Mister Nifty

Here a little techie thought for personal reflection or to use in a cool youth lesson. In programming there are a couple types of logic that are used to produce results – Sequential and Combinational Logic. (more…)

When I was a younger we visited churches across the United States. I remember one church in particular that we attended in the mid 90’s that was still using office equipment from the late 70’s. No joke! With my interest peaked in computers, I always asked why they had not upgraded to newer equipment. The answer I got was, “Why change it if it works?” Works is a relative term to the individual.

This image reminded me of that office scenario – the green monochrome screens, the decades old stained, mildewed keyboards, and the sound of dot matrix printers spooling paper up and buzzing line by line. Don’t forget the perforated rip sound when the job was done, and the peeling off of the paper track with the little equidistant holes, not to mention the LPT and serial cable spaghetti bowl.

Imagine trying to cram this 1980’s hard drive beast into your cellphone for extra storage.  It’s quite the dichotomy for sure.

What if there was a photo that depicted your current methods and mindset with the imperative of the Gospel, modern innovation, the direction of the church, and the culture around you?  Would you need an upgrade?

Here are my questions for those methodologically obsolete. Why upgrade your methods and your mindset if you’re comfortable doing what you’re doing? Why teach your team new concepts if they’re hitting status quo? Why expand your mind and learn new things on a weekly basis? Why use social media for your church? Why upgrade your God-forsaken website made with Frontpage? Why stretch yourself to find more creative ways to share the Gospel?

The answer: you might just find a more efficient, effective, economical, engaging, evangelistic and exhilarating experience around the corner.  Jesus was a  mindset and method changer. Work smarter, not harder for the Kingdom.

(Photo via http://www.dump.com/2010/03/20/20gb-in-1980-vs-32gb-in-2010-pic/)

I was speaking with a pastor today who asked if I knew where to find multilingual media resources for churches. I did some research and came up with nothing significant. The sermon media and religious short-film industry is primarily English. Many churches today have multilingual services throughout the week including Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Chinese and many more. With the ever expanding diversity of the US, worship/sermon media creators should expand their scope to multilingual formats. This is not only a good business move, but also casts a wider net to impact congregations who don’t speak English.

Here are a few ways  I see how this can be accomplished:

1. Hire a language student as an translation intern at your business. Go to your local university and post the job in the student center.
2. For short-films, use actors who are multilingual.
3. Provide subtitle versions in multiple languages.
4. Export sermon/worship images in multiple languages. After the initial design, it’s not difficult to drop in translation text.
5. Create a page template translated (UI and content)  for each language that displays all relevant content.

By creating a multilingual-friendly environment in their marketplace, worship media companies would be in lock-step with the trending direction of American diversity, especially within the church.

Update:

Worship House Media has a collection of Spanish videos.

If you don’t have experience in video ministry and are planning to install multiple projectors or screens of any kind in your church read further. A common mistake among those starting out cold turkey with video equipment is to take a primary video feed and split it between two screens without amplification. When you split a cable into two cables, the signal does not remain 100% strength on each. It splits the strength of the signal and divides it between the two. The screens will display your video feed, however the picture will be dimmed to 50% of the original output. (more…)

After Mars Hill Church released their iPhone app, I’ve had a deluge of people wanting to know how to create their own iPhone app.  To begin, if you’re looking for free, you probably shouldn’t be trying to create an app. There are a few ways you can go about getting your own custom application.

1. Pay an iPhone developer anywhere from $5,000-$10,000 to have a completely custom solution.
2. Create an iPhone friendly website.  This also costs a bit of money to hire a web developer.
3. Use a service like Mobile Roadie that keeps the cost down with an app template. – $500 setup fee – $29.00/month

If I were undertaking this project, I would go with option 3. I have never used Mobile Roadie, however I’ve looked into their site extensively and it appears to service all the needs a church might have in an app. It’s originally created for bands, but it can be morphed into a pretty feature-rich digital church app.   Here are some of the features that caught my eye:

• Videos
• Music (Sermons)
• Photos
• Events
• Fan Wall (Member Interactivity)
• Blog/News/Updates
• Social Sharing

They also offer custom functionality for additional cost.  Check out all the features here.

Go to Mobile Roadie

Also check out:

Right Brain Media

Truthcasting

AppChurch

And via Paul Povolni from Head Snacks:

AppMii

AppMakr

I just finished reading this incredible book by Shane Hipps.  I can honestly say this book was a paradigm shift for me in regards to media. We always talk about the effects of media on our lives, but do we ever stop to think how it really shapes us or our faith? From the impact of early typesetting to modern movies, Shane shows how everything is a form of media and all media has influence. He exposes the subtle subconscious influences media has on our minds…and our faith.

After reading Flickering Pixels, I made some habit changes. I would highly recommend reading this book. It will change the way you look at what’s being served on the media platter in your life. I’m glad I have this one under my belt before my wife and I have children.  Check it out!

Flickering Pixels on Amazon