New to the site and looking for some advice...

[ParkAveTech]

Hello! My name is James Proctor. I have been attending my church for going on 3 years steady now. Before that time I was going on and off. When I came back I was thrown right into working the Sound Board because the older teen that had been doing it went off to college which left no one in our church able to do it. I attend a small church, we average 20 or so each Sunday.

There is currently 2 of us that rotate 2 weeks on and 2 weeks off on the Sound Board. Besides the sound board I am responsible for ALL of the preparation work before the service even on the weeks that I am off of the sound board. I manage all of the Computers, Net, Projector, worship team setup, ect. I also handle the sound board for every special event that our church is responsible for sound. I also have just started handling the Churches website and email accounts.

God is moving in our church and we have received several prophetic words concerning things changing around and our church growing. In light of these things I would like to figure out where we stand with our capabilities and present my pastor with a listing of things we can do then let him decide when and how to add in the new techs.

Things I have been looking into include:
- Live Audio Streaming to our Website via MixLr - Hopefully we will be having our first test this weekend

- Skype conferencing for missionaries and the like (All though we would need a camera before this could be done which isn't in our limited budget abilities at this time unless I personally bought a small $15 webcam or something to start with)

- Worship Intro creation using Opensource Video Editing software.

God has really helped us get things up and running to this point. Back a couple years ago we were looking into buying EasyWorship however we couldn't see how we could afford it. Being a Programmer, I stepped up and created us a Worship Program like Easy Worship but there were a-lot of issues with it and I never did get it working completely right. I then went online and found out about OpenLP which was a God Send! OpenLP allows us to do everything we need all at no cost to us. We then had a new 3,000 lumens Projector donated to us along with a extra bulb. Our old Projector was on it's way out and even with a new bulb still wasn't bright enough. This new one however has opened up so many possibilities to us.

So I guess what I am trying to ask is what other technologies should I research? and are there any resources out there that I could use that would steer me in the right direction when trying to come up with a proposal to hand to my Pastor?

[Paris MkVI]

First of all, welcome to the site!

Before talking about tech and such, I would suggest a conversation with your pastor on ministry. What is the vision/mission God has given your church family? What specific ministry support requirements exist right now? What specific ministries are your church family called to?

The question is not, "What can we do?" I believe the question is, "What should we be doing?"

With these items more clearly defined and stated, you can then start to evaluate in broad terms what tech you might need to support them.

Then you can prioritize and see what comes first, second and third.

Now you are armed with what you need for prayer, planning and preparation!

[ParkAveTech]

Thanks for the welcome!

I did have a chance to sit down with my pastor this evening. The person that had been doing the website before me was very busy with his personal life, job, family, ect and so he didn't have much time to deal with it. Now that I have taking over the website my pastor jumped at the chance to sit down and go over the website and discuss how he wanted it and everything.

We took the time to discuss other areas of the Media department ( I call it department even though really it's just me! lol) as well. We are planning on sitting down together again at some point soon to come up with a unified Vision and Goals for the media ministry.

So far as of this evening pretty much everything I have suggested to my Pastor that we should implement is now in the works. We start streaming our services this Saturday (Where Sunday is Christmas we are having our normal worship service on Saturday instead of Sunday.), Skype is being researched further, and Dropbox (File sharing) is being installed through out the church and on our home PCs.

We also discussed Social Media. He had some concerns about Facebook but in the end we both agreed that the positives more then out weighed the potential negatives.

It was a very productive 2 hours and I feel that we are well on our way to having a organized Media Ministry.

I am looking forward to spending time on this forum and Learning all I can about Church media so I can personally get better at what I do so God can get ALL the glory!

[Paris MkVI]

That, my friend, is a lot of exciting news!

I am a big believer in making sure I am on leaderships' strategic course for ministry before I get into the tactical. Besides the obvious benefits to ministry, it helps make it possible to spend the tithes of single moms and widows more effectively.

Keep that line of communications open with your senior pastor. Pay attention to the quiet little voice that says, "Maybe you should ask for specific details." Avoid what I refer to as the Linda Elerbee Corollary -

"We're all in the business of communicating - except with each other."

Merry Christmas, blessings and prayers for your ministry lifting His name above all names!

[collinong]

i am amazed that you have time to handle all that stuff. it’s a blessing and curse to be multi-talented sometimes.

glad that God has provided you to serve so heartily in your church and hope those around you can support you and provide helpers.

[ParkAveTech]

Well I am still at it... we are slowly laying the foundation for future growth of my Church's Tech Department.

Since my Last post:

We have been streaming our Messages live to the Internet since December 24th (2011).

We are about ready to launch a new Version of our Website which is using Joomla and a Custom made Joomla Template. The New site will consist of many upgrades over our current site. Better Admin features and more user friendly Front end.

We are preparing to start streaming pre-recorded messages 24 hours a day 7 days a week through our Live Stream. Which means we will be getting the Gospel out onto the internet 24/7!

I am planning a Tech Team Orientation Meeting in the coming weeks to try and get some more people interested in joining.

We have written up a Vision for the tech team which is unified with my Pastor's Vision for the church.

Many other things have happened since December but that is a quick run down of the most important. God is really moving Mightily in the church and a lot of great things are happening. I'll have further updates as things happen!

If any one is interested in checking out my Church's website it's - parkavenuechurchofgod.org - this is the current site and the new site will be going live hopefully by the end of the week. Our Live Stream is located at - parkavenuecog.Caster.fm/

[rjwalker]

Originally Posted by ParkAveTech

If any one is interested in checking out my Church's website it's - parkavenuechurchofgod.org - this is the current site and the new site will be going live hopefully by the end of the week.

Quick tip, the images you have on the home page huge, especially compared to the size you need- leading to very slow opening for the page

The pastor picture is 2048x3072, about 55 times bigger than the 276x421(+/-) display on the page - that is, you're moving about 55 times more data than you need to; the picture of the pastor and his wife is about 300 times larger than needed! (3072x2048 vs. 175*116 -- 6,291,456 pixels vs. the 20,300 pixels needed)


The pages will download and open much faster if you resize the graphic files to that needed on screen.

Don't be fooled by how quickly the pages open when they are cached on your computer.

Note, I live in the country and use a 3g air card which is a lot slower than, say, cable. But I suspect your page, with 5 6.5 megapixel images, is slow to load even with a fast connection.

[ParkAveTech]

Yeah I was thinking that when I first saw the size of the images. They aren't optimized for the web at all. I have stopped working on that version of the website and I have a new version using Joomla which will be launching soon. In that new version the images will be resized to load faster.