It is a personal goal, a challenge if you will, to push the limits of the cheap, efficient, minimal, basic, simple tools in my world to produce excellent results. Notice I didn't say professional, that word has too many meanings these days. As Christians we are called to do all things in excellence, not necessarily as a professional, and I find that to be the greater of the two anyways. There are lots of "professionals" who get paid to make crap. Somebody made and was paid for every commercial you see on TV. Have you ever really thought about that? Every commercial, even those ambulance-chasing lawyer commercials. Who couldn't do better than that, I mean really? But that's neither here nor there, so back to the topic at hand.
We are all in agreement that we as the church need to do better on the media side of things. But how much of that is because we don't have big media/communications budgets and how much of that is because we don't use what we have to it's full potential. I was asked recently where to begin when creating a "Media Department" for a church, so I thought I'd share the list with you all. Keep in mind that every church is an individual case with individual ministry needs and you shouldn't just be trying to keep up with the First Church of the Jones's, always assess your needs. But for most churches this list is pretty close to the bare essentials.
Cameras: Let's talk both video and still for right now. The key in this, as in most things, is to buy what you can use. If you're not a professional videographer or photographer, don't waste money on professional equipment. It's nobel to want to learn but even the experts were at one time beginners. As we all learned in Little League Baseball, master the fundamentals before playing in the Big Leagues. Too much camera is often times worse than not enough. If you want to be brave, get something with only 1 or 2 advanced features that you can push yourself to learn, otherwise you will be overwhelmed and quit. I personally, because of my minimalist media challenge to myself, us a Flip MinoHD 720p camcorder with a Gorillapod. This camera is surprisingly pretty good, especially with a tripod. For a still camera, I'm going to say just go to your local department store and buy a decent 8-10 megapixel digital camera ($100) that holds an SD memory card. Why SD? Because you can get a lot of memory for very little money ($10 for 2 GB).
Software: On to the serious stuff. I'm an Adobe user, and I'm going to be an Adobe recommender. There are other great softwares out there but for me, it's the way to go. Much of the layout, controls, and tools are consistent throughout the product family, or product suite. At least more so than using a photo editor from one company, a vector design program from another, and still yet a layout program from another. Why learn three ways when you can learn to adapt one. Plus Adobe offers "suites" that can cover your basic needs for a cheaper group price (still pricey though). There are a lot of decent free programs out there but you can't beat the real deal, again just assess your needs and learn to adapt if you need to. While we're on software I'll quickly mention Final Cut video editing software. I wouldn't buy it just yet if you're a smaller church with a common budget of "cheap", maybe the "Express" version but still probably not yet. It is a must in the near long term but save the money for now because...
Hardware: Mac or PC? I'm a Mac guy, so I'll take on the role of fanboy and evangelist for a second and try to persuade you. While Mac's can get pretty expensive, they are great for media. Programs like ProPresenter currently only run on Mac and that's something you're going to want to use eventually. They are extremely user friendly and give the user a lot more control over how you can use it. They offer great security and great support as well. In my experience the over all life of my Mac has gone much further than that of my PC's. With all hardware decisions you're going to want to think about the long term. As good stewards we have to try to extend the use of what we have for as long as we can do it with excellence. Mac computers are going to come with some great applications, wait for it, including great basic video editing software. This is a big advantage for anyone on a tight budget that wants to put together a new media ministry. PC's are ok, too. There I said it. Really a lot of the newer ones are pretty great actually. Windows finally has a more reliable OS (operating system) and PC's are often times way cheaper with a lot more "brains" for the money. Also, ProPresenter is finally releasing a windows version in the very near future. Either way you go, try to streamline as much as you can. With some of the new Microsoft file extensions, .docx for example, there are a lot of problems sharing files to different platforms and this can cause a lot of grief if someone forgets to save the file the right way.
Creation: Who's gonna create the media and what area will it fit under? Communication is the reason for media. Figure out where you want the message coming from and make sure to always use that channel of communication. Instead of everyone submitting announcements and projects directly to the media personnel, have it all filter through one minister so that there is always consistency in what is being communicated. Make sure that minister will filter the messages through the church's mission statement to make sure it is in line with who the church is, instead of giving an appearance of who the original sender wants the church to be. One huge lesson I have learned is that often times we try to manage the perception of our church by showing people how we want the church to be instead of showing people what the church is really about. Don't build a façade, reveal the truth.
Creating excellent media isn't about being professional, it's about taking the time to give your all in what you create for the glory of our Lord to convey His truth to the people He wants to reconcile with. Never forget why we do what we do. We have the greatest message anyone could ever receive and it's time we start faithfully delivering it. I hope this helps and feel free to leave your own ideas below on how we all can begin to do excellent things with what God has given us.
-Ministry is a Mindset :: Think About It
Recent Comments