jeff mikels

• Read the Rules: http://lafayetterocks.com
• Reply to the YouTube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biXyVq6toa0

This was posted to YouTube by a lady who had never been to our church before, but came with the violinist.

This Sunday launches the Grand Opening month for Connexion Christian Ministries in Lafayette, and it’s time for me to evaluate whether I’m really in favor of church planting or just my own church plant! » Click here to read the rest. «

I just finished putting together two new church brochures for our Grand Opening service on Sunday. By the way, if you haven’t heard yet, we are changing our church name to Lafayette Community Church. Read About It Here.

I’m uploading both brochures here for your use if you want.

• LCC Baptism Brochure
• LCC Information Brochure

In our new church effort in Lafayette, I set as a goal from very early on that we would attempt to do everything we could with excellence, and though we have had some hiccups with our children’s programming and with our music, we have been consistently high quality with our printed materials and with our video presentations thanks to some really great software.

On the printed front, we have been using Apple’s Pages for basic word processing and simple page design and Serif PagePlus 11 which is exponentially greater than anything else in its price range ($50 for features that easily surpass Microsoft Publisher and even rival PageMaker or Quark). However, that’s for another blog entry. On to what we do for video now and what our next steps are.

Video Presentation Hardware

• 15″ MacBook Pro 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo / 1GB RAM
• Draper Traveller portable projection screen with High Contrast Gray screen material.
• DLP Projector (I don’t remember the specs right now).

Software

• ProPresenter 3.3.8 by RenewedVision.
• Keynote 3

Description

ProPresenter is the best program we have found to display lyrics on the screen. It’s very easy to learn with only a few quirks that take getting used to. Together with the Mac, it is unbeatable in terms of visual quality of the text even with full motion high resolution video images in the background. On top of that, the programmers are very responsive to requests for improvements, and the software was designed from the ground up to meet the needs of touring worship bands like Chris Tomlin and David Crowder.

Keynote is the hands down winner in presentation software that understands the line between attention-getting and cheesy. Transitions, fades, and slide builds are unmatched in PowerPoint because Keynote does what it does with subtlety. It’s also much easier to work with once you learn a couple of its quirks.

Our current setup has us running ProPresenter and Keynote simultaneously on the MacBook Pro. ProPresenter takes over the projector screen and turns it black while waiting for us to begin. Navigation is done on the laptop screen, but lyrics and backgrounds are sent to the secondary display.

Just before my message, we hit F1 in ProPresenter to black out the projection screen, switch to Keynote without closing ProPresenter (the projection screen stays black during and after the switch), and hit “Play” on my sermon Keynote file. Keynote takes over the projection screen with my slides and also displays a “Presenter View” on the laptop screen. We turn the laptop to face me, so I can see my current slide and my next slide without ever needing to look over my shoulder.

Next Steps

Now that we are meeting in the Long Center (a larger venue), we want to make some changes to our setup so we stay on the excellent side of things.

1. Replace our screen with a larger rear projection screen. We’re looking at the Draper Cinefold and Draper Ultimate series of screens for this.
2. Consider upgrading our projector depending on its performance with the new screen. Most likely, we will just need to buy a new bulb.
3. Purchase a new Mac to put in the sound booth. It needs to have dual external monitor capability, and the only Macs to have that now are Mac Pro computers or Psystar Open Computer Macintosh clones.
4. Split the monitor signal from each monitor out to drive four displays (1). The monitor in the sound booth, (2). the projector on stage, (3) One monitor in front row pointing to stage duplicating what’s on the projector screen. (4) One monitor in front row pointing to the stage duplicating what’s on the screen in the sound booth. That way, the stage-facing monitors will show what’s on the screen and also show the “Presenter View” that Keynote can display.
5. Use VGA cables or a VGA over CAT5e system to get video signal to the stage from the booth.

Final thoughts

If anyone is reading this post thinking that technology will save your bad presentations, think again. Websites like http://presentationzen.com are a great resource to help you rethink the how and the why of your presentations. Technology can make your presentations more effective, but it isn’t guaranteed to do so.

On Sunday, I challenged my congregation to join me for a competition of spending time in the word of God. I called it The Southside Church God-Time Competition, and here are the simple rules:

• At least 10 minutes a day with God, every day.
• Time with God means something is read (from the Bible), something is written, and something is prayed.
• There will be some kind of award given for the person who lasts the longest.
• There will be some kind of award given for the person who accumulates the most individual “God-Times.”

I haven’t figured out the prizes yet, but I’m willing to take donations! If you want to sweeten the pot, let me know!

I’m also working on setting up some kind of online tool to track our progress and see how we are all doing. For me personally, I’m going to use my blog to record my progress.

For 6 weeks, we will be exploring the six biggest questions in life.

• Why am I here?
• Why should I believe in God?
• Why should I trust the Bible?
• Why is the world so messed up?
• Why is there such conflict between Science and the Bible?
• Why Jesus?

It’s going to be a powerful program combining dynamic Sunday worship experiences with casual but deep discussion groups. I’ve been looking forward to it for 3 months now!

In many ways, I’ve been thinking of this 6 week campaign as a re-launch of the church. During the summer, our attendance went down quite a bit, but now that school is starting up again, I’m really hoping that we can get a jump-start on this new year by launching this campaign.

I want every Sunday service to be a real event. More than that, I’m really eager to see us take the life of the church to a new level. Here are my personal dreams for the campaign.

• That we would get more than 50 people solidly involved in a small group experience.
• That our Sunday attendance would double.
• That all our volunteers and campaign directors would be encouraged and excited all the way through.
• That the campaign would launch us full speed into the Fall.
• That we’d get a solid small group thing happening combined with memorable Sunday gatherings.

These things are so doable, and I believe God can easily accomplish them all. I’m eager to see it!