trey taylordiscover | imagine | create

I was in the youth sound booth the other day for some reason, and I saw this bad boy which brought back some good memories. This Powerbook G4 was my first Mac, I got it around 2002 and its served us very well. Its worked its way down the ranks, and basically become a 15″ iPod (I need to pick them up an armband for it, that would rock). Yep its been reduced to running iTunes for the youth and children, and knowing it as well as I do, I’m sure it does a bang-up job at whatever is thrown at it.

It’s kinda cool to walk around the office and see history lying around in the form of out-dated gear and technology. I like seeing how far we’ve come as the church, and that we are serious about affecting culture through the language it speaks. When I’m frustrated about how slow I feel we’re moving, it reminds me that we are moving faster than we’ve ever moved to engage our culture in new ways. Thats pretty rad.

For the last year we’ve been feeling that multi-site was the direction God was taking us. I had the opportunity to go check out LifeChurch.tv and see how they roll… which is a sight to be seen if you’ve never been out there.  Go. Thats all I’ve got to say. Anyway, all you guys in the blogosphere that I read have taught me tons on the subject as well, and I’m sure we’ve got a long way to go, especially when it comes to fine tuning ‘our way’ of doing multi-site. Everybody is doing it so differently, and its working for you guys where you are. So right now, we are in the phase are studying, researching, praying, and trying to figure out what ‘our way’ looks like. 

Over the last 2 days, I’ve been meeting with the guys from Fowler Design Group about wiping our existing video system and taking us to HD from lens to screen, as well as designing the delivery system for each of our future campuses. Which is our first step in the journey of going to a second site. On top of that, we are in the process of extending our existing building to accomodate more room for youth and kids, as well as a second venue on site, which will technically be our first venture into multi-site. 

So, to step back and look at this, we are doing a lot all at once. A full video overhaul, including lighting, in the main worship space, and then full production (audio, video, & lighting) in the new youth room, the new kids room, and the second on-site venue, all while making plans for our first off-site campus launch some time early to mid 2009. 

So my last 2 days have been working through this, dreaming a little about what is possible. And of course filling my head with more acronyms than I thought existed in the entire world. Can you think of another industry with more acronyms than the video/production industry?

So needless to say my head is hurting right now just thinking about it all. But at the same time, its really exciting. I love technology, especially when its used to advance the kingdom. 

I’ll be posting a lot more details in the future. We are still in the infant stages of this, but as we build this system and our plan for multi-site I’ll be posting as much info as I can.

I ran across this yesterday on Tony’s blog and I loved it so much I wanted to pass it on.

7 Reasons Why the Church Needs Artists

1//Only through art can we know God more fully. A person encounters God as an artist before he encounters him as a theologian. We have reduced God’s primary interests to truth and goodness. We must remember that beauty is a primary of interest of his.

2//We must see God’s world more truthfully. Only seeing one theme is insufficient. Artists must help people see both the brokenness and the promise of renewal.

3//We must embrace God’s salvation more completely. Art as morality dictates that we should create more than just “religious” art. Everything is to be redeemed. Everything is worthy of artistic representation.

4//We must worship God more humanly. Because of the image of God, humans make art. Humans create. No other organism on earth does.

5//We must believe God’s promises more confidently. We are blinded to the glory that is here now. With art, you encourage and enlarge hearts to believe the impossible.

6//We must proclaim God’s kingdom more powerfully. Truth has bigger muscles in art.

7//We need to meet God. The primary place where we experience God is in our imagination–the intersection of our mind, emotions and will.

For you guys out there that may not have found Planning Center Online yet, you need to. Its been one of the most useful tools we’ve ever used around here. 

If you do use it, and for my guys, they have released some pretty cool updates. You can see the complete list of them here.

But the coolest new feature, the one I’m most excited about is their new iPhone interface. So all of you guys with iPhones can now access our schedules and services flows right from your phone. Unfortunately you can’t edit from the iPhone yet but I’m sure thats coming soon. I know I’m gonna be using this bad boy a lot!

Ok, everywhere I turn I keep running into this article. It’s ridunkulousness taken to the max. This is being added to my “stupid christians” list as we speak.

Here’s an excerpt from the article…

A Christian group based in San Diego found grounds for outrage over the new retro-style logo for Starbucks Coffee.

The Resistance says the new image “has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute,” Mark Dice, founder of the group, said in a news release. “Need I say more? It’s extremely poor taste, and the company might as well call themselves Slutbucks.’

The group, which claims more than 3,000 members nationwide and has found a place on the fringe advancing various conspiracy theories, is calling for a national boycott of the coffee-selling giant.

Ok, here’s my question… do you really think just because your groups calls for a national boycott that its going to happen? uh no!

And so you and your 3000 stop drinking Starbucks, will that really hurt the company? I mean Disney’s still around and “we’ve” boycotted them dozens of times.

What are they really trying to accomplish here?

I’m really hoping that when Christ looks at His bride, you know the one who’s to be beautiful, somehow he misses those that are uglying it up. I’m sure though that when he looks at the church, he’s not gonna look at the big hairy butt first.

My biggest problem with this kind of stuff is that from the outside looking in, we are all painted with the same brush. And that my friends is tragic. Because the church as a whole isn’t like that, however there are a lot of zits, bunions, and other nasty blemishes on this bride that need to be cleaned up.

Silly silly people… there are much bigger things for us to fight than a logo on a cup. And there are much more Christ-like ways to fight them than a cowardly boycott.

After reading that article, my one prayer for the church is, “make us less retarded,” or at least some of us.

We’ve been in a series called Dust since Easter. The premise is easy, following so close to Jesus that we’re covered in his dust. It’s original intent was to be a discipleship series, especially for those newbies that got saved on Easter. But it’s really taken on a whole new light. It’s turned out really cool. Pastor has talked a lot about passion, liking that to the dust we gather. He’s also talked a lot about dreams of the God nature. And man has it been good. Sunday was our last in this series, and I thought I’d share the video we put together for it. 

Little more backstory: In January, a handful of us made a whirlwind trip to Israel solely for the purpose of shooting video for this series. When I say whirlwind I mean it. We left Sunday after the last service and got back that very next Saturday. About 3 days of flying and 4 on the ground… roughly. It was nuts. Needless to say we hit the ground running. We captured enough content for half a dozen or so video illustrations to use during the series. It was a 1-camera shoot using our Sony Z1U, which we also used for all the b-roll. Each week we’ve used at least one clip to supplement the message, I’ll probably share the others in time. 

This one is from Capernaum…
 
Also, I dabbled with the SmoothCam filter on Final Cut. It was all handheld and the original footage was really shaky so there are a few glitchy moments, but overall I thought it turned out pretty good. 

I’d love to hear your thoughts, let me know what you think?