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Internet, Technology, Worship
Internet, Technology, Worship Technology & Worship - a resource roundup (ThinkJump Journal #7 with Kim Gentes)
Friday, July 20, 2007 at 3:54PM I recently taught a session on technology and worship and found that a lot of people are looking for good resources in that area. To help with getting some good information out there, I wanted to post a summation of a good list of resources for folks interested in this area. This is a list that is compiled by me, but includes my personal favorites as well as those of some of my staff at Worshipmusic.com. I hope it is helpful.
SOUND & MEDIA/TECHNOLOGY FORUMS
- http://www.churchmedia.net/ (both free and paid forums available)
- http://www.theworshipcommunity.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=12
- http://osministry.com/forum/ (techie idea exchange)
- http://www.churchsoundcheck.com/
- http://www.howaudio.com/ (professional training)
VIDEO & GRAPHIC TECH INFORMATION/TRAINING
- http://www.churchvideoideas.com/ (great for churches and video)
- http://www.lynda.com/ (professional training)
I especially like the writings by Quentin Schultze and would encourage you to read any of this writings and articles on technology and the church. Such as follows:
- http://www.byfaithonline.com/partner/Article_Display_Page/0,,PTID323422%7CCHID664014%7CCIID2238650,00.html
- http://www.calvin.edu/~schu/publications/hightechworship.htm
VIDEO AND IMAGE CONTENT SITES
Many of you asked about image sites. I will be frank. I feel that a lot of Christian image/photo places are filled with predictable, or even cheesy images. Still there are some good collections that do have quality image and video collections. But regardless of that, every site will have its strong and weak images. And it will vary greatly on the type and artistic bent of your church.Here are some of the higher quality sites I use occasionally-
- http://www.worshiphousemedia.com/
- http://www.corbis.com/ (not Christian focused, but excellent quality image database)
- http://www.midnightoilproductions.com/
- http://www.istockphoto.com/ (again, not Christian-centric site, but contains good selection of useful images)
- http://www.sermonspice.com/
- http://www.bluefishtv.com/
- http://www.highwayvideo.com/
- http://www.barnafilms.com/
- http://www.worshipfilms.com/
- http://www.digitalstocksource.com
Nooma is the creation of Rob Bell at Mars Hills Church in Michigan. Each Nooma (there are now 17) are bite-sized 10-12 minute multimedia sermonettes. They could be used for small group discussion, on a Sunday morning, whatever.
UNIQUE TECHNOLOGY PRODUCTS/RESOURCES FOR CHURCHES
What I will list here are some products that I have recommended and/or use personally. Again, I am listing the URLs of the products to my company for simplicity sake. You could use this just as a reference for the product information and look around if you want to price shop. My hope is that you will find this list helpful and some of it may pertain to your local church.
- PlusDeck2c - (hardware) A computer device that actually plugs into your computer (Windows/PC) and lets you convert all those old sermon tapes and music library tapes to MP3 files (or CDs) directly on your computer. It's a great technology device for churches wondering how they are going to get their history of teaching and sermon tapes on to the web or mp3 disc or such. You can see an online review of it at http://churchvideoideas.com/2007/01/09/plusdeck2c-cassette-deck-for-converting-cassettes-to-mp3/ or you can look at it directly on our site at http://www.worshipmusic.com/plusdeck2c.html (be sure to watch the demo video online- page down to half way down the page to view it).
- Transposer - (software download) Transposer 2.0 allows you to raise or lower the pitch of any MP3 song without changing the tempo. You can also change the tempo of an MP3 song without changing the pitch. The quality of the recording remains the same, within reasonable limits (pitch changes of 3 semitones higher or lower, and tempo changes of less than 25%). The good thing is, you can try out the software for free to see if it works for you before you ever buy it. http://www.worshipmusic.com/gen-trans-pc.html
- Sweetly Broken Video - (digital download) modern worship song with an example of a wonderfully Cross-centered theme, but with humanized video images. http://www.worshipmusic.com/sweetly-broken.html . Go down to the sub-section for video of this song in the right-middle of the page and choose the video format best suited for your church (there are online samples for each).
- Mediashout - (software) In my opinion, the best video display program for Windows computers. http://www.worshipmusic.com/9847100000.html
- ProPresenter - (software) In my opinion, the best video display program for Mac computers. http://www.renewedvision.com/pp.php
- EasyWorship - (software) the video display software that is the easiest to learn and get up and running in your local church quickly. But has some important high-end limitations. Good for churches who want basic video support, but aren't wanting to tax it with extensive live video, compressed video files and running direct from DVD (all things EasyWorship does not do, or does poorly) http://www.easyworship.com/home.php
- God Songs - (book) a great book and resource for songwriters. I know its not exactly technology specific, but its an amazing resource for your worship and music people http://www.worshipmusic.com/1933150033.html
- Finale Music software - (software) the best music software for notation, in my opinion. http://www.worshipmusic.com/software-coda-music.html
- Praise.net - (website) a free online resource with discussion forum for worship leaders and worshipers.
- WorshipMusic.com - (website) my online company that is specifically meant for equipping churches in worship, music, technology and tools that encourage and bless worship. http://www.worshipmusic.com/
- WorshipTeam.com - (website) a new online web service for weekly worship planning. (this is what I have been working on for the last 4 years :) ) This is a legal, authorized online service that brings a complete suite of tools into a single solution environment to meet the needs of local church worship leaders, ministries and their team members. This complete tool set includes scheduling, personnel, document mgt, communication, songs, and order of service/list development all within a unique "workspace" that integrates this for your team. This service is in BETA test mode right now, and any one can check it out for free. http://www.worshipteam.com/
In Christ
Kim Gentes
Reader Comments (6)
www.difted.com/video
Carry on from the old blog site..
Hmmm, was this with a recent version of EasyWorship such as 2006 or 2007? We haven't heard of the MPG problems, be we have on the WMV. Usually what causes this is there is a problematic codec that has been installed on the computer. EasyWorship adheres to all the codec priorities in order to try and use the codec that has been determined by the OS as the one the user would like to use. There are some programs that install codecs that they are designed specifically to work with and have there priorities boosted to the highest thus we pick them up. By chance did these same videos play fine in WindowsMedia Player? If you would like to send any questions to me personally you can send them to support %at% easyworship.com have a refernce me (Jerod) and this blog and they will get it to me. We are always in favor unbiased comparison of all the products, good or bad, as long as it is a fair shot for all products :D
Also, you should add a few more software choices for people to look at in the 'unique technology products/resources for churches' area. Everyone has a different flavor for what they are looking for and what they like. These are all fine products.
http://liveworship.com/
http://songshowplus.com/
http://www.sundayplus.com/
Jerod,
Thanks again for the good feedback. Regarding the additional links you provided, while they are certainly other options for folks, what I do is only put links in my resource list that reflect my "choice" applications. It's all based on my experience and opinion, so it certainly is fallable. The reason I didn't list the liveworship.com is that I haven't used it, and haven't had a chance to try it out to give an honest opinion. I have used songshow plus, and consider it pretty much a horrid GUI experience. Sorry, just my personal experience- we used Songshow plus for years and each version of it that was intended to fix some problem only made the program more and more like a patch job. As a software engineer of many years (a lot in the GUI development area), I am critical of software that does little to help the user intuit the interface or even operate it after learning. For me and the users at my church Songshow Plus was aging program that it looked like the developers kept adding patches/upgrades because it was bringing in revenue, but it should have been completely redesigned from the GUI to the underlying operational components. Going to EasyWorship from that was like heaven! That said, I would not include Songshow Plus in a review of my "best" resources until they come out with something that has a revolutionary departure from their current product. I have only cursorly seen SundayPlus, so I couldn't say positive or negative about it. Again, my position is to post just stuff that I have had at least enough contact with to recommend.
About your statement on the compression video, all files (MPG and WMV) I ran would run well in Windows Media Player, which is how I made sure thye would work well on the computer. To me, it didn't make sense that Windows Media Player would decode the video and play it without a problem, when EasyWorship would not. What we end up doing to avoid any problems is putting just AVI files in the queue for any presentation. It's a little hideous for file size, but at least I know they will play without a problem.