Category: Video clips

Pre-service Huddle

The worship team at my church is made up of about 20 – 25 instrumentalists and singers. Each weekend, about six people make up a team – on drums, bass, electric, acoustic, keys, and vocals. Some weekends it’s bigger and other weekends it’s smaller.

I send the songs out to each weekend’s scheduled team on the Thursday before. We meet to rehearse on Saturday at 3:00pm, lead the music at the 5:00 evening service, and then come back the next morning to lead music at the 11:00am service.

Since there is a 9:00am service that has music led by the choir and organ, and we’ve already rehearsed and led a service the previous day, we usually meet around 10:00 or 10:15 to talk about any changes that have come up, any tweaks we need to make, and to pray together.

This morning we talked about a change to the chord progression in “Crown Him with Many Crowns” (we used a version inspired by Enfield), I gave out some corrected chord charts, we clarified who was playing certain parts and how we were starting off a song, and then were able to get a sound check and quick run through before the service started.

Here’s a clip of what it looked like this morning. Just four or five guys in a circle. Not very exciting, but hopefully helpful.

“Respond to This”

Last Sunday morning at my church, one of our associate pastors, Bill Haley, preached a message titled “Jesus is Supreme: Don’t Neglect His Offer”. It was based on Hebrews 2:1-4, and was a call “not to neglect so great a salvation”. It was powerful.

As I began thinking and praying about what songs we should sing this weekend (Bill is preaching again, on Hebrews 2:9-18), I really felt strongly that we should spend the first half of our time together continuing to consider and respond to what we heard last week.

I asked Jon Crocker, my friend and brother-in-law, if he would be able to take some audio clips of Bill’s sermon from last week and make a short video with them for us to watch during our opening time of singing. He said if I gave him the audio clips, he’d be happy to do it.

So on Tuesday night I emailed Jon a transcript of what sound bites I wanted him to edit into a three-and-a-half minute long video. In three days, he put this video together, and we showed it at our weekend services:

Are there ways you can use creative gifts in your congregation to do things like this? People are usually glad to help if you ask them.

Are you moving on from last week’s message too quickly? Think about ways you can reinforce and respond to the previous week’s message.

Does your use of media (specifically videos like this) point people to Jesus? Fancy backgrounds, countdowns, lights, set designs, and videos can cost a lost of time and money but have zero lasting effect on people. Integrate media into your services intentionally and prayerfully.