The very talented people of First Lutheran absolutely "blew the roof off the joint" with their musical talents all day long Sunday! There were choirs, an orchestra, and kids singing their hearts out for the Lord. The best part? We caught every minute of it on tape! A simple idea kicked around in early December by FLC's newly formed "New Media Dream Team" quickly became a reality thanks to the hard work of Justin Schaefer, Shannon Hauerwas, Mark Scheibe, Drew Schaefer, and others.Justin lined up some equipment for us to use once only free of charge to conduct a "viability test" inside the walls of our church. He brought three high quality cameras, a machine to switch seemlessly from one camera to another and run the powerpoint and audio all through one system. Justin was present overseeing the production the whole time. Did anyone else notice there wasn't one glitch during worship?!
Many larger, growing churches use this equipment and a person like Justin every week at a minimum to record the sermon and put the audio and video on the church website to expand the ministry of God. Other churches "rebroadcast" the pastor's message -and even the entire worship service- live in house, much like we did with both the 8 and 9:30 and the children's program. If we were to do something like this, the equipment would cost $20,000-$30,000. Wouldn't this be an awesome opportunity for someone to gift our church with the money to be able to do this? Could you just imagine how our church would grow and it would expand the ministry of Jesus Christ?
Justin also recorded both the choir's performance of "The Messiah" and the Children's program, "Here He Comes." We're looking into what we can do legally with the master copies, whether we make it available for check out in the church library or pay someone to make copies for us and give them out for a suggested donation to cover the costs. Another possibility might be to put both performances on our website for grandmas and grandpas snowbirding in Florida and Arizona to see with a simple click of the mouse.
We are all about extending our fellowship, to share our worship with everyone we can "dream" of! It's not about "filling the pews", it is about "filling the hearts" of members who can't be here, members of other churches, and all those who are simply members of Christ's family, regardless of "churched" or "unchurched". We can continue to open up through the doors of the building, through the portals of media, and most of all through the welcoming of our hearts. Any way we can share the sights and sounds of worship goes to fulfilling God's most important commandments - to love Him and love each other! I hope we find ways to keep it up together!
ReplyDeleteWell said, Byron. In all we do, Christ has to be our focus. If we loose that, we've lost everything. As we gathered to pray and think about new media for the first time last month, our group said firmly It should never be about the media; it's about the message..which is the good news of God's love for all people in Christ Jesus!
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