crosspoint bumper

Love the look and sound of this series trailer from Crosspoint.  Cinematic and “Inception”-like. Nice work.

what creatives need….

What do creatives in your organization, church or business need?  Not ALWAYS the top of the line equipment (although I must confess, having 16g’s of ram and 8 processor mac does help tremendously).  What they DO need is the freedom to create, experiment, dream and at times fail.  Case in point, the video below. Shot and edited on an iphone.  Watch all the way through to see how they did it at the end.

creative advertising

Love the use of stickers in advertising in this post.  Thinking through how some of these could apply to some of the upcoming projects, series, websites, etc.

a new office?

How cool would an office like this be.  I’m thinking of relocating my Cedar Creek office to Clarks Hill.  Could go fishing and swimming during my lunch break.  Check out the rest of the photos here.

tell your story

This morning I was reading in my time with God about Horatio G. Spafford, the writer of the famous hymn It Is Well.  You’re probably familiar with his story, how he lost all four of his daughters in a wreck at sea, and how, when passing over the same spot where his daughters perished, he wrote that hymn.  By the way, this is a guy who was ruined financially and not only lost his four daughters, but also lost his only son.

This is a hymn we would sing growing up in my home church.  We would sing the song, most of it memorized and go on with the worship service.  Now, I don’t want to get into a debate of traditional vs contemporary, or hymns vs praise/worship songs.  That is not relevant here and I think the wrong questions anyway.  What struck me as I read the song lyrics today were two thoughts: 1. context 2. story.

Spafford wasn’t setting out when he wrote these lyrics to become debated by others on whether or not we should sing hymns vs songs.  In my opinion, he didn’t give a flip what you or I thought about his lyrics.  He was a man that was ruined, and in the darkness of his life, he was clinging to the only One worth clinging to.  He was telling his story…real, honest and raw. He was telling it in the context, in the language of his day to where people connected with it. He not only shared his story, he pointed them to Jesus and then to what awaits for those who believe and follow Jesus.  He shared the gospel in his story.  Imagine as the people in his day, knowing the story, knowing Spafford himself perhaps, would sing or read the lyrics in this song.  I’ll be honest, every time I hear or read the 3 and 4 stanza’s of this song, I get a lump in my throat and have to choke back tears of thankfulness, awe of God and hope.  It makes me want to do fist pumps and shout, “YES JESUS!!!”

So, where you live, in the context that God has placed you to breathe, work and relate, tell your story in your way.  Think about the people that may hear or see it.  Think about where they are at in their life.  Point them to Jesus.  Point them to the hope beyond that “this is not it”.

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
when sorrows like sea billows roll;
whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.
Refrain:
It is well with my soul,
it is well, it is well with my soul.

2. Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
let this blest assurance control,
that Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
and hath shed his own blood for my soul.
(Refrain)

3. My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
(Refrain)

4. And, Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
the clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
the trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
even so, it is well with my soul.
(Refrain)

using bumptop?

Friend of mine mentioned this program to me, and I’m curious if some have used it yet.  As I’m watching the vid below I’m thinking of tons of different uses for it.  There’s a free version and a pro version.  You can check it out here: http://bumptop.com/mac/

freebie resources for sermon series

Elevation has thrown its hat in to the ring lately along with other churches that have begun to offer their sermon series resources for free.  You can check it out here.  Some of the things I’ve always admired about Elevation is their creativity, attention to detail and design.

couple of On The Ridge Campus photos

Here are a couple of photos (compliments of Nick – Ridge Campus Pastor) of the worship center at Cedar Creek On the Ridge in Ridge Spring.  For those that don’t know, this is our second multi-site campus about to launch within the next few weeks.  It was very cool to see the reaction of those who had not seen the set completed (for the most part) this past week.  Tomorrow we’re having small worship gathering for the volunteers at the campus.  Just a few notes and comments from the production side of things.

• As you can see, the house lights are on full…as we found out from our electricians on Wednesday, these particular lights have to be on (per the manufacturer) for 100 hours straight before dimming them.  They actually use a fluorescent bulb (not a fan) vs an incandescent bulb but are dimmable.  Not ideal for tomorrow morning but should be good to go for the first public worship service.  Once that 100 hours is up, we can really set the lighting the way we want.
• Table at the front in the photos is for communion tomorrow.  Normally that is where Nick will be to greet, announce, speak, pray, etc.
• We utilized a combination of LED washes, par cans and ellipsoidals in our theatrical lighting.  We also have a large spot mounted in the back (not pictured).
• Ceiling was blacked out.  I was hoping that the back wall would be as well, but that was a no go.  I’m thinking perhaps some black fabric/curtain may be a good call to go behind the transformants and trusses on the back wall down the road.
• Lighting is controlled by some free Chauvet computer-based software.  It actually is pretty cool in that you can setup 2d and 3d renderings of your stage setup, create scenes on your computer anywhere, bring them in and load them up..nice for volunteers.
• Total of 4 screens, 2 on the sides, one on the rear wall (not pictured) and then the motorized screen that drops down from the center for the message.
• 2 analog way switcher/scalers for the screens.  One for the side and rear screens, one for the center screen.
• Imac using propresenter for media.
• Small behringer board for media mix before sending it to house sound.
• Right now we’re going week delay and using dvd’s for the ridge campus.  Quality is okay on the dvd, but we may quickly change over to using captured video from either p2 cards or from dvcpro deck.  We’ll see…still a work in progress.

web campuses and social networking integration

I am constantly blown away by the innovations coming out of LifeChurch.tv.  They have invested much in bringing on talented and innovative staff for their web development, also known as Team Digerati.  The interface for the web campus is armed with several top social networking tools.  If you get a chance, you should really check out one of their web campus worship experiences.  We’ve been talking through more and more lately about how to increase the level of connecivity across all of our online presences.  I think one of the projects I would like to work on one day would be to put together a team and develop an online worship experience as dynamic as this.

There is a lot of chatter right now about if true Biblical community can be experienced online in this environment or not.  Some say the lacking component is the physical presence aspect.  Still, for many others, they are already finding their own “community” in social networks, chat rooms, forums, etc.  It’s a discussion that we had this morning at CCC.  I would be interested to hear your take on it.  Post a comment or as always, send me a tweet at @ajwired.

web design must-have: firebug

One of the firefox extensions that I rely on for just about every site I design is Firebug.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been designing a site and everything works well except for one detail.  What I like about Firebug is that I can right click on any word, image, anything on the page and chose “Inspect Element” and it will show the css as well other info.  Great tool for any web designer.