New Old Tech
My church recently entered the 20th century (not a typo) and we now have digital projection in our worship space. The primary purpose of it is to allow the sermons and messages to bring in visuals to supplement the spoken word. I’m exciting for this teaching and preaching resource! I took the better part of 3 hours to learn ProPresenter so I can serve as backup to our media volunteers, and it’s a neat resource as well.
However, I find myself at a disadvantage…one that given my age one would think I wouldn’t have. You see, I’m a text-based person who thinks and writes in words rather than pictures. I’m not particularly artsy or have discerning taste of artwork–you have no idea how much feedback I needed to get this blog to where it is!
To add a visual component to my worship leadership will be a new skill to develop. As a blogger, words retain their power, but I’m not averse to visuals that can inspire during the preaching moment and I’m looking forward to this challenge.
To help me out, I have some questions for those of you that are ministry professionals or are people in the pews of churches that use media in worship. I hope your responses come from experience and not from theory.
1. Who Drives the flow?
Does the media drive the message flow or does it depict the message?
Are visuals treated the same way as a spoken sermon illustration (as in, they are chosen to substantiate a point), or are they the key “moment” in the sermon (that the rest is built around)?
I think there’s a difference between emotive and logical sermons in this way, but it’s helpful to hear whether others let the image or the logic drive the sermon development.
To be clear, of course the message is the most important driver–you wouldn’t be a preacher otherwise! But since every sermon uses images and examples, I’m asking if media examples are used in the same way.
2. Me or Team?
Do you have a worship team and how do you use them?
Do they help with finding images after you’ve developed the sermon or do they provide ideas beforehand?
What’s your timeline for worship production (“the night before” is not a viable strategy for me!)?
3. Reinvent the wheel?
What resources or guidelines do you or others have to help guide your choice of media and your use?
What writings on legal considerations do you know of?
Please share in the comments!
4. Critical need for minimalism
We are a traditional worship congregation, not a loud evangelical church, so a light touch is our goal. We aren’t looking to make every moment be screen-dependent, but we are looking to how media is used best in our media-saturated lives.
Thanks!
Thanks for reading and for sharing this with the media-in-ministry professionals in your life!
I just finished an 18-month gig helping my church set up its own AV worship style and policy, so I can share a few bits of wisdom.
To your first question — AV should never be the star of the show. AV is thereto complement and enhance the message of the worship. My main goal was to use the AV as a hospitality device — using the screens to project hymn lyrics and prayers was useful for those with vision problems who couldn’t always see the bulletins. Young moms loved it because they could hold their kids and keep up with the service without fumbling with the bulletin. And it also provided worship “stage direction” for the congregation to help them out when the worship leader would forget to tell folks when to stand or sit or where the hymn we were singing was in the hymnals. AV was the aid for worship, not the star.
As far as images, I encouraged our preachers and worship leaders to use as few images as possible, to perhaps select one to project during their sermon or confession as a way to illustrate what they were saying, to appeal to visual learners. Same for video — it was thereto back up what was said or being expressed in worship, or to add another layer.
Our church is lay-led with a different lay person coordinating the worship every week, so worship planning was a team affair to begin with. As the hired AV coordinator, I was part of the worship team and would talk with the principles each week and we would work together to figure out the AV needs of each service. I would find images or videos or they would bring an image or video to me and I would clear it for copyright (more on that in a sec). Using media in worship is a very time-consuming job and so it’s best to have people working collaboratively in its conceptual creation. Production of the final product was my responsibility, which worked well because I had the trust of the team to do my best work, but that really only happened because I was one of the few people in my church with the skills for the work. I think I would have liked sharing the work with others.
As for planning — I would begin conversations with the worship leaders three weeks before the service to ask about ideas and we would start talking about ideas. However what usually happened was that people wouldn’t be able to give concrete ideas until the week before the service. I set a deadline of 5 pm Friday before the worship service to have any and all materials for the service and they usually held to that. This doesn’t mean that I wasn’t asked to make changes on Saturday or Sunday morning. My policy was that I would only build something new on Sunday morning in case of an emergency and that was usually respected. But having as much lead time as possible works best for all parties.
Finally, the most important aspect of using AV in church is following copyright law. I imagine your church already has a CCLI or OneLicense licenses to print lyrics in your bulletins, and images work the same way. Most images you find on the Internet are copyrighted, but There are lots of sites where you can find copyright-free images for no or little cost. And what I’ve found is, when I find art that I or my liturgist wants to use, I email the artist and ask permission. Not only does that honor their work, but it lets them know that There’s a church that’s seen and loves their work enough to share it, and usually they’re delighted. It builds a relationship between your church and the artist, which ultimately is the main goal of worship, right — bringing as many people together for the worship of God.
The UCC has a nice primer on copyright law that’s easy to find by googling. Creative Commons (primarily Flickr, which has images available under CC licenses — look up CC licenses and how to use them) and public domain art like what’s found in Wikipedia or Wikimedia are good sources. The best thing is if your church has artists who can provide images for you.
So that’s my 84 cents, which I hope was helpful. I’m happy to answer any other questions or provide support. I have some nice templates I’d be willing to share as well to give ideas.
Jeremy, I wrote my dissertation on this and made extensive use of media in worship. I’m working on a blog post about it’s use now, but it is not ready yet go to live.
So quick pointers here:
1. Technology at its best in worship is essentially invisible. It supports worship but does so unobtrusively. One of the biggest issues is having typos on the screen. When you have one, suddenly the technology is what becomes the focus, not the worship experience. Make sure every slide is carefully proofed.
2. Learn to “metaphor” your messages. Metaphoring is the act of finding a visual symbol that best represents the main point of the message. That symbol should be something that is commonly seen, so when the congregation encounters it later, it brings back to them the main point of the message. This is extremely hard work, and takes much practice but pays off handsomely in the long run. Once you find that symbol, that that is the image used all the way through the slides for the day. It can be darkened/blurred to go behind the words of the music, and then clarified as you reach the main point of the message.
3. The background to the screens must be dark and the lettering light. Too many people do it the opposite way and it is much harder to read from a distance when the background is light and the lettering dark.
4. Purchase your images (I use Dreamstime) or make sure they are available for public use (like Wikimedia commons). Most good images can be purchased for less then $10 and I often find one for $2 to $5. You can then use them over and over and modify them at will.
5. Do use film clips where possible. They should never be over 90 seconds long, and 30 seconds is better. I found that my teens were very helpful in finding good ones to use and generally you can pick up what you need on YouTube.
6. Make sure you have very good presentation software. PowerPoint does a good job of making the slides but it alone will not work for the projection program. We used Pro-Presenter, but there are lots of them out there.
This is a big transition. It will probably take a year before you and your congregation are fully comfortable with this.
“Do use film clips where possible. They should never be over 90 seconds long, and 30 seconds is better. I found that my teens were very helpful in finding good ones to use and generally you can pick up what you need on YouTube.”
Youtube is not free for the public to use at-will. It is for private consumption, and is not covered under any definition of “fair use” within copyright law. CCLI and CVLI licenses do not cover content from Youtube either, however, CVLI does over quite a lot of content that may be usable in your service.
The only thing I would add to what’s already been said is to have a basic style manual including fonts, responsive reading styles, gender pronouns for God, a minimum font size that can be read, etc.
I also had a few thoughts for occasional ways to change it up.
– Use images to complement a sermon the way Stephen Colbert did on “The Colbert Report.” Maybe consider doing a segment like “The Word.”
– A “Pardon the Interruption” style sermon with the countdown clock/topics on the screen as a side bar. This could be good for a teaching sermon covering a lot of related topics like on Methodism or a liturgical season.
– A Twitter talk back sermon where the preacher asks specific questions and answers are shown.
I suppose I’ll meddle and go beyond what you’re asking. Media can and should enhance the entire worship experience, not just the message time. I have been struck by religious traditions that use incense well, in that it adds another sensory experience to the time of worship. Education and processing/internalization of data uses all the senses. Art is a wonderful resource for meditation, and this presents many opportunities to use media well as an additional sensory experience to recast the story throughout worship.
I would only add that churches should not underestimate the amount of additional effort it will take every week to include well-done, relevant media to worship. This can be a fulfilling ministry, or it can become a crushing load on volunteers, depending on how it is handled and resourced. Good luck to all!
I’m a former video producer (from long ago) and current preacher who has used video in worship for a while now. As video producer, I know that images can tell the story. This is even true with still images; for example, I’ve been moved by a really good funeral slideshow. That’s in answer to question 1: Who drives the flow? “The medium is the message” may be a bit strong, but it’s certainly true that sermons have come to me leaping from image to image, in something of the same way a really strong and apt story can drive the sermon. (All this in service to proclamation of the text, after exegesis of course!)
2. Me or team? I’ve never really had a team though I have volunteers for playback, and sometimes an admin assistant who does the presentation. If there’s anything unusual or extended in the service or sermon, usually I program it. I’m working on developing a team now. I’m in a small church so we’ll see. – Everything said above about time demands is true. – And remember that Greg Nelson hangs out next door.
3. Reinvent the wheel. There are resources, some free, some for sale. “Work of the people” does good work though for a traditional congregation the camera work is sometimes arty. I think First Church Portland could handle the theology though — Walter Brueggemann, Barbara Brown Taylor, I think Nadia Boles Weber, et. al. I bought some animations and themes from the people who began Ginghamsburg’s media ministry; things like that are available. Textweek dot com will have references to movies under lectionary passages and themes. Usually they’re not marked with time references so you have to search the movie for the clip. You have to be a little careful of copyright (e.g. you can’t edit the original). Textweek also sometimes points you other sites that use offer all kinds of media.
4. Critical need for minimalism — I hear you. My church is there, too. But sometimes I’ve just got to bust out of “hymn lyric” mode and do something fun. And truly, many people do think visually. (I myself am a word maven.)
Hope this helps.
But I’m busy supporting my own pastor’s graphic needs.
However, copyright is one of the topics we’re covering at “We’ve a Story to tell” http://www.umoi.org/story.
There isn’t one answer to this. Sometimes the visual supports, and sometimes it drives. Just like a well to story as part of a sermon. But a news clip or YouTube can be the focus too.
And remember, sometimes the lack of a visual supports. Just like the silent moments in music.
Greg