UPFRONT Larger than life I why design matters I church in your pocket I merchant of peace I church spotlight I extras/reviews
Photo Credit: Shelly Jackman
larger than life ≥ The Dallas/Fort Worth metro area is no stranger to megachurches. Perhaps that’s because, as the saying goes, everything is bigger in Texas. This year, a new megachurch dominates the DFW skyline—Cowboys Stadium. Granted, this megachurch is dedicated to the worship of sport and entertainment instead of the God of the universe, but it’s a cathedral nonetheless. With an estimated construction cost of more than $1.4 billion and a footprint of about three million square feet, Cowboys Stadium is a model of both excellence and excess. Nowhere is this more evident than the stadium’s gargantuan HD video board. The board’s size makes it a literal and figurative game-changer, so we felt it was worthy of a closer look. ≥ Research and calculations by Jenni Wright. Some data provided by stadium.dallascowboys.com.
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Stadium Fun Facts H $600
The cost of powering the video board for one hour
H 30
million
The number of light bulbs on the entire video board
Is it really HD? The main sideline screens have a 1920x1080 HDTV resolution. The endzone displays have a resolution of 1280 x 720, but can be upscaled to 1920 x 1080.
H 3,000
The total number of flat-screen TVs in Cowboys Stadium
H 4,896
How big does the screen appear to fans at the game?
The number of NFL players it would take to equal the weight of the video board (1.2 million pounds)
3.13 ft.
52”
A fan in section 100 of Cowboys Stadium is 90 feet away from the screen, which is the equivalent of sitting 3.13 feet from a 52” TV. ≥ Note: We don’t recommend that.
≥ Each of the large screens on the video board is about 160 feet wide and 72 feet high. That means each large screen is equal in area to:
136
7’ x 12’ projection screens (the size used by many churches)
1,241
52” flat-screen TVs
17,242
COLLIDE magazines
151,733 iPHONES
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buses (40-FOOT)
2.3
Imax screens
(70mm)
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As someone who reads COLLIDE, you’re probably convinced that design matters. I mean, it just does. After all, when something is ugly, confusing, vague, misleading, or malfunctioning— when something is poorly designed—we instinctively want to grimace, look away, or flee the premises altogether. If bad design is bad, it stands to reason that good design is good. But why, specifically, is good design good for the Church? Why do a growing number of churches dedicate resources to design? We turned to three excellent designers for a little insight, and asked each of them to explain why design matters to the Church. —Scott McClellan
Barton Damer, Igniter Media Good design communicates to your audience in new and refreshing ways. For instance, retail stores regularly design and redesign the layout of their products and spaces. If something was on a hanging rack, it will later be folded and arranged on a display table. If a particular clothing line was on the right side of the store, retailers will often move it to the left. Changing the layout of the store helps regular shoppers view the same products in a different light (and thus, the customers feel compelled to browse). If the clothing racks are always arranged in the same place and feature the same type of apparel, a frequent customer will pass right by because there’s nothing new or interesting to see. A fresh layout helps a customer view a
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T-shirt as new when the reality is that the shirt was simply unnoticed before. The design of the store provides new perspective and motivation for customers who think they’ve already seen it all. As a church, we must understand that we have to design and redesign the way we present the gospel. People assume they know what is “on this side of the store” and don’t bother looking or listening. That’s when it requires some creativity on our part to present the gospel in a way that is new and refreshing. When the presentation is too familiar, it often loses its effectiveness. We must look for new layouts that will grab the attention of those passing by. I’m not simply referring to graphic design; design is bigger than that. We may need
to change the layout of our services because they only reach those who are willing to go out of their way and come to us. That’s fine for loyal attendees, but how does the old layout compel new attendees? Fully understanding the role of design in the Church begins to change the way we think about our graphic design concepts. Design within the local church is no longer just “bling” or “eye candy” to make things look “sexy.” Design is an opportunity to present the greatest story ever told in ways that the world has never seen before. It’s no different than the retail store that changes its layout. Once we understand the value in the way we present what we have to offer, we can begin to make good decisions. When our designs have a purpose, they will communicate and not simply imitate. Whether we are speaking directly about design concepts or even the layout of our church services, imitation occurs when we don’t have a purpose for what we are doing. Why did I use a flock of birds in this design? Why do we sing Daughtry songs as the opener to our services? Why do we use big, expensive screens and then project the lyrics on them? Wouldn’t it be a lot cheaper to stick with a form of hymnbooks? Those who are imitating will continue to design their services based on what they’ve seen other churches doing. Only those who installed those big screens with the intent of enhancing the experience of a worship set or sermon have a purpose for using that equipment. Those who have screens but don’t understand the role they play are simply imitating. For the designer who had a reason for that flock of birds, it probably works well in the context of what they wanted to communicate. On the other hand, imitation is a symptom of a big problem. The problem is that our calling is to communicate an old message to a new audience, but the audience is not interested, at least on the surface, in what we have to offer. It takes creativity to break that barrier. Nick Campbell, a respected motion designer and blogger (www.greyscalegorilla.com), says clichéd or overtly imitative design shows a lack of creativity in communicating and problem solving. That’s an interesting statement because often the Church does not see it that way. In fact, we often believe (and practice) the opposite—the Church imitates in hopes of relating. Imagine it’s your job to create a new
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ad campaign for the Zune. The problem for Microsoft is that its Zune is being dramatically outsold by the iPod. Your job is to find a creative solution that will present their product in a new way in hopes that consumers will reconsider (or consider for the first time) the Zune. If you are successful, the campaign you design will change the perception of Zune and generate more sales. That’s a big task, right? Now imagine your solution is to use dancing silhouettes on a colorful background in an effort to reach out and relate to iPod consumers. Sadly, there’s no problem solving or creativity in that idea, and either Microsoft executives or consumers would reject it. As believers, we’re charged with a bigger task than selling clothing or mp3 players. We live in a world in need of a Savior, so let’s design new and creative ways of communicating the gospel of Jesus.
and deliver an accurate representation of what it’s like to follow Christ. I can do that through design. ≥ Bryan Clark is a senior designer at LifeChurch.tv. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bryansclark.
Adam Lancaster, The Village Church It’s not simply that art and design should matter to Christians in general or to the local church in particular, but that the right kind of art and design matter. Certainly, every organization must communicate effectively to create understanding among a particular audience, and every individual demonstrates a need for personal expression, but few value the importance of doing so in a way that is fundamentally aesthetic. The Church is a frequent offender, quick to manufacture seemingly artistic results
rusty cogs spin in irregular patterns, a molten core of heightened sensation that feels more deeply and sees more clearly than many ever will. There’s nothing kitschy about its raw imagination. There’s nothing glamorous about its burning emotion. To soft-pedal design simply to fill space in a service is to dishonor the medium. Creativity is a holy calling and design is a prophet’s megaphone. Christian aesthetician Calvin Seerveld says that to accept this high calling is “to become a professional imaginator in order to help your handicapped, unimaginative neighbor … to give voice, eyes, ears, and tactile sense to those who are underdeveloped toward such rich nuances of meaning in God’s creation.” Far too few recognize those rich nuances of meaning, which are at the heart of God’s intended, abundant life. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, is not satisfied with a mundane
≥ Barton Damer is a Creative Producer at Igniter Media (www.ignitermedia.com). He blogs at www.alreadybeenchewed.net.
Bryan Clark, LifeChurch.tv There are three reasons why I think design matters to the Church. First, design speaks to those who aren’t listening. Whether it’s right or not, many people will judge your (our) church without ever setting foot in it. A lot of those judgments, sadly, will be something along the lines of “there’s nothing for me there,” “those people are completely out of touch,” or “they can’t possibly have anything interesting to say.” A well-executed design, though, can speak volumes to someone who won’t give you a chance to say anything else. Second, design is so much more than marketing. Yes, our job is to get people in the doors to hear the teaching, but it’s also more than that. Art can enhance the teaching by penetrating areas of consciousness and emotion that spoken word cannot, giving the message an even greater impact. Design can even make teaching resonate longer by providing a visual reminder of the thoughts and feelings experienced during the message. Third, design is damage control. What we represent is important—more so than some product or company. If products and companies devote resources to protecting their image, why doesn’t the Church? Frankly, there are plenty of people out there giving us bad PR. I consider it a personal goal to tear down misconceptions
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“Creativity appears safe but it comes from an unsafe place, a cavernous recess in the soul where rusty cogs spin in irregular patterns, a molten core of heightened sensation that feels more deeply and sees more clearly than many ever will.”
without much knowledge or appreciation of the history or development of art and design (or worse, without a working Christian theology of art and worship). Dedication to a meaningful creative movement in Christian life and church will require a certain seriousness, beginning with addressing the cautious, contrived way some churches have tiptoed into the sphere of art and design. But design and media is not the peaceful, swirling comet shooting across the sky of Van Gogh’s Starry Night—it’s a sharpened knife and a bloody ear. Art and worship is not Ray Charles’s “Georgia On My Mind”—it’s a lifetime spent overcoming the darkness. Creativity appears safe but it comes from an unsafe place, a cavernous recess in the soul where
existence, but leads his sheep to the greenest, most delectable pastures. A proper use of art and design in the life of the Christian and in the Church can be that vehicle that plunges them headlong into deep, reflective, Godglorifying worship. Art and design matters to the Christian and to the Church because it matters to God, who sees fit to tell of His goodness, not in scratching the surface, but plumbing the depths of life. ≥ Adam Lancaster is the Creative Manager at The Village Church (www.thevillagechurch.net). He blogs at hv.thevillagechurch.net/blog/creative.
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church in your pocket By Ryan Barnhart
6  november/december 2009
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Jason Lombard owns an iPhone. He regularly attends church, but because he is a fireman and occasionally works weekends he cannot always attend church by gathering with others in a building. As a result, Lombard often worships any way his schedule allows. When Northland, A Church Distributed (www.northlandchurch.net) launched their first live, public iPhone-friendly service in July, Lombard immediately began viewing the weekly message on his iPhone when he could not attend church.
“I have to work a lot of Sundays so I find myself relying on the site as much, if not more, than going to a physical church.” Lombard said. “I find a quiet area and watch, knowing that if I get [called to a fire] I can just pop the iPhone back into my pocket and resume when I get back.” Inception With a congregation of 12,000 people across four locations in Central Florida and a successful online campus, Northland is continually searching for innovative ways to reach those within the body, as well as the lost. The iPhone is just another tool in their arsenal. “It is our belief that church—the practice of following Jesus in your faith community—should be an everywhere, everyday experience,” Northland’s Director of Digital Innovation Nathan Clark said. “We want to leverage technology to allow people to worship God together, wherever they are.” Before this summer, Northland was already live streaming its services but the iPhone stream was another step forward. “By putting the stream on the phone, without even needing a computer, anyone can fire up a video stream of the service and gather with others to worship,” Clark added.
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A Common Reason Although some pastors and church attendees oppose the idea of bringing church to the people, churches with an iPhone-friendly service such as Northland share a common vision: reaching more people with the message of Christ. An average of 4,500 people in 140 countries attend LifeChurch.tv’s Church Online experiences, but as of July worshippers may also view experiences on their iPhone. “As people become increasingly connected through their mobile devices, we want to meet them where they are, both spiritually and physically,” says Bobby Gruenewald, Pastor and Innovation Leader for LifeChurch.tv. Flamingo Road Church (www.flamingroadchurch.com) in Cooper City, Florida, also began live streaming video to iPhones in July. With 9,000 attendees spread out over five campuses and even more involved with the Internet Campus, Flamingo Road Church hopes to make life simpler for church attendees and seekers. “There are so many reasons why a person may not be able to attend services physically … like distance, illness, phobia, or being burned by past church experiences, and we wanted to stream the Flamingo Road Church service to give people in any of those categories a chance to connect with God in a way that best helped them get closer to Christ,” says, Brian Vasil, Internet Campus Pastor at Flamingo Road. The church desires to bring believers and seekers closer to Christ any way they can. “Our lead Pastor, Troy Gramling, is a firm believer in shortening the steps for people to begin a relationship with Jesus,” Vasil added. “We believe that live streaming allows us to do that.” Mars Hill Church (www.marshillchurch.org) in Seattle, Washington, and Newsong Church (www.newsong.net) in Irvine, California, do not offer live streaming through the iPhone as of yet, but Mars Hill does offer their vast media library through the iPhone app while Newsong offers the current week’s service and archived services. “It’s a tool that’s effective for ministering to not only those on our campuses but those in our global audience as well,” says Nick Bogardus, PR/Media Relations Director of Mars Hill Church. Tony Kim, the Executive Pastor at Newsong, concurs. “God can use any platform to connect; we just have to remove the obstacles and get out of the way!” Kim says. How to Begin Setting up the live streaming video through an iPhone was a fairly simple and inexpensive three-step process for Northland. It took just five days to be fully tested and functional, and it cost just $50 on top of their preexisting technology. First, the Northland team tweaked their Flash Media Encoder setting to create a video stream optimized for the iPhone and purchased an audio plug-in to optimize the sound. Next, Wowza Media Server 2 (www.wowzamedia.com) was set up on an Amazon Web Services cloud server (aws.amazon.com). Lastly, they connected the video stream from the Amazon server to Northland’s iPhone-friendly mobile site. (A more detailed version of the three-step process is available online on Northland’s media and technology blog.)
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≥ Live service at Northland, A Church Distributed
tech & web
The Bad with the Good Of course there are those who suggest that advancements in technology can lead to laziness on the part of a church attendee, and Rob Vander Ark, an Internet-based business owner, expressed a concern over a lack of community for those solely using iPhones as a means of “attending” church. “It’s great if people actually listen and learn as long as this doesn’t replace them attending church in their own community,” Vander Ark said. “But if I was forced to work on Sunday and my wife and kids went to church, at least I would hear the same message and we could discuss it.” But the complaints heard by those taking advantage of live video streaming are few and far between according to the churches that have instituted the feature. Besides the occasional glitches that come with technology such as software crashes or slow download speeds, the churches have only received positive feedback. “We have heard from individuals who have connected their iPhone to the audio system in their car so they could listen to an experience while driving,” Gruenewald said. “Others have connected it to their TV so they can enjoy it with others and some have even caught a Church Online experience at the grocery store.” The Flamingo Road staff has heard similar stories. “The iPhone stream has been received extremely well,” Vasil said. “People have told us that one of the first things they do when they are ‘showing off’ their iPhone to their friends is to tap the bookmarked Flamingo Road Church streaming site and talk about going to church and experiencing God on their phone.” Fad or Outreach? Is live streaming to iPhones just a cool feature or is it another way to further the kingdom of Christ? Northland, Flamingo Road, and LifeChurch.tv believe the latter. “We may never know this side of Heaven all of those that are impacted by worshiping through their iPhone, but we aren’t going to sit
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“As people become increasingly connected through their mobile devices, we want to meet them where they are, both spiritually and physically,” ≥ Bobby Gruenewald, LifeChurch.tv
around letting good technology stagnate without trying to leverage it for God.” Vasil said. Jason Lombard agrees. Lombard has been able to build and renew his faith through Northland. “[Live streaming] allows me to worship in my comfort zone when, in any other situation, I might say ‘Church is too stuffy for me’ and not go,” Lombard said. “It has absolutely helped my spirituality.” Lombard’s “church” may fit into his pocket when he is finished viewing, but his relationship with Christ has grown much deeper as a result of him staying connected with the church and hearing the weekly message when he cannot attend church in a physical building. To him and Northland, there’s no question the iPhone is an important tool in furthering the kingdom.
≥ Ryan Barnhart is a freelance writer who lives in Denton, Texas. He can be reached at rybarns@yahoo.com.
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I Will Remember Your Tweets No More John Dyer
Losing Your Data Did you hear about Microsoft’s latest disaster? On October 10, one of Microsoft’s subsidiaries, Danger, accidentally deleted all the data from every single T-Mobile Sidekick device. All those contacts, events, to-do lists—everything—were gone, and they had no backup. Within hours, the usual “#FAIL” comments were all over Twitter, and within days the usual articles pleading with users to backup their data started to appear. But Microsoft isn’t the only one guilty of losing data recently. Apple’s new Snow Leopard OS has a nasty bug that, in certain cases, deletes all your data if you login as a Guest (this should be fixed in 10.6.2). Now, if I were one of those Sidekick or Snow Leopard users, I would have been pretty frustrated. But whenever I see one of these disasters, I can’t help but think about how I secretly wish some things I’ve written and done online could be erased. Losing Your Dignity Thankfully, most of my worst meltdowns took place on long-gone message boards where I didn’t use my real name. But today, even though most of us are using our real names as we interact online, it hasn’t stopped online showdowns. I’m sure I’m not alone in having witnessed a few painful-to-watch-but-kindof-hilarious Twitter meltdowns in which two people (Christians, no less) who’ve never met get into a 140-character tiff and then publicly stop following each other. Of course, it’s all quite ridiculous, but the scary thing is not just that it happens, but that those conversations are out there permanently. Forever. You can try to delete them, but they never go away completely. Google and Archive. org are always watching. So in an age in which our pasts—both good and bad—are constantly accessible, what does it mean to “forgive as the Lord forgave [us],” (Col 3:13) or “forgive and forget”? Remember
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that old adage, “Forgive and forget”? What do we do now that it’s impossible to forget? Freeing Our Data In Viktor Mayer-Schönberger’s new book, Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age, the author addresses some of these very questions. He argues that before the digital age no one could remember every event and every conversation they had. This meant that over time communities could exercise “social forgetting” that erased the little unpleasantries of everyday life. Today, things are bit different. College students are continually reminded that anything they put on Facebook might become a part of their first job interview. Personally, I’ve gone back and deleted a few regrettable tweets, hoping that no one will find them buried in a cache somewhere. Since I live half my life in the Christian world and half in the secular web world, I’m always a little afraid that something I said online will come back to haunt me. Mayer-Schönberger suggests that the solution to these problems is to “stop creating tools that automatically remember everything. Instead, we need to design them to forget” (Wired, 17.08). He cites tools such as Flickr’s Guest Pass and Drop.io’s Private Sharing, which are designed to only keep a file active for a limited period of time. Choosing to Remember Mayer-Schönberger’s solution sounds pretty good (and almost downright biblical). The Old Testament often talks of God graciously “forgetting” the wrong we’ve done. In Jeremiah 31:34, God makes the foundational promise of our Christian faith, “I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.” But it doesn’t take a Bible scholar to know that God doesn’t really “forget” in the same way that Microsoft and Apple do. The data on those once-cool Sidekicks no longer exists, but our
all-knowing God never really forgets. Instead, he chooses to stop holding those sins against us and see us through the blood of his Son, Jesus Christ. Theologian Miroslav Volf, author of The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World, says that when we try to deal with the past, we often make one of two mistakes. Sometimes we downplay what happened, saying, “Aw, it wasn’t that big of a deal. I only lost, like, six followers over it.” This way, we don’t have to forgive the event as it actually happened. Other times, when we hold resentment against someone, we inflate an event in order to make the offender look worse. “She posted that over the entire Internet.” But Volf, who underwent a months-long interrogation during the Yugoslavian conflict, suggests that a major part of forgiveness is not forgetting, but remembering rightly so we can forgive what really happened. For Christians, this means that the Internet’s ability to help us remember rightly is a chance to practice a theologically-informed, true kind of forgiveness. Rather than downplay an incident or cut people off every time they annoy us, we have the chance to look at the past with Google-like accuracy and choose to stop holding those wrongs against those who harmed us. Instead of constantly blocking, de-following, and un-friending, we can choose to see people and their wrong through the blood of Christ. You know, that might just make a decent witness.
≥ John Dyer is a web developer in Dallas, Texas, and he writes about issues related to faith and technology at www.donteatthefruit.com.
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By Scott McClellan
A Merchant of peace
Dan Merchant as Bumper Sticker Man
12  november/december 2009
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The bumper sticker from which Dan Merchant’s documentary, Lord, Save Us from Your Followers, takes its name suggests a troubling dichotomy between the Church and the rest of the world. It seems the growing consensus among non-Christian Americans is that Christians are an often unlikable lot whose attitudes, values, and behaviors don’t appear representative of Jesus (or our culture’s perception of him). And while Jesus told his followers to expect trouble in this world, it’s fair to assume he meant something along the lines of the persecution faced by the early Church in Rome and the modern Church in China. Merchant’s film posits that American Christians bring trouble upon themselves by judging rather than loving and seeking to control rather than serve. Books such as Dan Kimball’s They Like Jesus but Not the Church and unChristian by Dave Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons have put forth similar ideas supported by research and personal experiences, but the unique value of Lord, Save Us is that it humanizes the culture war. In other words, the film is about people, not propositions.
Merchant speaks face to face with people from all over the religious and political spectrums about faith, God, culture, and Christianity, and as he does we see his subjects as human beings instead of data. When Merchant interviews people on the street, he doesn’t take himself too seriously; he wields his microphone while wearing a jumpsuit covered in provocative (and contradictory) bumper stickers. The tactic simultaneously subverts, confuses, and disarms, serving as an icebreaking sight gag that enables perfect strangers to begin a dialogue about weighty subject matter. In fact, the jumpsuit is a good metaphor for the man wearing it. In conversation, he laughs easily and loudly at our proclivity for mishandling and misrepresenting the message of Jesus. In his film, Merchant pokes fun at the dogmatism and ungenerous discourse on both sides of the aisle. All the while, Merchant’s heart is burdened by a desire to communicate
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a more loving gospel to both the religious and nonreligious. For Merchant, humor is a perfect gateway into exploring the apparent contradiction between “the gospel of love” and the anger and fear that sometimes infiltrate American Christianity. A filmmaker at heart, Merchant proves comfortable examining and challenging internal and external conflict in an inherently public medium. The result is a film that is equal parts light and heavy, public and personal. It’s a film that features a confession booth at a gay pride event, a Family Feud-style game show between conservative Christians and liberal secularists, and a ministry—Night Strike—that provides love and care to homeless people. Lord, Save Us from Your Followers is a film that espouses a decidedly Christian worldview and is well received by secular media outlets. Recently, I spoke with Merchant about his film, the conflict that inspired it, and the power of grace.
COLLIDE: I heard you describe Lord, Save Us from Your Followers as being about “the collision of faith and culture in America.” In your opinion, what’s the root of that collision? Dan Merchant: The simplest way to put it is everybody’s trying to figure out what it means to be American in the 21st century. We’re trying to figure out, as believers, what it means to be Christian Americans in the 21st century. I think the easiest entry point into this “collision of faith and culture” conversation is when we butt heads on political agendas. I think what has happened to a certain degree is people of faith—so called Christian leaders— have advanced certain political agendas that thrust us into conflict in the public square. If you go back to the last decade, the Christian perspective has taken on very political tones, and I think what that did was create some incomplete perceptions about who we are. In a nutshell, we became concerned with what we were against rather than what we were for. Those things became more visible than the gospel and that was a conflict I was observing. Personally, it was a conflict that I was experiencing, too. That’s where my phrase, “the gospel of being right vs. the gospel of love” comes in. That was my internal conflict and I think it was sparked by what I was seeing in the culture as well. Then, of course, I realized I was part of the problem. COLLIDE: The film appears to issue a challenge regarding the lives that we live and the messages we communicate as Christians. For instance, you just mentioned becoming known for what we’re against rather than what we’re for. That comes down to how we use media to communicate and what we choose to communicate, right? Merchant: As Christians, we have to decide what message we’re going to put forward. And as people who follow Jesus, it probably ought to be what he talked about. It’s easy to make it about what I want it to be about. It’s really easy to make it about “taking back America.” OK, that’s great, but that’s not what Jesus says. What Jesus says is a whole lot more challenging and a whole lot more redemptive. What I observed through the making of Lord, Save Us and in the last year of screening the film is the power of the language of the
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gospel, how it just cuts through all the clutter, how it knocks barriers down, how lovingkindness actually works. Grace and forgiveness and redemption are things that knock down walls that, frankly, we don’t always trust will be knocked down. So it’s an interesting thing that happens when we actually trust in God because He’s capable of some pretty powerful things that we’re not capable of. Perhaps we don’t trust that He’s actually going to show up sometimes,
“Dang.” That’s one of those ideas that kicks into your head so fast, I’m not quite sure I thought of it. So I suggest, perhaps, God stuffed it in my noggin. It was a powerful day. I prepared myself to get yelled at for eight hours; instead people graciously and lovingly accepted my apology. That created a foundation for a conversation because it knocked down the walls that were between us. There’s a thing that happens when people understand that you care about them.
“Grace and forgiveness and redemption are things that knock down walls that, frankly, we don’t always trust will be knocked down.” so we feel like we have to make it all about the rules instead of this love that overwhelms and upends the rules. COLLIDE: Speaking of grace knocking down walls, the scene in Lord, Save Us in which you set up a confession booth at a gay pride event seems like a profound and emotional part of both the film and your personal experience making the film. Merchant: Oh, no kidding. It was. The confessional idea I’d seen clearly demonstrated by Pope John Paul II, when he gives the Jubilee Apology, and I feature that in the film. And, obviously, Donald Miller and Tony Kriz (Tony the Beat Poet) in Blue Like Jazz did a version of a confession booth at the college that they were hanging out at. The idea of that kind of posture was really moving to me. Frankly, what I tried to do at the gay pride event was find the most difficult place I could think of. I was half praying and half thinking about it and said, “Lord, how could I do this? Where should I do this?” And it came to me: gay pride. I said, “Lord, any other ideas? How about a college football game? How about a Rolling Stones concert? Anyplace else?” But the response was, “Nope, gay pride.” I thought,
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For almost everybody there, it was a completely bizarre and weird experience to hear “I’m sorry” from a straight, married, Christian guy. There’s a lovely, young redheaded woman [in the film] who said, “I just don’t know what to say. I’ve never heard any Christians say anything nice to me before.” You hear those things and those things wound you because you start to understand— you start to walk in somebody else’s shoes for a minute. You start to get a little perspective. These are hurting human beings that are made in God’s image. We have to understand that compassion is not something that people have to earn before we deliver it to them. We’re Christians. We’re the ones who are supposed to get this compassion stuff. What was Jesus’s ministry and sacrifice all about if we’re the ones that don’t understand compassion? It seems like we’re in Bizarro World sometimes. The idea that everybody has to check the box, you know check these boxes. [Withholding compassion] is so antithetical to the gospel. Again, the good news for the Church is that lovingkindness actually does work. COLLIDE: The idea of not having to earn our compassion reminds me of Paul saying, “While we were still sinners, Christ died
for us” (Romans 5:8). That’s an incredibly important phrase that we tend not to apply to other people. Merchant: You’re right. With Paul, it’s not that he was the grumpy guy on the road to Damascus who Jesus transformed. He was the worst guy. You think there’s not a lesson in there? God can use anybody. God is using a goofy filmmaker who made a movie named after a bumper sticker. COLLIDE: What has been the response to the film now that it’s out in theaters and people are actually getting to see it? Merchant: The response has been remarkable, and from all kinds of folks. People that go to art house movies because they think they’re interesting but don’t go to church and don’t have faith say, “Wow, that’s an eye opener. That gives me a perspective. It gives me something to say yes to.” Some of the pre-screenings we did were at very liberal, non-religious colleges, and one of them was Lewis & Clark College up here in the Northwest. There was a kid who came up to me after the screening and said, “I don’t like church and I really have no time for church people, but there was something about that last bit of the movie where people were washing the feet of the homeless that was really powerful.” He was attracted to that and went down and volunteered at Night Strike. COLLIDE: Wow. Merchant: He was one out of an audience of 300 at that Lewis & Clark screening—only 12 were Christians, 288 weren’t. In the three weeks that followed the screening, 80 people went down and volunteered at Night Strike. So that’s from the non-Christian perspective. They’re saying, “Wow, there’s something about this I don’t understand. I thought I got this religious stuff and I wrote it off, but there’s clearly something more here.” It’s because people respond to this presentation of the gospel the way Jesus did it. It works.
≥ To find out more about Lord, Save Us from Your Followers visit www.lordsaveusthemovie.com.
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RenewedVision.com ™
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voices
THE FUTURE IS IN THE NEW ben arment
Hundreds of thousands of pastors have converged upon South Barrington, Illinois, at one time or another to attend a Willow Creek conference. For years, it was Mecca for outreach-minded church leaders. They came to learn the models and methods of this largerthan-life church. And that’s a shame. It’s a shame that most of us missed the beginning of Willow Creek Community Church. We missed the college class where Bill Hybels caught the vision for a New Testament church from Dr. Bilezikian. We missed selling vegetables door-to-door with a teenaged Nancy Beach to help pay the bills. We missed the years of meeting in a movie theater and the infamous “train wreck” (detailed in Rediscovering Church by Lynne & Bill Hybels) that almost killed the church. Most of us caught the back end of the vision for Willow Creek, when it was tested, proven, and old. Once it broke all records in church ministry, we finally paid attention. When the lakeside auditorium was built and the escalators were installed, we finally woke up. And that’s a shame. It’s a shame that we only catch on to great ideas when they’re no longer new. Willow Creek is a living monument to the power of vision, but we seem to have learned nothing from its story. When was the last time you paid any attention to a recent college graduate with a dream? It’s a shame because the future is in the new. Last year, I worked at Catalyst Conference, where we hosted 12,000 church leaders in Atlanta, 3,500 in California, and thousands of others at one-day events all across the country. The events were packed, the excitement was contagious, and the momentum was unquestionable. This year’s gathering in Atlanta sold out at 13,000 people and became the highest trending topic on Twitter. But hardly anyone
16 november/december 2009
was excited about Catalyst when it started. They had to give away hundreds of free tickets in its first year. Only two or three sponsors were interested in exhibiting. The early bird deadline was extended at least three times to reel in the stragglers. Nearly two-thirds of the attendees came from North Point Community Church, and that only happened because Andy Stanley promoted it for $49 two weeks before the event. What a shame.
“We miss out on the most important season of a vision’s lifecycle because we have an undying love for proven ideas and a blatant disregard for new ones.” We miss out on the most important season of a vision’s lifecycle because we have an undying love for proven ideas and a blatant disregard for new ones. We don’t want to tolerate the hardships or the impossible odds that come with new ideas. We don’t want to take a risk on something untested. We want to gather where others are gathering, celebrate what others are celebrating, and affirm what others are affirming. I’ll never forget the story of how a pastor visiting Willow Creek got caught measuring the distance from the rear doors to the front stage, presumably for his own building campaign. He wanted his church to be just like Willow’s, but without the unique vision. I think he missed the
point. And unfortunately, so have most of us. This year, a considerable number of conferences are closing down. Rob Bell just announced the end of NOOMA. The time is ripe for fresh, new vision, but it’s not going to come from what is already established and proven. The future comes from the new. And this means we all have to take some risks. We have to start looking for great ideas in their infancy. We can’t dismiss a young staffer’s audacious idea just because he’s inexperienced. Sure, he’ll make mistakes, but his idea will become refined by the process. It just might be the next great revolution in the church. We have to trade our preferences for potential. If we go to the same conferences, listen to the same podcasts, and follow the same preachers, we’ll get more of the same. It’s time to shuffle the iPod and discover some new opportunities. We have to be willing to break some rules. Great ideas turn into systems that get repeated over and over again. So when a new idea comes along, it threatens our way of doing things. We’ll be inclined to say, “You’re not allowed to do that.” But we have to be willing to break the rules if these new ideas have a shot at making it. So go ahead—honor the idea-makers of the past. But make room for the obscure, the unheard-of, and the ridiculous. The future is in the new.
≥ Ben Arment is the founder of STORY (www.storychicago.com). He is a former church planter and a daily blogger at www.BenArment.com.
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Christmas Poll For most churches, the Christmas service is one of the most important services of the year. Whether you do elaborate musicals, dramatic readings, Christmas carols, or candlelit worship, there’s going to be some planning involved. So how much time does the average church give to planning out this service? When there were still 10 weeks left until Christmas, we took a poll on the COLLIDE blog to determine how many of our readers were already eyeing late December on their calendars.
The Watch List Nov. 20 - The Blindside
Dec. 18 - Avatar
www.theblindsidemovie.com Warner Bros. Pictures
www.avatarmovie.com 20th Century Fox
The heartwarming true story of how a homeless youngster turned into an AllAmerican football star with the help of a loving family. Make sure to bring some tissues to this one.
Avatar is the new James Cameron action/ adventure/sci-fi film that mixes live action with a new generation of special effects and CGI in a battle to save civilization. Sounds epic.
Nov. 20 - Twilight: New Moon
Dec. 25 - The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
www.newmoonthemovie.com Summit Entertainment The second installment of the successful Twilight series features more vampires, teen romance, werewolves, and paleness.
Nov. 25 - The Road www.theroad-movie.com The Weinstein Company
Question: Have you started working on your Christmas service yet?
55% Of course—it’s just 10 weeks away!
27% We’re talking about our Christmas service. Does that count?
18% Uh, no. There are nine Sundays between now and then.
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Avatar
The Road stars Viggo Mortensen, Robert Duvall, and Charlize Theron in a story about a man and his son as they travel through a post-apocalyptic world.
www.doctorparnassus.com Sony Pictures Classics This movie features Heath Ledger’s final performance and can only be described as fantastically and extraordinarily weird.
Dec. 25 - Sherlock Holmes www.sherlock-holmes-movie.com Warner Bros. Pictures Guy Ritchie’s modern adaptation of the classic mystery series stars Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law as Holmes and Watson.
Dec. 4 - Up In The Air
Jan. 15 - The Book of Eli
www.upintheairmovie.com Paramount Pictures
www.thebookofelimovie.com Warner Bros. Pictures
From the director of Juno comes this dramedy that stars George Clooney as a big-time corporate suit who loves life on the road but has to adjust his lifestyle when his company downsizes.
Denzel Washington plays a lone warrior in a post-apocalyptic world who holds the key to redemption in his hands.
Dec. 11 - Invictus
www.weinsteinco.com Weinstein Company
www.invictusmovie.com Warner Bros. Pictures Directed by Clint Eastwood, Invictus tells the story of how Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) joined forces with South Africa’s rugby team captain (Matt Damon) in hopes of uniting their country.
Jan. 15 - Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil
The sequel to the family comedy Hoodwinked features more popular fairy tale characters such as Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel.
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VISUAL
REVIEWS Convergence DVD Series Curriculum
Donald Miller – Creative Trust Media www.allthingsconverge.com
≥ In Short: Donald Miller has teamed up with
Glo
Software Zondervan / www.bibleglo.com
≥ In Short: Glo is a new kind of Bible for the
digital generation. Glo helps bring the Bible to life with its media-rich interface, powerful tools, and extensive media library. In addition to the text of the Bible, Glo includes more than 2,300 high-resolution photos, 7,500 encyclopedia articles, 460 virtual reality tours, 3.5 hours of HD video, 689 works of art, and 147 maps. But what makes Glo truly unique is its intuitive browser interface. Through its five lenses (Bible, Timeline, Atlas, Topical, and Media), users can filter and search content based on its relation to Bible passages, geography, a biblical timeline, relevant topics, and any combination thereof. Glo even has Bible reading plans and daily devotionals to help you study the Bible consistently. Plus, Glo is constantly being updated with new information and media. Lucky for printed Bibles, jealousy is unbiblical. Our Take: Glo is a media rich and visually stunning piece of software that transforms studying and navigating the Bible into a unique experience. What’s really impressive is how it organizes information in order to make it easier to find. Rather than using linear or “string” search, Glo utilizes tagging for everything so that users can always find related items with ease. For instance, you can quickly find the words of Jesus spoken in Jerusalem during Passion Week in the gospel of John—that’s an incredible feature. Though the product is currently PC–only, we look forward to playing with the Mac version next year. An iPhone app or mobile version wouldn’t be a bad idea either.
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prominent Christian writers and thinkers such as Phyllis Tickle, Lauren Winner, Dr. Dan Allender, and Dr. Tremper Longman to bring us this new small group DVD curriculum. The first three installments in the series, which released November 17, include Breaking the Ice: Learning to Share Our Stories, Frustration and False Gods: Living in a Fallen World, and Spiritual Practices: How to Meet God in the Everyday. Each DVD features three 15-minute conversations between Miller and his guests as well as bonus features. Our Take: While we have yet to watch the series, we are always excited when Miller releases new material. We love that Convergence desires to examine the intersections of faith and life in today’s culture and attempts to do so in a small group setting. Small groups everywhere should look into using Convergence in the near future. Get ready for real, honest conversations about God, life, story, and many other spiritual topics.
Feed My Own Children Short Film
Word Pictures Book
Brian Godawa / www.godawa.com
≥ In Short: Author, artist, and screenwriter Brian
Godawa spent most of his early life arguing with people about the truth of the gospel using impersonal logic. Once he realized this wasn’t winning people over, he reevaluated his approach to find that while the Bible speaks in propositional truths, it also uses story, metaphor, and imagery. In Word Pictures, Godawa takes you through his thought process, emphasizing a move from reading the Bible literally to literarily, by looking at history, culture, and his own personal experience. Our Take: Brian Godawa’s Word Pictures is a must read for anyone who wants to approach the Bible as a narrative without sacrificing reason and truth. Godawa elegantly explains how the Bible uses literary elements to help us understand propositional truths and beauty. Godawa walks a balanced line between two extremes—purely literal and purely literary– and instead invites his readers to read the Bible holistically.
Li Yang
Community Christian Church www.communitychristian.org
Short Film
≥
≥
In Short: Community Christian Church’s “Feed
In Short: “Li Yang” is a new documentary
My Own Children” takes a satirical look at how spoiled children in America have become. By modeling the video after popular TV commercials asking for money to help feed starving children, “Feed My Own Children” challenges Christians to rethink their wants and needs in light of the rest of the world. Our Take: Though it takes a good 30 seconds to understand that this video is satire, “Feed My Own Children” is a humorous yet important reminder that we too often focus on our own needs rather than those of others. The short film leads individuals to examine their attitudes and the way they lead younger generations of Christians.
installment in the Deidox series that tells the powerful “personal story of how the gospel is spreading” through China’s underground church. Hear as Li Yang tells stories of how God’s light is shining through the darkness in China despite the fear and persecution that Chinese Christians face every day. Our Take: “Li Yang” serves as both a challenge and encouragement to the global Church. In “Li Yang,” viewers get just a small glimpse of what the Lord is doing across the world. The film also demonstrates, as many have insisted, how narratives can impact audiences. We highly encourage you to watch “Li Yang” (and every other Deidox film). You won’t regret it.
DeiDox / www.deidox.com
november/december 2009 19
church Spotlight
Park community church ≥ Chicago, IL
In our September/October issue we briefly mentioned Park Community Church (www.parkcommunitychurch.org) as part of our “Modern Worship Spaces” article, but we still wanted to discuss the church in more detail. For the last 20 years, Park Community Church has met in more than 20 locations across the city of Chicago, including high school auditoriums, theaters, ballrooms, and hotels in order to minister to the community. Though their current worship space, a remodeled warehouseturned-church, piqued our interest, it was Park’s use of creative arts and multimedia that inspired us.
Jackson Crum - Pastor COLLIDE: How does Park Community Church utilize multimedia in its worship services? Crum: In recent years, multimedia has played a role in our weekend services, but only as an aid or support to our messages. We place a high value on the teaching and preaching of the gospel and use media to help support that. Whether it’s through video, music, texting, or any other new media, the goal is always to help folks focus on the message. Texting is something we’ve utilized as a way to help our folks engage with our messages. Often, with our crowd, they come with many questions, and texting provides a way for them to engage with us and voice questions they might not have the chance to express otherwise. We have a visual crowd, and we find that media helps connect the message. I use pictures of the biblical locations we’re talking about and use Google Maps to show the geographic locations in order to help communicate the historical authenticity of the Bible to a generation who believes the Bible is a book of fables. We also share people’s testimonies on videos we call “My Journeys” and have found them to be effective ways to tell people’s stories. COLLIDE: What is the value and purpose for using media and design in your worship space?
20 november/december 2009
Crum: Media and design are valuable to us but only if it’s helping us to communicate the gospel and helping people connect the dots. We never want to put the medium ahead of the message. We value the arts and creativity and believe the Church needs to champion and model them, not just emulate culture. Some people are visual learners, and we’ve heard from many of our congregation who are artists that the colors, structure, and background designs our team creates make them feel like we’re thinking of them in our designing. The fact that we care about our space and beauty in all shapes and sizes speaks to our crowd.
Tim Schraeder – Director of Communications COLLIDE: We couldn’t help but notice your impressive website. Tell us about it and the process behind creating it. Schraeder: Our website is a crucial component to how we communicate. Park is unique in that our average age is 29, and 60 percent of the people who attend Park are single. Being made up of a young, tech-savvy crowd, we put a lot of energy into making sure our website is accessible and up-to-date with vital information to help people connect. We launched our website about a year ago (when we opened our building) and knew we had a great site that was simple and got the
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With the launch of our new website we’ve also launched a private social network for our regular attendees with the help of the Cobblestone Community Network (www.cobblestonecn. com). Most of our 200-plus small groups have private groups on the network where they are able to communicate with each other, post prayer requests, and share a calendar. Different ministries in the church are using it to communicate news and information, and it enables us to have classifieds, job postings, a volunteer board, and other things that we wouldn’t necessarily want on a public site or on Facebook or another social network.
Jason Widney – Director of Media Arts COLLIDE: How does Park Community Church utilize multimedia in its worship services? Widney: We use media in many ways including sermon bumpers, testimonies, announcements, special production elements, set design, and environmental projection. We regularly change the way we include media in our services. COLLIDE: You’re constantly changing up your stage setup and design. Why do you feel this is important? How have people responded to this? message out there. But we realized our site wasn’t adequate for the job we needed it to do after seeing how much traffic we were getting. We were driving people to our website for nearly everything after we stopped printing a weekly bulletin. So, we found a great team of designers to work with, and they helped us think through what our site should do, functionally, and what it should look like. The end result, we believe, gives us a fresh look and drives people to content and information that’s vital for them. As for our “old” site, that’s only a year old, we’re working with our web development company, Ekklesia360 (www.ekklesia360.com), to donate it to a church plant that needs a good website. COLLIDE: How does Park utilize social media in its ministry and communication? Schraeder: We only print a bulletin once a month since a majority of our congregation is hyper-connected to the Web and social media. Throughout the week we depend on Facebook and Twitter to communicate upcoming events and opportunities for people to connect. But we also use it to see and hear what people who attend Park are talking about. Social media enables us to maintain a pulse on what people in our church are talking about and lets us know what they are thinking and how they are responding to our services. And in many cases, it has introduced us to people we had no idea attended our church.
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Widney: We change our set to assist in the support of the message and to engage people’s senses in a visual way. The response has been overwhelming. People refer to the stage designs as art and have talked about how it enhances their experience. COLLIDE: What kind of creative team do you work with? Tell us about your creative process. Widney: Our worship pastor, director of band development, communication director, associate director of media arts, and I meet on a weekly basis to walk through the services on a creative level. It’s a brainstorming session from which I take a few ideas to investigate and develop. I’d like to say we have all the ideas and concepts on paper, finalized weeks or months in advance, and it flows smoothly, but I often find the greatest creativity in the final hours. We are starting a new process as we prepare for Christmas by engaging three artists from our community to assist in the creative process.
≥ For an extended Q&A with the staff at Park Community Church visit www.collidemagazine.com and search “Park Community.”
november/december 2009 21
tech & web
The E-Reader Explosion The e-reader market is growing, but it’s still quite uncertain. Tech enthusiasts may be quick to jump on the e-reader train but most people remain hesitant due to price, features, and a traditional affinity for paper books. As new e-readers generate significant buzz, including Barnes & Noble’s nook and the oft-rumored (but still unseen) Apple tablet, it seems more and more people may trade in their paperbacks for a digital edition. We asked our blog readers what they thought about e-readers and here’s how they responded:
17% I have an e-reader and love it. 0% I have one and I don’t love it. 47% I don’t have one but I’d love to try it. 16% Until e-readers get better and cheaper, give me good old fashioned paper.
20% To heck with e-readers, I want something that I can dog-ear and put on my bookshelf.
22 november/december 2009
current e-Reader Options Sony Reader Touch Edition www.sony.com/reader Price: $299 Screen Size: 6” touch screen Memory: 512MB (dual expansion slots up to 16GB) Supported Formats: EPUB, PDF, BBeB Book, DOC
Barnes and Noble Nook www.barnesandnoble.com/nook Price: $259 Screen Size: 6” E Ink + 3.5” color LCD touchscreen Memory: 2GB (expansion slot up to 16GB) Supported Formats: Supported Formats: EPUB, PDF
*3G Wireless & WiFi book downloads
Amazon Kindle www.amazon.com/kindle Price: $259 Screen Size: 6” E Ink Memory: 2GB Supported Formats: AZW, TEXT, PDF, HTML, DOC
*3G Wireless book downloads
Email, Social Networks, and Generation Y
Status Updates Becoming Standard
While more and more people are updating and sharing their status with the world, email and text messaging remain the most popular type of communication among Generation Y according to a study by The Participatory Marketing Network and the Interactive and Direct Marketing Lab at Pace University. More specifically, Generation Y is more likely to give up social networking, TV, and magazines than text messaging and email. And what’s so bad about magazines, we ask? Regardless, email and text messaging are tops for Generation Y at the moment, but we can’t help but wonder how much longer that’ll be the case.
According to a new poll by Pew Internet (www.pewinternet.org), around 19% of Internet users now update their status through services such as Twitter—up eight percentage points from a year ago. The study suggests that the increase is due to mobile devices, social networks, and younger Internet users, but we’re content to blame it on a growth in narcissism. Speaking of which, you can follow COLLIDE on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ collidemagazine.
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tech&WEB
REVIEWS Google Wave Web App
wave.google.com
≥ In Short: You’ve probably heard of Google
Wave, but you may have no idea what it actually is. Google Wave is a whole new way to communicate that puts email to shame. Instead of sending emails back and forth and back and forth, with so many levels of replies your information gets lost, Google keeps the entire conversation in one, simple-to-read stream. Each “wave” reads more like a continuous conversation, similar to an IM chat, rather than a see-saw conversation. Wave makes it easy to add people to the conversation and share media, polls, maps, and other gadgets in the wave. What’s even more impressive is the timeline feature that lets you playback all of the changes made to each “wave” so that you never miss a beat. Wave really brings collaboration to a whole new level. If you want to check out wave, you’ll have to sign up for an invite because the service is still in private beta. Our Take: So far we’ve enjoyed Google Wave and have found it useful on many levels. The COLLIDE team actually used it to help brainstorm and organize ideas for this issue, allowing us to give each other feedback on items and make changes when necessary. One thing that is missing from Wave right now is notifications for when a new wave has been sent to you. Though Wave is currently web-based, we downloaded a program for Macs called Waveboard that lets us run Wave in the background without always having a browser window open. While Wave still has many bugs that need fixing, we feel like it really could be the communication wave of the future. (Get it? Wave of the future.)
MinistryCSS Website
www.ministrycss.com
≥ In Short: MinistryCSS.com is a collabora-
tion between Church Media Group (www. churchmedia.cc) and Church Relevance (www. churchrelevance.com) that spotlights great ministry website designs. Users can sort by categories such as Church, Conferences, and
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don’t like the idea), read A Multi-Site Church Road Trip. Surratt, Ligon, and Bird will expose you to stories and information you haven’t read anywhere else about the churches in the multi-site trenches. Because Road Trip is both conversational and informative, the book is an enjoyable and rewarding read.
Wetoku Missions, or by popular tags such as Simple, Textures, Gradients, and Navigations. If you can’t find your website in the directory, feel free to submit it for consideration. Our Take: MinistryCSS.com provides a great directory of beautifully designed websites for inspiration. Though ministry website design is getting better, it is still difficult to find a big collection of well-designed church sites. MinistryCSS.com does the collecting for you, and the site also exposes you to current trends and companies that can help you with your ministry’s site. Check out MinistryCSS.com and be inspired.
Web App
www.wetoku.com
≥ In Short: Wetoku is a handy tool for recording
video and audio interviews and posting them online—provided you and your interview subject have webcams, microphones, and Internet access. Wetoku makes it simple to record your conversation and embed it on a website or blog. And unlike Skype or other online communication tools, your interviewee doesn’t need a Wetoku account in order to partcipate. Our Take: Wetoku is still in beta, so its feature set and business model are still evolving. Though we’d hate to tamper with the simplicity of using Wetoku, we’d like users to have the ability to make minor edits to their interviews before posting them. Also, it’d be helpful to have a timer that displayed the running length of your conversation so interviewers knew when it was time to wrap things up. We have no clue how to properly pronounce its name, but that doesn’t take anything anyway from the potential of Wetoku.
Tumblr Web App
www.tumblr.com
≥ In Short: A tumblelog is a kind of blog that is
A Multi-Site Church Road Trip Book
Surratt, Ligon, and Bird / www.zondervan.com
≥ In Short: Did you know that in 2008 there
were an estimated 2,000 multi-site churches in North America? It sounds as though the 2006 book by Geoff Surratt, Greg Ligon, and Warren Bird, The Multi-Site Church Revolution, was on to something. Now the trio is back with A MultiSite Church Road Trip, in which they introduce us to a number of churches (some you’ll recognize, some you won’t) across the country. Along the way, they share valuable insights and best practices for church leaders trying to navigate a relatively new model of ministry. Our Take: If the term “multi-site church” interests you at all (even if you’re convinced you
more of a stream of embedded media files and brief bodies of text than traditional 400-word posts. Tumblr is a fantastic tumblelog platform, especially for those dissatisfied with the big names in blogging such as Blogger and WordPress. In fact, Tumblr might be the best of both worlds—it’s much more customizable than Blogger but won’t call upon your webmaster skills as much as a self-hosted WordPress blog. Our Take: On its site, Tumblr bills itself as “the easiest way to blog,” and that’s a fair claim. From the Tumblr dashboard or iPhone app it’s easy to post text, photos, quotes, links, conversations, audio, video, slideshows, and more. It’s also easy to customize your site’s design, connect your Tumblr site to your Twitter and Facebook profiles, and publish your site under that domain name you registered but don’t know what to do with.
november/december 2009 23
AD