Just How Many Curly-Cues Does One Need?

I have a subscription at SermonVideos. I purchased it when we switched our worship visual presentation at church to EasyWorship, in order to have a good supply of motion backgrounds to use.

Don't get me wrong. I think this is a create, cost effective resource, and I use their backgrounds and illustrations a lot. It seems like recently, though, there have been a lot of flower - and - curly-cue type motions. Maybe its the season, with spring and Mother's day coming up. But I just don't know how many of these I can use.

I suppose I could have a similar conversation about "how many backgrounds of worshiping people with their hands in the air do I need".

Oh Usher, There's a Cheetah in My Seat

Along the way in my discipleship journey I've come across lots of innovative things for ministry. This one boggles my mind.

Second Life is an online virtual world, where users can create digital versions of themselves and explore, participate, and basically live in a online universe.

As with many online worlds, some of the interaction can be, well, adult oriented, let's say, but some churches are making outreaches into this world as well.

LifeChurch.tv is a progressive church that connects many locations through satellite hookup, and hosts online church activities and worship experiences.

They're also entering the Second Life world with an virtual version of their church. People can attend the same worship that's being broadcast in the "real" world in Second Life.

Imagine being in a worship experience where the worshiper next to you is a Cheetah (see above).

According to the LifeChurch.tv website,

We developed "Experience Island" as an effort to share God's truth and love with the rapidly growing number of Second Life users. We desire to engage people right where they are (physically or virtually), and Second Life represents a new frontier in that effort. Because the Second Life environment uses avatars, people are able to remain relatively anonymous. We find that this creates a less-threating environment where people are much more willing to explore and discuss spiritual things.

I have to admit I'm both completely fascinated with this idea, and somewhat unsure about what this means for worship, especially in terms of human contact. This MSNBC article and video covers that angle as well.

I do think that we need to continually examine how we as Christians adapt to new cultures and new technologies. I'm still thinking I need at least some "real" church though.

I found an example of the Second Life church experience on YouTube, see for yourself:



By the way, a nod to TechnoPraxis for the original article that led me to some additional reading and surfing.

God, iPod, and Microsoft

I recently stumbled on this video parody of the Microsoft version of iPod. It is funny in its own right, and I've seen millions of "If Microsoft made..." kind of writings. When I viewed this one though, something struck a chord with me. Its the difference between simplicity, elegance, excellence, and "overdone".



This made me think of church outreach, evangelism, and of worship. We often talk about how the message itself is fundamental, but the means of communicating the message are changing and changeable.

But it certainly is possible to overdo the message and create a lot of distracting "noise" that diverts people away the fundamental message.

Maybe this is an offshoot of the KISS principle (Keep it Simple, Stupid). Its easy to create fancy bells and whistles in our message and in our worship, but sometimes simplicity, elegance, and pure excellence is the most effective way.

Church Marketing

I recently came across this cartoon about church marketing (click on the cartoon to enlarge)

The cartoon is courtesy of Cartoon Church.com.

While I'm not sure its entirely accurate, I think there's probably some amount of truth to it ;-)

Technology in Worship: Pixel or Perish

I found an article in the Arizona Republic recently titled "Technology Advocate tells Pastors: Pixel or Perish". I found the original online article here.

I don't think I found anything incredibly new or exciting here, but I wanted to share it.

I think the one part that stood out for me is this quote:

"People under 50 don't remember what they hear," he said. "They remember what they see. If you look at a church that's dying, they have nothing for the eye."

I'm really interested in use of worship visuals to aid in making a connection between worship and personal discipleship. I think the visual aspect is a key element to worship.

Here's an interesting warning though:

"But if screens in churches have become ubiquitous, too many use them to project sermon notes or song lyrics...That becomes so deadly...Why put more words on the screen? The human brain needs access to a lot of information and can handle it. Action, movement, makes it more dimensional."

There's definitely a fine line between too-little and too-much.