betterthanblank

Saw something over at Los’ Blog that inspired me.

It’s every weekend for the next 6 months, with a different color for different elements of the worship experience. I’m trying to stay on top of a lot of details and still remain flexible - thus the post it notes.

My wife said, “Isn’t there a program that does this for you?”.
To which I answered, “Yes”.
She said, “And you of all people are not using it?”

How do you plan your worship?

Popularity: 7% [?]

Before:

After:

Finally for the first time this year my inbox is empty of unread mail and under 100 emails.

How’s yer inbox looking?

Popularity: 7% [?]

It’s time to do some house keeping here at betterthanblank. When I started the blog I added every single blog I could find that was in anyway interesting or connected to this community (whatever that means). Now I look at the list and it is pretty overwhelming. So, I’m gonna try something that may or may not work.

If you want your link on my blog then just leave me a comment, if not - don’t. I’ll add you if I don’t already have you, and if yer blog is even somewhat interesting. In a couple weeks I’m gonna try and clean up the sidebars and get them a little more comprehensive.

So again - leave a comment with your blog if you want to be on the blogroll. Happy New Year!

Popularity: 43% [?]

The last few days I’ve been buried in XLR cables, racks, speakers, outboard gear, junk, trash, and whatever else has collected over the past five years in our tech gear. I’m the kind of person that gets irritated at messes and I can’t stop thinking about a project until it’s finished. So yesterday I finally finished the initial install and clean up of our tech gear. With the help of some of our staff & volunteer staff (Karl, Kevin, Dan, Chuck, John, Don, Tim, Alex), we are up and running. Our sound booth is clean and things are functioning well. Here’s some pictures:

Now for some of you who go to larger churches with hefty budgets, you may notice that this doesn’t include the standard M7, or a Hog, Meyer line arrays or matching Shure wireless systems, or custom lighted rackmount systems, moving lights, etc. Here’s the rub; we did this all using parts and pieces of gear that we have been using over the past few years in a middle school. We sold gear to get pieces that we needed to make this work. I think the most I spent out of pocket was like $500 for projector mounts and some video signal converters (which we will talk about in Part 2). I’m pretty proud of that fact even though we’d LOVE to have the M7 - I think it will be our next big purchase when the budget allows. I’d also like to get into moving lights asap.

Here’s some basics on what we are running:

• Midas Venice 32 Channel mixer. This mixer has a really sweet, thick, warm sound. Not as many Aux’s as one might like, but we are running AVIOM’s so…
• AVIOM System. This was our only purchase in the past year that was really pricey. I think we spent about $8000 for the entire system. I don’t know all the actual gear models, but we have the head amp unit mounted near our mixer which sends a signal via CAT5 to the FOH where it is received by a distribution unit. From there we have 4 stage mixers, and 3 rack mount mixers, with stage remotes. So we have 7 total units on stage. The rack mount units are for future wireless units. The entire band runs on Shure E3’s and E4’s (I think that’s right, Karl?). Oh yeha
• EV powered speakers, sorry can’t remember the models. But we’re in the process of flying the pair of mid-highs, and we’ve built our subs into the stage - we’ve got 18’s. Yes you can be envious of that. And I consider myself blessed.
• Some of the outboard gear we’ll be running is: Ashley EQ’s, TC Electronics multi-effects, Presonus ACP 88 compressor/gate, SM57’s & 58’s, Sennheiser E906’s, and some sort of condenser mics for overhead drums (they are not the AKG 414’s that we’d love to have).

You’ll notice that we have the camera and lights out there too, plus the three screens. I’ll discuss those worlds in Part 2, 3, 4, or 5, or maybe 6 who knows… But I thought maybe you’d be interested to see how LifeChurch does it’s thang.

How do you do yours?

Popularity: 9% [?]

You NEED to watch these videos from Pastor Steven Furtick of Elevation Church in North Carolina:

• Backstage Interview Part 1 (church planting, vision)
• Backstage Interview Part 2 (obstacles, preparation, team building)
• Backstage Interview Part 3 (church culture, sacrifice, team unity)
• Backstage Interview Part 4 (vision for growth, staying true to your vision - this one’s GREAT!)
• Backstage Interview Part 5 (vision, nuts & bolts, leadership)

When this started it was announced as a 10 part series - I sure hope so!

Popularity: 3% [?]

Most of the time when we think of meetings they take the roll of a necessary evil in our lives, like taxes, and Simon Cowell. I’ve read & researched a lot on meetings: how to have effective, organized, exciting meetings that people actually want to come to. I wouldn’t say that I have achieved nirvanic meeting skills, but I try - and I’m learning more each week. We tweaked our Creative Arts meeting a little more this week. This is what it looks like now:

• Usually on Sunday night or Monday (when things are fresh) I write up and agenda of items to discuss, including follow up items from the previous week’s meeting.
• I email the agenda to our Music Director and Creative Arts Director so that they can digest some of this info before the meeting. I include our Audio Engineer and Tech Director in this email (they are volunteers so they can’t always make the meetings).
• Our meeting is the last in a succession of meetings on Tuesday - so there are usually a couple extra items to add to our agenda by the time we get to meet (usually right after lunch).
• We begin our meeting by spending time in prayer for direction, wisdom, and we pray for each member of the Creative Arts team (band, tech, etc.).
• We go over our agenda and try and stay focused on hitting each point and coming to a conclusion, or finding a solution. We get sidetracked now and again - I think being too rigid leads to less participation.
• I allow my directors to bring up any issues that they may have on their hearts or minds.
• Then we move to planning the weekend services, using the message theme as a launch pad.
• I always open up planningcenteronline.com so we can see what we’ve done in the past weeks, and what lies ahead. (This is a super huge blessing, if you are not using something like this you are really missing out).
• Sometimes our songs are already planned because we planned them in advance, if not we begin talking through what songs would be a good fit for the message, what keys work well, who is singing/playing (scheduling the band) - how the service will flow, etc.
• When we land on a song, we play through it together just on acoustic guitars, just to make sure we are very familiar with it and that the keys will work. Then when we are comfortable with the choice, we put it in the schedule. This goes on until all the songs are chosen and we feel confident that the set will work well and is God-inspired.
• Then we usually talk about how the stage will look: lighting, props, risers, people placement, etc.
• This usually leads into a discussion on scheduling the tech team.
• We try and schedule in time to discuss a book or magazine, watch a video, listen to new music, or just do something to keep us plugged into what is going on and how to stay fresh.
• When we nail all these areas, this meeting usually takes 2-3 hours (ouch!).
• I send out a follow up email with “action points” on who committed to what and kind of like a final “to do” list.
• Sometimes we have special guest, from marketing people, design people, etc. Just depends on what we are doing.

Here’s what I see after looking over that list:

• We need to spend a good amount of time talking about transitions, from song to song, from song to video, from video to speaking, from whatever to whatever - we’ve got to start nailing these better.
• I hope this meeting is not boring or too tedious (I mean it is work!).
• I wish I had a giant whiteboard.
• I wish I could get an iced caramel-machiato (sugar free & non-fat) for each meeting.
• I wish we could be productive without meetings.
• I wish I could get Macbook Pro’s for my team.
• I wish we could take better notes and follow through and hold each other accountable better.

How do you run your meetings?

Popularity: 3% [?]

I’m really loving this blog. Loving all the people I’m connecting with. Loving having an outlet. Loving sharing. Loving learning. Today I added a bunch more links to my blogroll and didn’t like the way it was cluttering up everything, so I did a little housekeeping. Now we have, at the top right:

• • My Google Reader shares: these are articles from my subscriptions from other sites that I really like
  • Blogs: these are just miscellaneous blogs that I read now and again
  • Blogs by Pastors: these are blogs run by pastors (obvious)
  • Blogs by Worship Leaders: these are blogs run by worship leaders
  • Churches: these are churches that I either have a personal connection to, or am interested in keeping tabs on.
  • Links: links to things, people, places I like
  • Read Daily: my favorite blogs
  • Video Confessors: these are people who are doing video confessions of their ministries

So, I might have got a couple in the wrong category or something - just shoot me a comment and I will fix it.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Popularity: 13% [?]

Well this will totally ruin my small picture motif I have going on here, but I found this great project that I want to be a part of. It’s over at thewonderfulnoise.com and it’s called “Show Your Desk”. That’s it. Oh yeah and I stumbled upon that site from theragamuffinsoul.com, which I got from my friend Bobby over at myworshiprevolution.com - quite a journey if I do say so myself. And without further adieu:

Oh yeah the quality is poor because I took them with my Q.

Popularity: 7% [?]

I just got inspired by watching a CNET video (if you don’t know what that is, you need to get with it here). This particular video had a great list of open source programs to replace the new Adobe CS3 Suite. So I thought I would be a nice guy and list out as many cool open source programs as possible, as well as other cool, fun, & productive sites & programs - a resource page! Check it out here or click on the Resource Center link at the top of the page.

Popularity: 1% [?]