Building Multi-Site Campuses

I always like to include posts that are about topics that I am currently researching for work or are in the process of putting into action myself. In April my church is launching its second satellite campus in a small town about 30 minutes from our main campus. We want to model the second satellite campus after our first one which is located in a local prison and has been extremely successful but know that each area is demographically and culturally different. Our first satellite campus which we refer to as an Internet Campus or iCampus is a simple setup of a projector, portable sound system, projector screen, a laptop, and a hot spot. Basically, we stream our live services into the satellite campus and have a pastor available to facilitate the service. The challenges we are facing are not with a building and equipment but if the setup will be successful in this new area, if the people in the town would be as receptive as those in our first campus.

When brainstorming challenges we might face in this new campus, we ask ourselves if people would come to a church service that is being projected on a screen versus having a live service. Are we losing the relational aspect of a church by doing this? These are great questions to consider when building multi-site campuses. There are many churches that have built successful multi-site campuses and are continuing to do so as their churches grow. In researching many ways to start a satellite campus I have looked at other churches as examples and have talked with their staff and have looked at companies that have helped churches as well. ProPresenter is a great company that offers solutions to churches that are wanting to start multi-site campuses.

Right now it is a trial and error process to see what will and will not work but in the end it will be awesome to see what kind of satellite campus we end up starting. I will do a follow-up post in April that outlines what worked and what didn't.

The Social Media Church

Courtesy of Edudemic.com

Let's face it, social media has taken over our society, our culture, our entire world! Many churches have realized this and have utilized it to reach their congregation or to gain more information about them. But how can you use social media to grow the church, to reach the masses? The church I work for, Heartland Christian Center,  posts videos of the pastor's messages onto their Facebook page, specifically on an evangelical outreach group page that has thousands of people from 20 different countries as members. When looking at it this way, our sermon videos are not only being viewed by the 400 plus people on our Facebook page and the members of the evangelical group but by thousands of others who are friends with those who are friends with our page or in that closed group.

Social media can quickly lend itself to becoming a church planting tool. Think about it, on any given Sunday morning my church will have on average 600 people in attendance, 100 people viewing our service live over the Internet, and at least 1,000 people watching the rebroadcast through Facebook or our website. If you add it all up, we have a church of 1,700 people that get the message every week and possibly more. Because of the Internet, streaming video, and social media we have been able to launch two other campuses that reach two different groups of people that we couldn't reach before.

Churches need to learn how to use all facets of social media to their advantage, to get past the notion of just another way to communicate with the congregation, but to use it as a tool to reach the unreachable in a different state or country, even in the next town. Evaluate what you are posting on all of your social media sites, whether it is Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, etc. Ask yourself if this post, picture, or video something someone will share with someone and does this convey the message that the church puts forth.

My hope is that every post I put on here is in someway helpful to churches out there who are struggling in the area of media or just feel lost, let me know how this helps or if there is a topic that I haven't covered that needs to be addressed.

Digital or Analog?

Courtesy of Sweetwater.com

About three weeks ago we made the switch from an analog sound board to a digital one and the switch was not an easy one. When you have one day from installation to learn an entirely new sound board in general is tough but adding the digital element and new features can be overwhelming. Digital sound boards are awesome, you can do so much more with your live sound than you could with an analog board, but because it is digital many assume that it is easier to use.

As churches begin to consider the switch from analog to digital there are a few things that should be takien into consideration. First, do not assume that it is going to be an easy switch or that it is going to be a plug and play deal. Secondly, it will not solve all of your sound issues especially if you have a few people in your congregation who like to complain. Finally, it will take time to master the board.

Assuming that switching out your analog board for a digital one is going to be easy or being led by the salesperson that it will be will frustrate you during the installation and training period. Researching the digital board and any additional equipment you may need before making the decision will help you through the installation process. In our situation, we did our research but we took the word of the professional installer that it will be a simple four hour job and ended up taking twice as long. We failed to evaluate our analog system and the way it was setup before having the new system come in, which costed us time sorting through.

Believing that having a digital board will solve all your issues and complaints is wrong. The truth is it won't. It will change the way you run sound and it will change your sound for the better but all that doesn't matter to that person or persons who has complained in the past. Our sound overall is sounding better and clearer than ever before but we are still getting complaints by the same people before we made the switch. My advice is to acknowledge the complaints but don't get hung up on them.

Thinking that because it is a digital board you will be running sound like a pro in no time will easily frustrate you. Learning the basics on a digital board is easy but to really get to know the board will take time especially getting to know all of the features. Be patient when exploring the board and let your pastoral staff know to be patient as well. Your pastors will get frustrated because they're going to want you to know everything as soon as the board comes out of the box so you will have to tell them that it will take time to get acquainted with the board.

Before deciding to switch from analog to digital keep in mind these things and all the reasons why you want to make the switch. I'm glad that we made the switch especially since the board we bought has an iPad app that is truly awesome. I hope that this post can be of help to those considering the switch. 

Lessons Learned: Making a Live Worship DVD

Courtesy of
http://www.virgin.com/media-and-mobile/news/suffering-from-digital-stress

Recently, our church had a Praise and Worship night where we had professionals come in and record the music with the intentions of making a CD to sell. It was also decided that we make a live DVD as well with multiple cameras. The audio recording went well but the video recording not so much. I am one to plan out my shots with each camera in mind but when working with three completely different kinds of cameras it does not always come out as planned. We used our Sony HD prosumer camera, a Kodak "pocket camera" and an iPhone to get the shots. The plan would have worked since the iPhone 4s surprisingly takes good HD video as does the Kodak camera but there were two factors I did not consider that became a nightmare in post-production. The first factor simply being the human aspect and the second factor being the technological differences involved with the cameras.

I have learned that it is important to train good people to work the camera in media ministry because there will always be someone that will back out at the last possible minute and a good backup needs to be handy. During this particular event I had two people back out leaving one camera guy and myself to run three cameras. I left one camera on a wide shot and the other I walked around with which worked out great but it left me in a position to where I couldn't direct the other camera person on shots I wanted.  This brings me to the second factor I mentioned earlier. The other camera person did a good job but the quality of video was not as great as hoped. The Kodak camera does not have a manual focus setting so there were times where the camera automatically focused footage and the digital zoom caused the close up shots to be grainy. These issues left me to be extremely picky on clips and being limited on space on the iPhone led to not enough shots to make a good multi-shot video.

With a possible predicament on my hands I had to make some editing decisions about the videos I was creating for the live DVD. I used whatever footage I had that was good to create the videos and used techniques that I have learned over the years to clean up as much of the footage as possible. I have referenced VideoMaker's website numerous times in this blog but for good reason it is a wonderful resource to have on hand when you need it like working with bad footage. The lesson I learned through this process is that planning is good for a project but to make the planning worth while you should consider every possible scenario there is to ensure a successful outcome.

Business Plans: What Do The Experts Say About Having One?

As I am nearing the completion of my Master’s degree, I thought I would take a break from writing about church media and talk about business plans. Actually, having a “business plan” for your media ministry is not a bad idea because I think it would help you understand what you or the church is trying to accomplish and where you want to take the ministry to.  In researching about creating a business plan I found two experts that I think worth listening to.

Courtesy of timberry.com

The first expert is Tim Berry. Tim Berry is the business planning coach for Entrepreneur.com and has currently written five books on business plans. He has a MBA from Stanford, a MA in Journalism from the University of Oregon, and a BA in Literature from University of Notre Dame. Tim Berry is also a successful entrepreneur who founded Palo Alto Software, bplans.com, and co-founded Borland International (Berry, About Page, 2012). According to Mr. Berry, some of the key factors that investors look for in a company that is in an interesting market, has a credible management team, and a defensible and scalable product. These are factors that to investors make good investments (Berry, 2011).

Courtesy of growthink.com

The second expert is Dave Lavinsky. Dave Lavinsky is the co-founder of GrowThink a company that specializes in helping entrepreneurs develop their business plans. He has a MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and has a background in market research, small business and finance. Dave Lavinsky is an internationally renowned expert in business planning, capital raising and new venture development (Growthink, 2012). Mr. Lavinsky believes that most investors mainly venture capitalists look for small businesses or entrepreneurs that have a stand out business plan but also has already accomplished a few milestones in their business. This means that an investor might look for a developed product or a customer base that can make the investment look less like a risk (Lavinsky, 2012). Lavinsky believes that when an investment looks less like a risk the better it is and that is why these investors look for milestones as key indicators for giving funding.

Both experts have valid points in what investors may look for when looking for an investment to fund. In the end it really does come down to the individual investor or venture capitalist as to what he or she looks for. Dave Lavinsky suggests asking the investor or researching the investor to gain insight into what he or she is looking for.

In the church media world, we are in a way looking for investors through our parishioners to buy into what we are trying to accomplish. It is important that you look for individuals or a group that has similar goals than you do because they are the ones that will most likely invest in what you are trying to do.

References

Berry, T. (2012, January 1). About Page. Retrieved October 28, 2012, from Tim Berry: http://timberry.com/about

Berry, T. (2011, January 29). How Can I Find Investors When I'm Just Starting Out? Retrieved October 28, 2012, from Entrepreneur.com : http://www.entrepreneur.com/answer/222232

Growthink. (2012, January 1). Dave Lavinsky. Retrieved October 28, 2012, from Growthink.com: https://www.growthink.com/team/dave-lavinsky

Lavinsky, D. (2012, August 18). How To Raise Funding Using Milestones. Retrieved October 28, 2012, from Growthink.com: http://www.growthink.com/content/how-raise-funding-using-milestones

Advertising Advantages For Non-profits

I recently read an article that my pastor had forwarded to me about using Google for Non-Profits ™ specifically AdWords ™ to help create traffic to the church’s website for free. Google for Non-Profits ™ offers a variety of apps that you can use to help promote and streamline your church without the huge cost and I encourage churches to take advantage of this service. I recently set up our account with Google for Non-Profits ™ and I am just scratching the surface of the awesome things it has to offer.

I want to focus on using AdWords ™ because of the potential this service can unlock to direct traffic to your website or live stream service. What is AdWords ™ and how can you use it to drive traffic to your site? Basically AdWords ™ is a service where you create a basic ad that uses only words that are posted along the side of the search engine page. When some one conducts a search on Google ™ that may be relevant to what you are advertising your ad will show up on the side of the screen. AdWords ™ uses not only an effectively written advertisement but targeted keywords that associate your ad with possible searches your audience might conduct. How can this be effective? If your church is wanting to promote that they will be offering an online service then you would create an ad in AdWords ™ that has keywords that would be used in a Google ™ search like internet, online, streaming, church, service, etc. The better your keyword choices are the more likely your ad will appear in searches and the more likely people may click on your ad which will direct them to your website.

Finding ways that will help you promote your church that won’t break the bank and is still highly effective is always hard but when you can find services like AdWords ™ it is always good to take advantage of those services. I have included a video that explains AdWords ™ and its uses. I hope you enjoy it and learn from it. 

Your Church Wants To Do What?

Courtesy of hcc3d.com

The last Sunday in September our church is having a worship night with our worship band, which sounds great and many will enjoy it. But towards the end of August our Pastor told us that he wants us to make a live audio and video recording that we will sell and immediately we were scrambling to figure out what we needed to do to pull this off and make it look professional. We had so many decisions to make in less than four weeks on how we're going to do this. The first question we had was are we going to attempt to record and mix the CD ourselves or are we going to have a professional come in and do it for us? We decided that the equipment we have right now wouldn't cut it if we wanted a good quality product so we opted to hire someone from our network of friends that could do the job for a decent price. The second question was do we make and distribute the final product ourselves? We decided that we did have the means to develop and distribute the CD. 

Since the audio was being recorded and mixed professionally we would have to make sure that the quality extended out to the packaging of the CD. How can I design and print out the liner and label without spending a lot of money and it not look "do-it-yourself"? In searching for companies that specialized in CD duplication I found one that I thought was reasonable and allowed me to customize the label and album artwork, and will print blank CDs so we can do the duplication ourselves. Websites like Mixonic.com are good sites to check out when you are looking to produce and distribute your own music or films without a record label or distribution company. For the video side of things, since we have the capabilities to produce the DVD in house, we will be shooting and editing the video ourselves for the DVD. But just like the CD we will order the printed blank DVDs with jackets and assemble the DVDs ourselves. 

When considering whether to go "DIY" or professional for a project like a CD or DVD recording there are a few key factors to evaluate. One factor of course is cost, what are the costs of doing it yourself versus having a professional do it for you. Another factor is time, how much time are you going to put into the project. Is it better for you to spend the time to produce yourself or hand it off to someone else. Finally, satisfaction, are you going to be satisfied with the final outcome of your project if you do it yourself or if a professional did it. How much control are willing to give up or want to be satisfied with your final project? Taking all these factors in consideration will help you make the right decision on which way to go.