and spend time figuring out new systems.
I really enjoyed the NAB this year, and took plenty of notes, and got lots of inspiration. I would highly recommend it for anyone in full time church tech.

The longer I “do church” the more I’m seeing the importance of smooth transitions, and I’m seeing it across the board. On a broader scale, I’m seeing the importance of making a smooth transition for people to go from visiting an outreach event to regularly attending on a Sunday morning. The old “bait and switch” evangelism doesn’t work. Smooth ramps are so important, I think we should constantly ask ourselves how our transitions are doing. How smooth is your transition for Sunday morning attendees to move into membership, or small groups? How smooth is your nursery to toddler transition for parents? How accessible is the sanctuary from the parking lot?
The dynamic that I’m noticing about transitions is that they’re either invisible… or they’re glaringly obvious. Seemless transitions don’t get noticed, but have an incredible ability to shape a mood or an image. Ugly transitions, on the other hand, you can spend time, effort, and money, tirelessly building momentum, and lose all the ground you’ve gained thanks to one ugly transition.
Some transitions are expensive, like changing church locations, but it’s still worth the effort to make the transition as smooth and transparent as possible for your congregation. Some transitions are tough. Startup churches have a tendency to use whomever is willing to help out, especially on the worship team. The tough issue comes when, 3 years later, you now have some really talented musicians and vocalists in the growing congregation, and it’s time to transition out the people who were a part of this in the beginning, but aren’t up to the band’s current, professional standard anymore. A well thought out, smooth, lateral transition can save a lot of hurt feelings, and reward loyalty.
From a tech standpoint, these transitions should constantly be at the forefront of your mind. Switching between camera angles (if you do I-Mag) is more than just adding variety. If done smoothly, it can add to the emotion of a worship set, or tension to a sermon. Using lighting fades can be a way of signalling to the congregation that we’re slowing things down, or about to move in a different direction. The transitions between worship songs can do just as much to set the atmosphere as the song selection itself. It’s important for a worship leader to help people move though these transitions. Even in sermon preparation, I’ve found that transitioning between different elements in a message can be just as powerful as a cool little anecdote. In fact, it’s comparable to taking a corner too fast in a car. You’re going north at 50 mph, and need to head west at an intersection. If you don’t transition at all by slowing down, signaling, etc. all the passengers (congregation) smack their collective head on the window. For an airline pilot, the most crucial point of flying is transitioning from being in the air, to being on the ground as smoothly as possible. EVERY plane transitions from the air to the ground at some point, but the landing is what differentiates between a successful flight, and a headline disaster.
At Shoreline we dedicate an entire service run-through to just getting our transitions figured out. At 8 am everyone stops what they’re doing and we meet. Even if they’re in the middle of setting up the drums, or a sound check, we stop for a 15 minute meeting. During this meeting we go through all of the elements of the service; worship songs, performance songs, video clips, prayers, talks, etc., and we focus specifically how we will transition from one to the next. We make sure that everyone is aware of the element preceding their segment, and how it ends. Then we look for ways to make the transition as seamless and transparent as possible. If someone is talking after a song, we make sure that he’s already on stage, and his mic is already turned on before the song ends. We look to see if we need to dim the lights completely to help change people’s focus. We zoom in with one camera on the current element, and set the other camera up to shoot the next element, so it’s a simple crossfade. We use a 60 second video “bumper” before the sermon to give the band a chance to clean off the stage, and keep audience’s attention.
It’s important to think through each element, make sure everything is delivered to the best of everyone’s ability, but also dedicate time to transitioning the congregation smoothly throughout the entire service.

It seems to me that one of the tech “milestones” for a startup church is recording the service. Once you get there you can sell/give CDs of the service, let the pastor listen to his sermons (if he isn’t, he should be!) and you can offer online downloads, podcasts, and with a $10 flash app, put a “Listen to last week’s service” right on the front page of your church site.
But for some reason I see a lot of churches assume that the next logical step is to do a live broadcast of the service online. Here are my thoughts on the subject, and hopefully will help you in making a decision when considering this move.
Firstly, live “anything” is always a costly endeavor, and I honestly believe that the cons VASTLY outweigh the pros in 99% of churches. Let’s look at it from a tech standpoint, then a cultural one, and finally I’ll talk about when I think it IS feasible to do a live simulcast.
Practically, you’re adding a lot of cost, bandwidth, stress, and expectancy for very little ROI. First, you have to figure out how to get internet access to your service, with redundancy. If you own the location you meet in this might not be too big of a problem. But you still need backup bandwidth, in case your DSL goes down in the middle of a service. If you’re in a portable/temporary location getting Internet is a little more challenging. Even if your current location provides wifi, you run the risk of someone changing settings during the week and not informing you. You also have the very real possibility of outgrowing your current location, and the new site might not have Internet as readily available. That aside, bandwidth isn’t cheap. A semi-decent MP3 is encoded at 128kbps. You can get away with an speaking audio only (no music) 32kbps stream, or a 256kbps video stream, but bigger would be better. Let’s say you have a dedicated T1 line (couple hundred bucks a month), and your going to live stream the service, not taking into account any overhead (which can be up to 50%) that still less than 50 people able to listen, and only 6 can watch. Six! If you only have cable internet or DSL, and not a pricey T1, you can halve that. My slingbox is a great example of how poorly streaming-video looks on low-upstream bandwidth. You can cut down on bandwidth by either a) massively compressing the video, b) cutting the frame rate down to 10fps or less, c) batch encoding the video into a postage stamp sized window, or d) a combination of all the above. Again, this goes back to return on investment. You WILL have to compromise on quality to do live. Alternately, you can rent bandwidth from a central, managed server. Then you can push one connection to the server, and let it handle all the distribution. But that will set you back a youth pastor’s salary on a monthly basis.
Culturally, we are moving away from the live broadcast model. It’s old fashioned and antiquated. Before recording became readily available, radio, and later television, was broadcast live, and if you wanted to catch your show, you had make sure you were home on time, and tuned to the right frequency. The VCR started to change all that. If you had a PhD in astrophysics, you could figure out how to stop the flashing “12:00″, and tell the VCR to record your show while you were out. Then came Tivo, and the DVR became commonplace. Now with Hulu, video podcasts, Apple TV, etc. it’s become even easier to watch your shows when YOU want, not when the network dictates. I recently saw a statistic that Sci-Fi’s show Eureka had a much bigger viewership that watched on their DVR compared to a smaller percentage that watched it live. As a culture, we are moving away from the live broadcast model. The exception to this is sporting events, but by-and-large, we want to watch what we want to watch, when we want to watch it. It doesn’t make sense to me for a church to try to resort to the old model.
My other reasoning against a live service online is the reason people aren’t physically at church, and might be watching online. I figure they’re most likely out of town, and if that’s the case, the chances they’ll want to log on to your website at the exact moment your service starts are pretty slim, especially if they are in another time zone. Or they may be sick, or needing to sleep in on a Sunday morning. Still, it seems to me that it would be either more convenient, or at least, no less convenient to watch it later via podcast or through a website flash player.
I do believe there is an exception to this rule. If you church has grown to a size that it can feasibly support a well run online service, you can build a community online. Lifechurch.tv and Seacoast both do live video campuses, but they both have the finances, and the online congregation to both support it, and justify the expense.
Anytime you add a feature to your church, you must be prepared to maintain it, because people will come to expect it. But if you do live anything, you have to have a contingency plan for when the primary system fails. I believe it’s far better stewardship to do a podcast and/or online video that people can access on their own schedule, since it gives you so much more freedom, and is so much cheaper.

Wow, first post and I’m already apologizing for slacking. Truth is, I’ve been wanting to do this blog for like 2 years, felt God tell me a year ago I needed to do it, and then I just kept shelving it.

I’m the tech pastor at Shoreline Church, which started back in 2005, and has grown well ever since. We’ve always had a strong emphasis on media and tech, and I’ve been a big part of that.

However, we’re still learning as we go, and I figured there’s so many different areas involved in starting up a church, others might benefit from some of our experience.

I (Sam) will probably mostly post about running sound, ligths, video, web stuff, tech purchases, etc. I hope to have other authors on here, too, though, that can talk about other aspects of starting a church; finances, location, preaching schedules, marketing, etc.

Anyway, I’ll value all feedback through comments and eMail. I’ll be as transparent as possible.