Audrey Went Fishing with Pastor BJ

Audrey went fishing with Pastor BJ and definitely made the video cute in all the right places.

Bored Sheep Herders

These sheep herders took filming, fast motion and sheep herding to a whole new level!

Less is More

As a Pastor over an area of a church we all have an enormous umbrella of responsibilities. Here are some ideas of ways you can broaden your umbrella while doing less.

1. Make an “organizational chart” of what you think you’re department should look like on paper if you had “employees” filling each position. (Best thing we ever did)
This will show you that you are most likely wearing too many hats in the department and should “recruit” or “promote” volunteers to do some of the things you’re doing. You may need to “promote” someone to be a director over something you’re currently directing but shouldn’t be, because you’re also directing 3 other things. I say “recruit” volunteers for something very easy and “promote” volunteers that are already there to something at the next level. (EX: “Recruit” a new camera person and “promote” an experienced camera person to running the video board.)

2. Go through your typical week in your mind and ask why do I spend time doing that thing? Can someone else do that thing? Is that thing really important in the big picture? We quit doing some of those “things” and it freed up an entire extra day to focus our attention on the “things” that were most important.

3. Ask yourself, “what are the most important things I need to be doing?” Are our hours in the work week focused on these most important things?  Spend your energies and time on these…the most important things.

4. Lastly, this is for the over achiever…namely me and my 2 staffers. We put due dates on our work. We found that when we did this we wouldn’t piddle with it forever. Yes! We can make this video amazing, but we can also finish it. We need to be done with this video by 5PM Thursday. Done. Not…this video needs to win awards at a film festival for it’s crazy After Effects tricks.

7 Tips on Introducing New Songs to Your Church

Introducing new songs to your church can be tricky sometimes. Here are some sure-fire tips I have found that have worked for me in my setting. Hopefully you can glean from them and use them in your setting.

1. Play the new song or songs you would like to introduce in with the preservice music and the exit music on a CD or iPod for a couple of months. By the time you play it “live” in the service they will at least have heard it a few times and will be familiar with it.
2. This doesn’t work for all songs, but sometimes it helps the first time you play the song to position it outside of the worship set. For example, use it as the offertory song.
3. It is very important to surround a new song with familiar songs. A new song may cause some in your church to disconnect, so limit the time of disconnect by using songs that are familiar around the new song.
4. It is very important to come back to the new song the following week in your worship set. I believe that you should wait a week and then bring it back one more time on the 4th week. After 3 times in 4 weeks, typically, your church will embrace the song and sing along.
5. Be careful of too many new and newer songs in one worship set. My opinion is: in a 4 song worship set 1 new/newer song is enough.
6. It’s always good to let the worship leader connect the new song somehow with the congregation. I think the preacher should preach and the worship leader should lead music, but very short words or scripture to help them understand the “heart” of the new song better always helps your church connect.
7. This last thought is for ProTools users and churches who can get high quality recordings of live performances. We recently started using ProTools and have considered doing an EP of 5 new songs a few times a year and selling them for cost or giving them to the congregation. The congregation will listen and be familiar before we ever do the new songs.

It is so vital to introduce new songs, but “how” you introduce them could be even more important!

The Man Card

Father’s Day was all about getting and keeping your man card by being a courageous, committed, cooperative, consistent and compassionate man of God. Here’s a video we shot to make fun of men “losing their man cards”.

(chris farley voice) “In a Van Down by the Highway”

So…we were moving props around at the church…one prop was half of a van. We started, of course, to get ideas and decided we should take it to the top of the hill and roll it down the whole hill while we’re all in it. We tried it once and it was awesome. The second time we went a bit faster and a tad bit farther. Did I mention this half van had no brakes except our own shoes…and the bottom of the hill was a major highway. In our favor, there was a steering wheel. It was the most fun I’ve ever had almost dying.

Last One…Andy Stanley Baby!

Julie Arnold baby!

Los Whit Baby!

Farewell to Jim and Jim

Chris (the other Jim) is moving off to Houston…so we got on our Jim and Jim digs, pushed record and went for it…which is pretty much what we always did. So this is a Jim and Jim proper goodbye. Farewell Jim Johnson and Jim Johnston.