The Beginning Is the End of the Beginning…

Today I have spent a majority of my time researching various CMS’ or Content Management Systems. Up to this point I have been handcoding every website I have ever built. This has been fine until you get into an area like a church that is representative of so many subsets of ministries you need a library to keep things straight. In comes a CMS to rescue the confused, but I have a confession to make…

I’m a graphic snob. I mean, I just finished 12 hours of Drupal essential training, and it’s a great CMS for what it does. BUT the ability to customize the ‘themes’ is limited to the box it comes in. This may be acceptable to most, but something inside of me keeps saying…”Really? That’s it?”

So my search begins to find a more suitable candidate for my CMS query. Expression Engine? Nope, too much money and a steep learning curb. Drupal? Just went there….Joolma? Haha….seriously. WordPress? Ehh.

So I’m at the end of the day, back at the beginning. Anyone know a good CMS that fits ‘into’ a custom design instead of ‘customizing a theme’ to fit your CMS?

Losing Focus, Means Losing Impact…

I’ve heard it a million times from various church leaders and business leaders on the edge of BIG things…

“Once you lose your focus, you lose your impact.”

This is true more now than ever before when it comes to the church’s responsibility to be the leader in the community. So what does that mean for the media guy?

Before we can jump into an honest conversation about this, you have to know where I’m coming from. I think if you were to survey the top leading churches in this country, when it comes to having the most impact in their sphere of influence you would find one common thread. Each one of those churches has the ability to take the vision that is guided by the leadership team and translate that into a form of visual media whether it’s the web, video, or some other form. A lot of pastors still look at visual media as a great option to have. That mindset is what is killing the church’s ability to communicate the gospel and the vision they are offering.

If you walk into an office setting and the furniture is from the 1970′s, all of  the brochures are black and white with a handwritten address and phone number scratched in on the back, and the receptionist explains how they are the best thing going…what goes through your head? The same is true for the visual media at your local church. Whether it’s the signage, the bulletins, magazine, brochures or video, all of that is a mirrored reflection to most guests of the quality of the message you are giving. Visual media IS ministry.

So, what does that have to do with losing your focus? It’s not hard to get side-tracked when your in a fast paced church ministry. More often than not, the most common word thrown around in a ministry atmosphere is the word “change.” That is, if your ministry is alive and vibrant to begin with. When we begin to lose our focus about our direction, our job, our tasks and goals, then we completely lose our ability to have an impact through our leadership and our ministry. You can’t go five directions at once and still end up at the destination your were originally heading.

How long does it take before you put everything on cruise control during your work week? There’s another word for that, it’s called ‘plateauing.’

Since I Last Blogged..

Following up on the last post I made, if you would like to view the magazine for this past quarter I was working on, you can do so  here.

At church there has been plenty to keep me busy…

1. We just decided to start packaging various sermon series from both our Sunday morning worship services and our Wednesday night services, Worship at the Pointe. This means designing artwork, custom DVD menus and DVD authoring and that means I have been working on mastering our chroma and alpha keying ability for our DVD’s. Basically, when the Pastor comes to a point in his sermon it is then overlayed on the screen. Sounds simple and for the most part is, but it’s very time consuming. Especially on a 10 week series like our prophecy series that just ended. Incredible series though..

2. For the second year we’re going to be introducing a 40 day study. Last year we did a series entitled, Unite: 40 Days of Life-Changing Prayer. During that series, those 40 days, we as a church saw more people come to Christ, more baptisms, more unity and more movement of God in our church than we had the entire year to that point. It’s our prayer as a staff that this is the case this year with our series, Unstoppable: 40 Days of Faith. All of that to say, the booklet we design that correlates with this study is a task in and of itself. It’s a devotional book that goes along with the sermon series, etc. Roughly 44 pages long and requires a lot of designing, editing, proofing, and labor involved. Much like a magazine is, which I’ll be putting together at the same time as this booklet.

3. One area I’ve really been enjoying and stretching myself in is video lately. Whether it’s an interview or promo for an upcoming event, each one presents it’s own set of challenges, which is great. I’m coming to really enjoy it! Below are just a few examples…

The Pointe

No, it’s not just a play on words, The Pointe is our new magazine that Crosspointe issues every 3 or 4 months depending on the push of the events. This is a huge collaborate effort between our ministries for their articles, input, proofing, and myself on the design side. This has been an enriching experience for me simply because I do not come from a print background. The opportunity to try something new and suceed in it has been an incredible feeling.

All that to say it begins today, the design aspect of the magazine. Even though we’re a month out from actually shipping this issue, this week will begin the layout structure to go back and plugin design on top of. I’ll post the completed design once it is finished.

Easter Trailer

Below is the Easter trailer I just finished to show before our Fireproof Movie Event tomorrow night. Our theme for Easter is simply, “What If Easter Didn’t Exist?” After trial and error over the course of a few weeks I finally got it to the point I was at least content with the way it looked. I’ll probably end up going back and putting some more animation to text for the final draft. Check it out below…

Easter Promo Trailer from Crosspointe Baptist Church on Vimeo.