I started doing video for churches when I was in seminary in 2000. Back then very few churches did anything with the medium. Those who did typically recorded their services to be played back on local television.

That’s not what I had in mind.

Fast forward to today when many churches now have projectors. I’ve been to quite a few that trot down the screen for the pastor’s message notes or to display lyrics, but that’s about it. Video can take these services to the next level with engagement and retention. It can dissolve barriers erected by years of indifference.

Uses for video in churches:

1. Television ministry

This is the thing that most people think of when they think of using video in church. The purpose of this is documenting and distributing the message of the church. From a technical standpoint, Lakewood Church is a great example of how to do this. It probably doesn’t hurt that their pastor used to be their video guy.

Some variants of television ministry are DVD recordings, video podcasts, and video streaming. Like television ministry, the aim is documentation and distribution. DVDs and video podcasts are inherently delayed where streaming video can be live, but the purpose is the same.

2. IMAG

If you’ve ever been to an event where live video was used to magnify what’s on stage, you’ve seen Image MAGnification (IMAG pronounced “eye mag”) in action. IMAG has one purpose — eliminating bad seats. This can be done by magnifying the image, but it can also merely improve sight lines and solve the same purpose. As far as I know there’s no term for the latter use, but it is a part of the IMAG process despite what the name says.

Done well, IMAG keeps people from shifting in their seats to get a better view of the action. Improving sight lines helps those in the front when something happens behind them. Magnification helps those in the back to see details. Keep both portions of the audience in mind when doing IMAG.

IMAG doesn’t shoot the audience. This would prove distracting to the audience. It can include the audience in the shot, but shouldn’t focus on the audience exclusively.

3. Sermon & Service Support

There are various genres of videos used in support of the service. These include video backgrounds, movie clips, click track videos, MOTS (man on the street), testimony videos, just to name a few. The purpose of this type isn’t to document the service or help people see. The purpose here is to augment what’s going on. A video background might add additional visual interest during a song. A movie clip or MOTS might show a place where the culture disagrees with the Church or an incident that operates like a metaphor for the pastor’s point. Testimony videos can show how God is working in the lives of ordinary people in the church.

Some videos support another element. Others are themselves an element, adding to the service as a whole. Like a good movie, they can elicit emotions that we normally keep hidden. They can ready a person for what God is saying in the service as a whole.

How have you used video in your church services?

I can think of at least one type of video I’ve left out (the walkup video). What are some others?

[Image via jaylopez]

• 81% of people misrepresent their height, weight or age.
• Women described themselves 8.5 lbs thinner, will ben lied by 2 lbs.
• However, many men liked about being taller than they really are.
• Men’s photos were usually within the last six months, whereas women averaged a year and a half.

While everyone is lying about who they are are what they look like, the Internet has brought many new tools to help dig up dirt on new dates.

[Click for Larger]

Would you do a background check on a new date? For yourself or loved one?

I never thought about running background checks on any possible gentleman callers looking to court my daughter — hmmm ….

What would you do?

[via Background Check]

But even with all of this fun facts, it does not mean that Google+ has been a success.

RJMetrics did a study on the engagement of users on Google+ that reveals an unfortunate truth, they may have a lot of users registered, but they are not integrating into the online lives of people. Here is an excerpt from their blog post of the study:

Here are some of our most interesting findings:

• The average post has less than one +1, less than one reply, and less than one re-share.
• 30% of users who make a public post never make a second one. Even after making five public posts, there is a 15% chance that a user will not post publicly again.
• Among users who make publicly-viewable posts, there is an average of 12 days between each post
• A cohort analysis reveals that, after a member makes a public post, the average number of public posts they make in each subsequent month declines steadily. This trend is not improving in newer cohorts.

The question is how can they seem successful, but actually not be doing well? I have a few thoughts on that.

• People were curious. Google is great at the tease. Google+ was released to the right people, the geeks and nerds that absolutely wanted it. To get in, you had to have the invite and everyone wanted to be included. Google typically has great products, how are they going to make social media great? Well, they did create a great product, but Facebook already has a great one and it has felt a lot like Facebook since the two became social media competition. The product differentiation just is not there, why would I want to leave Facebook or Twitter for something that does not have the user capacity and community that I already have here?
• It was easily integratable, but boring. Google did a good job of making it only one click for current Google web app users to sign up and so probably most everyone did, but it was boring. Take a lesson from UNO. The original game was fun and no doubt has sold tons of decks of cards. The next logical step is to make another product with the UNO name. People were curious about the new games like UNO Flash and UNO Stacko, but the game just did not hold the same appeal… Facebook is amazing, Twitter has it’s own place too, but what does Google+ have for the average user that does not care about SEO techniques, +1ing everything, and Google+ Hangout?
• They are making it worth it…. slowly. For all of us nerds, you need to have a Google+ account that is tied into your blog, it impacts the Google search results with every +1 you get. At the same time, they do have things like Google+ Hangout that we love to geek out on and have integrated it into our businesses.

Maybe eventually the world will catch up, but for now, there are too many options and Google+ was too late to the game.

What do you think is the long-term future of Google+ compared to its competition?

Oh, yeah.

We waited and it’s finally here.

Coda 2 dropped last week and made quite the splash with a 24hr 50% price break.

Have you taken Coda 2 through the paces?

What do you think of it? Likes? Dislikes?

I’ve found the code folding great, but there are a few features that immediately blew me out of the water:

• Built in MySQL Editor
  Seriously! This is amazing! This takes the whole “one window editor” to a new level. Absolutely blew me away.
• “Revolutionary New CSS Pops”
  This is what the website called them. “Revolutionary” seemed a little dogmatic, but it is really slick! I clicked around a bunch to watch it!
• I Don’t Know What the Heck It’s Called
  I don’t know what the heck you call these, but they’re slick:

Like I said, I’ve just toyed with it at this point and have yet to navigate through a project with it (later this week, maybe). What I’ve seen so far has really made me squeal.

Tell me, what do you think about Coda 2?

What do you like and/or dislike?

Would love to hear it!

It breaks down Facebook status updates and categorizes how friends are doing according to Facebook.

As most great things are, this infographic was developed in the real world by the real Shawn Groves and his real friends.

For reals.

I’m still chuckling …

How about you?

[via Shaun Groves]

Now that all of the photos have been submitted, it’s time for voting!!!

The winner of ChurchMag’s Most Memorable Moment Memorial Day Photo Contest will win a $20 credit to their favorite app store, so choose wisely.

Here are the contenders:

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

Which photo is your favorite?

Here’s where you can vote:

• Vote in the comments below. Just tell us which photo is your favorite!

The polls will close and the winner will be announced on Friday, June 1st.

Let the voting begin!

I used to spend hours - no, days – gathering 35mm slides and sorting them on light boxes, creating a visual presentation to enhance choir musicals. Usually we used 2 projectors with a dissolve unit, but when we wanted to get über fancy, we went to the third projector. The third unit was for title slides, and it seemed like the frontier of ultra-modern communication at that time. Our choirs usually sang to recorded tracks. No, they weren’t CD’s. We used a reel to reel 4-track tape deck, with 10-inch reels.

Our Deck Looked Like This

The Technique

Here’s how the process went:

• Gather slides from helpful people.
• Figure out a story board and start eliminating pictures.
• Arrange the best photos on a light board.
• Start loading them alternately: slide 1 in the left carousel, slide 2 in the right, 3 in the left, etc. (This while keeping in mind the slide had to go in upside down and backwards.)
• During the process you had to remember where you wanted a blank screen and insert a cardboard dummy slide. (Later projectors automatically detected a missing slide and gave the needed blank screen.)

When that was done, I double-checked by cycling through the pictures manually using the dissolve unit to be sure the flow all made sense. If a slide was off by one, it meant that you had to move a whole series of them. That involved criss-crossing between carousels, moving slides from right to left and left to right to get the order fixed.

When all was in order, the fun started. Here’s how programming worked:

• Set up the dissolve unit by connecting the signal output to the input of an unused track on the tape deck.
• Play the music.
• Manually record cues to time the slide movement with the music.
• Start over on the song if you get one cue wrong – even if it’s the next to last cue.
• Keep doing that until you fall asleep or finish, whichever is first.
• Rewind the tape.
• Reset the carousels to zero.
• Reset the dissolve unit.
• Switch dissolve unit from record to play.
• Switch cable from output to tape deck to input from tape deck
• Test the whole show.

Doesn't This Look More Intriguing Than a Computer Screen and Keyboard?

Days later, when it was all done, you could play the music for the choir and the deck ran the slide cues automatically. People in the late 70′s and early 80′s were wowed by that. We didn’t think it could be improved.

Can you say “Those were the days”?

It was fun, but what a time-vacuum. Things could go wrong too. If a carousel forgot to advance due to a corrupt signal or a jammed slide, your whole presentation would be off a half a beat. More than once I found myself frantically signaling (in stealth mode, of course) the tech person, or actually running to the machine to manually advance the offending carousel. To add to the intrigue, if you had a more than 160 slides, you had to have an alert operator change out the carousels at the right moment while things were running! No time for boredom. (There were 140-slide carousels, but they tended to jam too easily.)

If the dissolve unit fritzed out on you, you were done. This happened to me once during a slide presentation carefully prepared to celebrate the high school graduates of our congregation. The dissolve unit shorted on a cue, and that was that. No coaxing could change the situation that Sunday morning. The music continued; the slides didn’t. My good partner in ministry jumped to the rescue and we finished that program on the fly, now using hard cuts instead of the wonderful soft dissolves I’d programmed. We each used a piece of paper to alternately cut one projector image while the other manually advanced his projector. Great teamwork that was, but certainly an anticlimactic finish.

Technology has left all that in the dusty past. I actually kind of miss it, except for the time factor. It felt less sterile.

What do you think? What are your memories of now ancient technology used in worship gatherings? How much different do you think the use of technology will be in our culture and our worship gatherings in just 10 more years? What was actually better in your opinion than what we use now? How can what we now use be improved?

[Images via SeemsArtless, Fowlerville History, Pixtus]

For some businesses, they simply use it as a marketing and branding tool to get their products in front of targeted audiences via advertisements, social branding pages, and any other form they can come up with (hashtags and photos!). For others, social networking is actually an income revenue.

No mater how you used social media, it is here to stay in the world of business.

The infographic below shows details on the top 250 retail companies and their investment in social media. We picked out a couple of the best parts:

• The most heavily used social networks by the top 250 retailers are Facebook (97%), Twitter (96%), and YouTube (90%)
• The best results (# of followers, engagement) for the top 250 retailers by far comes from Facebook
• The most followed retailer on any one social network is Victoria’s Secret on Facebook. (Sex sells baby…)

What retailers do you think use social media the best?

[via Campalyst]

So how can this audience be leveraged to engage those who care about your church or ministry? Is it worth spending time and resources on yet another online trend? What makes sharing photos through Instagram different or better than doing the same on Facebook?

Why Use Instagram?

1. IT’S VISUAL

People love images. They tell a story—your story—through the emotions they convey. A smiling child at summer camp. An exploding confetti cannon at Easter. A joyful new believer, post baptism. Photos have the ability to record the spirit of a moment better than words ever can.

2. IT’S INSTANT

Online content’s shelf life is measured in seconds (and continues to dwindle by the day as people grow more “connected”), so posting pictures of events the day after they occur may already be considered outdated.

Instagram allows you to engage people in real time, as you experience it.
It only takes a few seconds to snap a photo with your phone, apply a filter, and share with your followers.

3. IT’S SHARABLE

The app lets you pair social media accounts to your feed so you can automatically display your Instagram photos via your Facebook and Twitter accounts. People can then easily and quickly share it with their friends through these avenues. Using hashtags (like #goodfriday or #summercamp) also allow for trending and findability in various feeds.

4. IT’S PERSONAL

Most mobile photos are candid and authentic-feeling. They bring an aura of intimacy not usually communicated through other photos. You can take advantage of this by giving people an inside look into your special events, making them feel like they have a deeper level of participation. A photo from an event speaker looking out into the audience may garner more impact than a generic picture of the speaker from an audience member.

How Do I Use Instagram?

CHECK IT OUT

Play around on your personal account to learn the ins and outs. Follow your friends and make a note of what makes you go “ahhh!” Try out each photo filter and different lighting and composition techniques.

PLAN IT OUT

Instragram’s strengths lie in presenting instant, candid, personal moments—utilize that strength in your strategy for this medium.

LAUNCH IT OUT

Start an account for your church or ministry and sync your social media accounts. Introduce your account across your communication platforms to gain followers.

DELEGATE IT OUT

Find some people in your ministry already using Instagram effectively (especially those who have deeper behind the scenes access, like pastors or worship leaders). Give them your account login information and draft them into service with a few assignments.

SEND IT OUT

Start taking compelling photos and share them on your accounts. Experiment to see what gains more attention and shares. Rinse and repeat.

This article was written with the help of Bryan Young.