Blog – Page 11 – Motion Worship – Video Loops, Countdowns, & Moving Backgrounds for the Christian Church

Where to Invest Money for Church Music Gear

Church sound systems are never cheap. And when you dive into all the necessary additional instruments, DI’s, speakers, wedges or in-ear systems, cables, and sound boards that are needed, costs stack up really fast. Generally speaking, most churches can figure out where to start – getting a simple sound board and speaker system up and running. But ones a worship ministry has its bearings and ge...

Dealing with Untalented Worship Ministry Volunteers

Worship ministry is truly a team effort. The quality of music, the attitude of the volunteers, and the culture of worship in your church are all dependent on the collective behaviors and standards of your team. And usually, those team members are all relatively similar in ability, commitment, and reliability. But what do you do about the few situations where you are dealing with a very… very unt...

What is the Fundamental Pitch of a Snare Drum?

Snare drums receive the most amount of attention out of any piece of a standard drum kit when it comes to mixing – and for good reason. Snare drums are the backbone of the groove in any song, and in church worship music they are especially important. Not only does the snare serve as a “timing landmark” for a song or groove – giving structure to the pocket and rhythm section – it also pro...

Media Production: Getting Sermon Notes and Lyrics on Time

Everyone has a different responsibility at church, and the general philosophy is that “as long as I get my work done when I need it done, Sunday will go fine.” And most the time, that’s kind of a true statement. In a sense, the thought is that it doesn’t matter if you practice the songs 2 weeks before rehearsal or 2 hours before rehearsal – as long as you know them by the rehearsal or Su...

How To Have Beneficial Church Volunteer Meetings

Volunteers are truthfully the backbone of success in a church. Volunteers cover more ground than any church plant leadership team can imagine, from worship to children’s ministry, ushering, first impressions teams, managing social media, tech, and so many other ministry operations. So it’s no wonder why meeting with volunteers is such an incredibly important practice as a pastor. The issue ...

How to Find Volunteer Worship Leaders

We all know of the “church shopping” phenomenon. It’s usually the bane of any church planter. When a church is just starting out, getting everything sorted and finding its “home base”, so to speak, takes time. In other words, congregation patience would be incredibly helpful for church plants, but the truth still stands that first impressions often have a greater weight in choosing a chu...

Lead Pastors: Preparing to Take a Sunday Off

Everyone in the church takes days off - whether for vacation or just to rest for a Sunday. That’s simply part of living a healthy lifestyle. You need time to yourself to recuperate and come back refreshed for your job. And while weekdays are often a good time to take work off, it’s important to have a couple Sunday’s away. However, while everyone else has no problem taking a few Sundays t...

Part-Time Church Tech Directors: Organization Tips

Church tech directors carry a ton of responsibility. Any time someone has tech related issues or questions, the ability to get it fixed and keep moving all hinges on the expertise and involvement of the church director and/or tech team. But having that much responsibility comes with an unfortunate caveat – you have to keep it all organized. Whether it be lights, worship backgrounds, worship l...

Volunteer Church Musicians: Quantity vs. Reliability

Churches need volunteers to operate, and building a strong volunteer culture at your church can help drastically with improving the efficiency of Sunday morning preparation, smoothing out rough edges in production, and lastly (and most importantly) advancing the gospel to unbelievers. Volunteer management is one of the most crucial responsibilities of being a worship leader. Not only do you nee...

Recruiting Volunteers as a Church Planter

If there’s one thing that church planters never need, it’s quality, committed, and invested volunteers… Thanks, we practiced that one all weekend. To state the obvious, finding volunteers that are capable and talented, as well as invested in the church’s mission is incredibly difficult. Talk to any church planter (or any church for that matter) and you’re sure to hear about the dif...

Tips for Recruiting a Church Planting Team

Having a strong church planting team isn’t about numbers – it’s entirely about the quality of everyone who's involved. Church planting is an intense, long, and sometimes strenuous process, and having the right people behind the effort can make or break the endeavor as a whole. Keep in mind also that the average turnover for church planting teams is around 80% 2-years after the launch date, s...

Finding a Children’s Ministry Director for Your Church

Almost every church needs a children’s ministry. Whether you’re an established church or a fresh new church planter – there will, without a doubt, be children in your congregation. Unfortunately, a lot of church planters and new ministries don’t view it as a top priority when starting out, so before we dive into the how, we’d like to quickly highlight why it’s important to have a child...

Using Powerpoint with Video Backgrounds

In this tutorial, Chris talks about the challenges and pitfalls of trying to use motion backgrounds across multiple slides in PowerPoint. Although PowerPoint is great for placing text on video for a single slide, problems occur when trying to loop a video and change the text. Instead, we recommend worship presentation software such as the those listed on our homepage.

How to Shorten a Countdown Video

This is a quick tip on how to make a worship countdown video shorter, e.g. taking a 5 or 10 minute countdown and bringing the length down to 3 minutes or 1 minute. It involves starting the video later, or setting the "in" point of the video to a later time This can be done using just about any worship presentation software, but for demonstration purposes I used Media Shout (MediaShout) and...

Placing Text on Motion Backgrounds

This is a brief tutorial on placing text over video in worship presentation software. These techniques can be used in most any software (except Powerpoint), but for demonstration purposes I used MediaShout (Media Shout). I cover ways to make text show up clearly on most backgrounds, and how to position text so that it compliments art and imagery instead of fighting for attention. I also sho...