Chuck Scoggins | Web + Print + Video Design

Often, we dive into a project like a Christmas outreach or Christmas services without thinking about how it fits in with everything around it.

• How does it affect the ongoing activities of the church?
• How does it impact the public perception (brand) of the church?
• How can the momentum be leveraged to help boost the church in January?
• How does the energy and finances spent on Christmas yield positive returns?

Our holiday checklists become so busy that we often jump in and work hard to get the thing done. I’ve been there…trust me, I get it.

In my design concepts classes at Lindenwood University, I teach my students about a process to help them work through their designs from start to finish. It looks something like this:

1. Target Audience – Who are we trying to reach?
2. Message / Theme / Concept – What message or theme will reach them?
3. Composition – How can we compose our design in such a way to deliver the message or accomplish the theme?
4. Components – What elements do we need to use to achieve our desired composition?
5. Tools – What are the best tools (software in this case) to use for our design?

We’ve already examined how this applies to planning christmas with finding our target audience and looking at our message / theme / concept. Now it’s time to think about how our Christmas design (outreach, programming, services, etc) should be composed in relationship to the rest of what our church does.

In design composition, we consider placement, divisions, harmony, unity, alignment, and flow. If we use our imagination, I think these might help us in our Christmas planning as well.

Placement

How does the time, location, and arrangement of our Christmas services, outreaches, and events help or hurt the overall mission and direction of our church during this season.

Divisions
How can we use divisions, or differences from our normal programming, to give emphasis to the Christmas effort?

Harmony & Unity
How can we leverage our Christmas event to bring unity to our congregation? How can we rally our people around a common cause?

Alignment
How does what we’re planning for Christmas align with our mission and purpose? How can we plan it in a way that it causes the community to align with what we’re doing (as opposed to adding noise and complexity to this already-busy season)?

Flow
Again, how does our Christmas emphasis flow from what we’ve done throughout the past year to what we’re doing next year?

The process of planning for Christmas at our church is similar to planning a design project. By thinking about “composition,” we can make sure that our efforts in December aren’t an interruption to the mission, goals, vision, and calling of our church, but rather a part of the composed whole.

Next time we will look at some of the communications components that will help us reach our planning christmas goals. Until then, what are the things you’re doing to make sure your “composition” works for Christmas? Leave a comment…

Christmas is a very unique time for churches in that it is the one time of year where people are most open to visiting a church or responding to an outreach effort. I’ve done my share of Christmas planning over the past 10 years in church communications. I know first-hand how crazy the season is for church workers and how important it is for us to think strategically about this time of year. As we approach the holiday season, here is the first of five areas we should be thinking about as we plan (as a side note, these are the same 5 big-picture design areas I teach through in my Design Concepts class at Lindenwood University):

Target Audience

If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time. – Zig Ziglar

There is a temptation as church communicators to skip the difficult step of thinking through exactly who it is you are trying to reach. The churchy answer is, “we want to reach everyone in our community.” It is a noble goal to try to be all things to all people, but it is not practical and not helpful as we do our outreach planning. Different age groups, people groups, and culture groups within our communities require different methodologies. For example, if the goal is to reach families at Christmas, we should have a different approach than if the primary audience is artists.

Questions To Ask:
1. Who is the group of people in our community that will go unreached if our church doesn’t reach out to them?
2. Who is it that we can reach that 1,000 other churches wouldn’t be able to reach?
3. What is the DNA of our church and, based on that, who are we best suited to reach?
4. What unique calling has God given our church in terms of outreach.

Our effectiveness in planning and execution will be much greater if we do a the hard work of selecting our target audience. Chances are good that by selecting a group to go after that we will attract those on the fringe and even outside of the target group as well. Don’t be afraid to target a specific audience.

I’m giving away a copy of Outspoken. If you missed my review of the book, go check it out. If you think it is something you could benefit from, here’s how you can win a copy:

Leave me a comment about how/why you would like to be “frustrated, educated, and motivated me to be the best communicator that you can be.” I’ll randomly pick a winner and send you a free copy of the book sometime late next week. That’s it.

[Edit: Congrats to Steven Wells for winning the free copy of Outspoken. Below is the image showing the random number generated used to select Steven!]

I had the privilege of reading an advanced copy of Blaine Hogan’s new book, Untitled, this past week while on vacation. In the book, Blaine walks us through the creative process based on his years of experience as an actor, writer, producer, etc. He discusses how doing creative endeavors with excellence involves hard work – the type of work that most people are never able to overcome the natural and internal resistance to do. Here are a few of my favorite quotes (with some thoughts following them):

• It is the artist’s job to accept that the work will be very, very hard; to understand the importance of deep reflection, and to fight the forces of fear and resistance, all in the name of filling blank pages and creating beauty.

  I think most people aren’t willing to do the hard work; particularly the hard work of reflecting, scratching when things don’t itch, and  cultivating a culture of creativity. As a result, very few people end up creating beauty.

• No one cares about your ideas. The people who pay your salaries or buy your art really only care about one thing. They only care about what you make.

  I appreciate how Blaine discusses the nitty gritty of making things and is blunt about how little most people appreciate the creative process. Sure, people appreciate art (in that, they want the product you create for them to look aesthetically pleasing), but they don’t care much about the process to get there.

• No one cares about your ideas or how great a pitch-person you are if you can’t execute your vision.
• Your vision casting must be in direct proportion to the work you are willing to do to make your vision come to life.
• Vision is easy. Ideas are even easier. It’s execution that separates the amateurs from the pros.

  I often have grand visions, big plans, cool ideas, etc. However, when it comes time to execute that vision I often don’t want to deliver.

• You must always have something more for them to see. Always. Always. Always. The discipline of cultivating ideas is a difficult one, believe me. Who has the time to think up new ideas just to hide them in our back pocket. But if you plan on creating for a living, there is no other way.

  I think a lot of creatives (myself included) feel that we should be given an assignment and – poof – inspiration should come out of thin air. However, for those who create for a living and are often asked to be creative on demand, there must be a constant cultivating (or “scratching” as it’s called in the book) of ideas and inspiration. As I think back on my dry periods (and what creative person hasn’t gone through droughts), it has been during times when I’ve neglected to scratch when I don’t itch.

• Our tendency when trying to explain ourselves (through words or art) is to add instead of subtract.Less is almost always more. Better should come before bigger.

  I’m constantly reminding myself to reduce (images, lines, verses, words, etc). Tear away all that is unnecessary. What I’m left with is almost always clearer and better.

• Creativity (in art making or relationships, even) only really happens in the tension and tension is created when we give ourselves something to push against, even if it’s something seemingly benign as a deadline. 

  I think a lot of us (creative types) often feel that boundaries, such as deadlines, are restrictive and reduce the amount of creativity we can produce. However, as Blaine points out, the best creativity happens in response or in the midst of tension. And, deadlines and boundaries are some of the best tension-producing devices. We ought to welcome boundaries. Think of them as challenges.

• This is the creative process – stop complaining! It’s messy! It’s rarely mappable! It is always dynamic and ever-changing! It will always be hard, but it should also be fun. Every landed plane deserves some kind of celebration.
• In the end, the effectiveness of our creative process comes down to whether or not we’re going to whine or do the work.
• The [young / inexperienced / student] filmmaker doesn’t present you with an alternative way to view things, instead she tellsyou how it is. Sadly, many of us don’t outgrow this phase.  

  The point I appreciate here is how subtly presenting people with alternate realities is almost always better than screaming your point about how you think their reality should be viewed. However, the maturity required to do this is difficult to obtain. It requires us to do a lot of inward work. It requires us to be willing to give up our view of how things should be in order to make room for someone to view the art differently. I honestly wish I could do a little less “shouting” in my art and invite others into the creative conversation.

• Execution isn’t sexy. Execution is hard. And it’s always harder than the pitch. 

  I agree with this principle. It’s always easier to propose an idea than to execute it. However, I often find that executing is not nearly as hard as I imagine it to be. When I ‘ve done the hard work beforehand, and when I break the process down into smaller steps the execution usually takes care of itself. The hardest part for me is usually taking the first step in the execution because of the resistance I’ve built up in my own mind.

Are you a new or small church and you want to do a good job with your communications, but don’t know where to start? Want to communicate like a big church but don’t have the time or budget? You’ve come to the right place. Below is a list of thoughts and resources to get you started. If you’re looking for an exhaustive list of resources, check out the church marketing directory over at the Center for Church Communication.

Philosophy
The first and most important thing is to decide what  your communications philosophy is going to be. Are you going to try to communicate everything that happens in the church (all events and ministries), or are you going to be strategic and only communicate the most important things? I highly recommend that you read Kem Meyer’s book, Less Clutter. Less Noise before you decide. And take a look at this open letter to pastors as well (be sure to click Roland Gilbert’s link about half way down). Trust me, if you figure this stuff out and write it down, you will be much better off as you grow.

Logo
This is one area where you can’t go cheap. When starting* your branding, you need to find a great designer (I’m available) and pay them to make you a good logo. This could be the most important $500 to $1,000 your church ever spends.

Facebook
Almost everybody in your congregation is already gathering in the virtual space known as Facebook. To be successful in church communications, you need to be there too. If I could only give churches two pieces of advice, this one would be in the top two (the other is to make sure you you have your philosophy figured out – see above): Sign up for a Facebook account for yourself and get familiar with how it works, then get a Facebook page for your church. Here are a few things to remember:

• Post to it regularly.
  I would recommend between one and three posts per day. Ultimately you have to figure out your rhythm, but you want to make sure you have a consistent presence. Use Hootsuite to schedule your posts, if necessary.
• Respond to every comment.
  This one isn’t always easy, but it’s important because it gives a personal touch to a digital format, especially since they can’t see you “hearing” them like they would in a face to face conversation.
• Be conversational.
  Don’t be preachy. Don’t just make announcements. Have conversations to people
• Listen.
  Use this opportunity to listen to what is going on in the lives of your people and learn from what they are saying.
• Ask lots of questions.
  Ask what people are going through. Ask for stories about how God is working. Pick a point from your upcoming message and use the opportunity to get some feedback on it. I feel strongly that you should have more question marks than periods in your posts.
• Everything that you post doesn’t have to be “churchy.”
  It’s okay to talk about current events (though you might want to avoid politics). For example, West Ridge Church (just outside of Atlanta) posted the following when the Atlanta Falcons lost in the playoffs last year:

Falcons Fans…there will be life counselors ready to pray with you tomorrow at West Ridge.

One last thought about Facebook: A lot of churches who are just starting out in the area of communications have found success in pointing their church’s domain name (a.k.a. as website address) to their Facebook page. While the thought of not having complete control over your website (people can say whatever they want to about you on Facebook) might seem daunting, the idea of not having to maintain two web presences might be really beneficial.

Website
If you do decide to have a separate web presence, I highly recommend using wordpress as a content management system & church themer as the design theme for it. WordPress was originally designed to be a blogging platform; however, with the amount of plugins and themes and customizations you can do, it makes a great content management system (the blog that you’re reading has wordpress as its foundation). There is likely someone in your congregation who can get this hosted and set up for you…and if not, you can hire a designer to do it for you for pretty cheap. Once it’s set up, you’re only looking at $7 to $12 (depending on what company you host it with) a month to keep it up and running. Here is a sample site that we built recently using wordpress and church theme.

Message Audio
Want to record your messages and put them online? There are a couple of things you’ll need to get it going: a recording device (many of you have this built in to your sound system), a way to “clean up” the audio, a place to host the audio files,  and a place to put the links to the hosted audio files so people can get to them.

• Recording
  If you don’t already have a way to record your audio, I recommend purchasing a Zoom H4N. It is an audio recorder that you can put on your podium (to record over the air) or at your sound booth (to run a mic line out of your sound board). It records to the .mp3 format, which is the format you need to have for uploading.
• Cleaning Up The Audio
  If you don’t start and/or stop the audio in the right spot, have copyrighted material, record too loudly or to softly, etc., you might need to clean up the audio. There are lots of free programs out there (such as Audacity for Windows or Garage Band for Mac).
• Hosting The Audio
  If you have a web savvy person in your congregation, or if you use church theme on your wordpress blog, you can host the .mp3 audio files on the web server where your website resides and simply provide a link to it on your website. If you do not have such space available, or don’t know how to go about putting the files there, there are a couple of services dedicated to hosting audio files. This is a good, comprehensive, article on how to get your audio online (with links to hosting providers about half way down).

Additional Resource
If you can come up with the funds, you should try to make it to Echo. My friends Cleve and Eric are doing a breakout session called “Church Communications on the Cheap” which covers this topic in more detail.

___________

*I say “starting” your branding because a logo is just part of your brand. Your brand is really the entirety of who you are, what you do for your community, what people think of you, etc. Your brand is your DNA. It’s what makes you, you.

If you follow me at all, you probably know that I’m on a Mission Trip for Creatives this week. I thought I’d share a few things that I learned this week:

• It’s pretty amazing what God can do through a few people who are willing to use their gifts. On our two-man team (one of four teams) alone, we served 6 churches, provided about 60 hours of complimentary communications work, and gave an estimated $8,300 in goods and services away. But that’s not even the amazing part. The amazing part is how God is going to take our humble efforts and multiply them for his amazing purposes. That is something to get excited about.
• There are some churches that are doing amazing things here in the Albany / Hudson Valley area. It is a good reminder to me that in spite of size, resources, and communications ability, God can and is moving in mighty ways.
• The creative communication of the Gospel is of the utmost importance. My new friend Jon Rogers said it well on his blog:

No, we didn’t build a church building or construct an orphanage. No we didn’t run a VBS or witness on the streets. We have created sustainable solutions for churches to effectively communicate an ultimate message of God’s never-ending love for each community these churches are involved in. Yeah, we all know that design is not what’s going to grow the churches we work with on this trip but it can help to remove the barriers for outsiders looking in. It’s still and always will be all about Jesus and his people devoted to growing in their faith and reaching out to others.

• It’s really important to know your calling and work where you (and your gifts) are celebrated. Sometimes when we get into the daily grind, it’s easy to forget that God has called us and gifted us. This week was just what I needed for renewal and rededicating.

Some people that I would like to thank for making this trip possible if you will indulge me for a moment:

• My church (Calvary) for getting behind the vision enough to release me from my duties for a week.
• Cleve Persinger, the guy who dreamed up Creative Missions.
• Andy Burns and Eric Murrell, two guys who really came alongside Cleve to make it happen.
• Michael Buckingham, Danielle Harland, & Phil Bowdle who were team leaders.
• My parents who gave a generous donation to make this trip possible.
• My amazing wife who stayed home to take care of the kiddos; and my inlaws for coming to help her out.
• All of our sponsors/partners (Center For Church Communication, Mid America Seminary, Media Salt, Hudson Baptist Association, Our Shirts Don’t Suck, and others too numerous to name).

If you’d like to hear more about Creative Missions, I’d love to chat with you and tell you our stories. Please feel free to give me a shout. If you’re interested in future trips, check out www.creativemissions.to. If you’d like to help sponsor a future trip, hit up Cleve.

We’ve used a couple of videos in our services that have received very good feedback. I thought I’d share them with you. They’re called “Drive Bye” videos and we play them right at the end of the service before we dismiss.

Full disclosure: We completely stole the idea from the Drive Conference that Northpoint Community Church puts on every year. We even hired their voice over guy, Brad Bretz, to do the V/O’s for them.

The people in our congregation really love how they drive the message home, give them practical ideas of next steps, etc. How about you, what is your church doing that is getting good feedback? What are you doing to drive home the point?

This weekend at Calvary Church we rolled out an environmental projection system for our Easter stage design. There are two components that I thought I’d share with you: the projection system and the wall we created to project on.

Note: It’s worth saying that neither of these concepts are our creations. We borrowed and custom-tailored them both for our needs. Deron Yevoli is really the mastermind behind our setup (and I think he took a lot of inspiration from Stephen Proctor.

The Projection System
We are using a setup using a Mac Pro tower and an iMac with ProPresenter and ProVideoPlayer from Renewed Vision. Below is an overly simplified diagram of how the system works. Basically, we cue videos for our main side screens with ProVideoPlayer. When we fire a video, it automatically triggers ProPresenter to play a corresponding environmental video that is set out to two projectors using a TripleHead2Go hardware device. ProPresenter also sends out lyrics (which are keyed over our IMAG or our side screen motion videos through our switcher) and graphics to a stage display (LCD TV mounted on our back wall).

Though it sounds pretty complicated, it’s quite easy to set up, especially given all the tutorials from Renewed Vision.

The Wall
The second key element to our environmental projection was the 22 ft by 45 ft wall we built out of coroplast to display the projection on. We basically created a wood frame and stapled the coroplast sheets to it to make a textured wall to project on. When we’re not projecting, the coroplast makes a great surface to put lights on. We’re pretty pleased with the way it turned out. Below are some photos of it.

Wall With No Lights

Wall Front Lit With Lights

Wall Front - Up Close

Wall - Rear Construction

Wall - Rear Construction

Wall - Rear Construction

Background During A Drama Element

Background During Worship

If you’re thinking about doing a project like this and we can be a resource to you, please don’t hesitate to contact me!

I’ve always said that one of the best part of conferences is the conversation that happens in the hallways between sessions. Cultivate is one of those conference experiences that is all about those types of ‘hallway conversations.’ The structure is set up to facilitate, encourage, and nourish the conversation. Yes, there are speakers and general sessions, but it’s a very different type of conference.

In 2009, I was lucky to be able to attend the conference due to the generosity of someone who purchased my ticket for me. This year, I want to “pass it on.” So, I’m giving away a ticket to Cultivate 2011.

Cultivate is May 4-5, 2011 at First Christian Church in Huntington Beach, CA. If you’d like a free ticket, here’s how you can get one:

• Leave a comment about why you’d like to attend.
• Next Monday (April 11), I’ll pick the best comment (or a random one) and announce the winner on Twitter (so make sure you’re following me).

Good luck and I look forward to seeing you there!

We at Calvary are in the middle of a message series on the topic of David and his heart for worship. We tried to come up with some resources that might help people in their pursuit of God in worship. One of the resources we created was a blog where we list our worship set for the upcoming week, iTunes playlists, song recommendations, and one other resource we’re calling our “Song of the Week.”

The Song of the Week is a song that we’re featuring in our worship service that relates directly to the topic that day. What makes it different from our regular special songs in our services is that we’re having a member from our creative team introduce it in a video on the blog and we’re encouraging our attenders to go out and check it out before the service begins.

Here are a few of the Song of the Week blog/introduction videos:

Week One

LIFT – Song of the Week from Calvary Church on Vimeo.

Week Two

LIFT – Song of the Week (Week 2) from Calvary Church on Vimeo.

Week Three

LIFT – Song of the Week (Week 3) from Calvary Church on Vimeo.

Week Four

LIFT – Song of the Week (Week 3) from Calvary Church on Vimeo.

The jury is still out on whether this is helping our people in their personal worship times, but we’re having fun sharing a little bit about some songs that have had an impact on us! I’d love your feedback on the idea in the comments.