The 5 Commandments Church Media
Content
the 5 commandments
of church media
from pro church tools written by brady shearer
© 2013
Brady Shearer
This report is free and is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. However, I would request you do not email this PDF to a friend; instead, please send them to http://prochurchtools.com where they can get their own copy of the e-book for free. Thanks very much.
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Maybe you're like me. I am compelled to create. And while I'm not always satisfied with what I create, I am compelled nonetheless. When I was young, creativity came naturally. I would paint and draw, dress up and act, and write songs and sing. Star Wars was my favourite movie. I would tie together pieces of coloured cardboard and wood to construct blasters. All towels became capes, and every element in our living room became a part of the galactic universe (the couch was the Death Star by the way). My mother recognized my creativity and nurtured it. My earliest years are a bright memory of acting out dreams. But as I grew older, my interests began to shift. I discovered sports and immersed myself in basketball. Creative activities were abandoned during my school years and replaced with travelling around North America for weekend tournaments and summer camps. Basketball became the most important thing in my life. And though I enjoyed it, I always felt as if something were missing.
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I didn’t find what I was missing in church. At that time, church did not interest me. My family attended a small church, with a congregation of fewer than twenty people. The worship “team” consisted of the pastor's wife strumming an acoustic guitar while holding an egg shaker. School, however, did interest me. I excelled at both sports and academics. I became obsessed with athletic performance and grades. What mattered most to me were my point-per-game averages, my grade point average and the Toronto Raptors. I suppose it could have been worse. But everything changed in my freshman year of high school. I was invited to a weekend retreat by a friend who attended her church’s youth group. During that weekend, I surrendered my life to Christ and the creative drive within me was reborn with a passion greater than before. Instead of an unfocused childhood pursuit, this newly awakened creativity was aimed and driven. I wasn’t creating out of spontaneity, but out of purpose. Christ awakened something powerful within me, and every creative effort became measurably aimed. It started with music. First, I learned to play drums. I saved up ten dollars and walked down to the local music store during lunch break. I bought my first pair of drum sticks. They were painted black with bright orange flames. Very tasteful.
Christ awakened something powerful within me, and every creative effort became measurably aimed.
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I couldn’t afford real drums (saving up for the drum sticks was hard enough) so I was forced to improvise. My mother had a series of old, leather-bound books that were used only for decoration, so I would take three or four from the shelf, arrange them on the coffee table, and use each one as a different kind of of drum. My mother didn’t mind; the books cost less than a dollar a piece at the second-hand store, and as long as they kept me from pounding away on her precious couches, she was satisfied. Actually, my mother was thrilled that I was once again tapping into my creative side. My father, on the other hand, was less pleased. It was he who had presented me with my first basketball. He was the one who drove me to the park to shoot hoops. He taught me how to dribble and bought my first basketball-hoop for the driveway. And he was the one that drove the interminable hours to every game, camp and practice, giving his son every chance to succeed. My father is a lot of things, but a Creative isn’t one of them. And I know that in my sophomore year of high school, when I chose to quit basketball for youth group, he was glad to see my budding relationship with Christ, but was saddened that I had put our shared activity behind me. Thus, it will probably come as no surprise that when I approached my dad about buying my first drum kit, he was not overjoyed. I told him it would cost $450 and he told me that I would have to save up. Four hundred and fifty dollars is a lot of money for a teenager. At least it was for me. It took countless hours of babysitting and “volunteering
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for money” at the local library to save up the cash. By the summer I had finally saved up enough money to buy that precious first drum kit. It was a Westbury kit (they don’t make them anymore) with candy-apple red wrap. I bought the kit from a kid in town and, in hindsight, I’m pretty sure I got ripped off. But at the time, that was the farthest thing from my mind. After all the hard work, the saving and the practicing on books, I finally had my own drum kit. I vividly recall sitting in English class - the last class of the day - with my heart racing. I was incapable of sitting still through the seventy-five minute class because I knew I would soon be going home to play the drums. As you can imagine, most of my free time was spent banging around on my kit. Our house was small, and the noise upstairs must have been deafening. My family practiced patience.
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Each road of my creative journey could probably be expounded into a story like this one. But for the sake of brevity, I’ll save the expounding for the story of my first drum kit only. From drums, I moved to my first electric guitar, my first bass guitar, my first, second and third pedal boards, and my first recording software (Cubase, then Logic, then Ableton). I got my first MIDI keyboard, recorded my first album, and then my second album. Next, I moved into different creative avenues. I bought a DSLR camera, a MacBook Pro and a set of video-editing software. I created a vision video for my church, was hired to create videos for other churches, and accepted a position as church Media Director. I developed a social media strategy, drafted a branding set, and composed my first motion graphics mini-movie. Today, I’m married to my best friend, finishing my degree in theology, and Media Director at a local church. I’ve also started my own platform called Pro Church Tools to help other people learn the things I’ve learned, saving them the innumerable hours and countless mistakes I’ve made.
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I tell my story because I want you to know me. I don’t know everything. I’m just a person who is on the same road as you are. I make the same mistakes (probably more) and I’m doing my best to live a life worthy of the call Christ has given me. That being said, I am frustrated with the media many churches are creating. I am tired of Christians and churches being the butt of every music, film and design joke in the media. I am sick of the indictment that small churches are incapable of creating beautiful and compelling media because they are small. And what grieves me most is that stories that don't need to be told continue to be broadcasted to the world. Backed by legions of creative teams and obscene levels of funding, our televisions, computers, and movie theatres are brimming with messages that don’t deserve our time -- empty messages that are degrading and demoralizing to our culture. And then there's the church. We have the most beautiful and life-changing message of all time, but you wouldn't know it by the media that we produce. Often, our media is less engaging than the notice for the garage sale down the road.
Often, church media is less engaging than the notice for the garage sale down the road.
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If you’re reading this e-book, you probably have many of the same frustrations. These frustrations may include the following: ! You see your church's efforts, but they are not producing the results you’d hoped. ! You have a deep desire to use or create compelling media that points to Christ, but you’re not sure how to do that. ! You don’t have the resources necessary for the huge financial commitment that media demands. ! You are busy, and don't have the time to commit to high-quality media ! Media is a huge subject that includes many different streams. You wonder, where do I start? What is most important? These are real frustrations I have struggled with. This is my vision: ! I believe that every church and ministry can create and use media well in their unique context ! I believe it doesn’t take a huge financial commitment to create stunning media ! The only thing churches need is the right training. And you’ve found the right place!
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If I can do it, you can do it.
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These are some pretty big claims. So where do we start? Well the best place to start is this e-book! Congratulations! Everything you need to get started in the world of church media is in your hands right now. As I said, implementing media takes time and money, but my goal is to minimize these factors as much as possible. The best way to do this is to have a set of guidelines that you can consult every time you make a big media decision. If you are familiar with church planting, starting a new program or running your own business, you know that one of the keys to success is to have measurable goals that inform your decisions. Your media ministry is no different.
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This e-book is all about guiding your media decisions, and I’ve called that guide The 5 Commandments of Church Media. These 5 Commandments are meant to serve as your foundation. One of the worst things you can do when implementing media is to start building without a foundation. Huge Mistake Churches Make: They use media because they think it’s important to use media. For example, they grab videos off the Internet and play them during services. For some reason, churches think that by inserting a pre-made video into their service they will somehow be current, relevant and effective. False! That’s like saying, “As long as someone is preaching each Sunday, no matter who it is or what they are preaching on, it’s okay!” Inserting pre-made media won’t automatically disqualify you from being effective, but, as with anything else, it is useless unless done purposefully - not done because it’s trendy or expected. The above situation is just one example. The point I’m making is that you need a guide to consult when you’re making a decision. These 5 Commandments are meant to be customized for your church. Each Commandment is a philosophy or principle that your church can work out for itself. These 5 Commandments will work for any church. But they will work best when you take the core of each Commandment and apply it to your particular context.
One of the worst things you can do when implementing media is to start building without a foundation.
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Before we get started, here are a few introductory points. 1. This guide assumes you are a church with finite resources and funding. If your ministry has unlimited financial resources and staff, you can close this book right now. But for those who need to capitalize on every hour and every dollar spent, this guide is for you. These Commandments are the guidelines and principles that inform everything I produce. They are tried and true. They are not gimmicks. They are not empty words phrased to sound meaningful. I rely on these Commandments and they have worked brilliantly for me. I’m convinced they will do the same for you. These Commandments are not high-minded theorems or abstract philosophies. They are actionable steps that you can put into place right away. So take notes and take actions! This guide is mainly written for the church that is starting with nothing and wants to launch their media ministry. But if your church has already been using media for a while and wants to improve, that’s great too. These 5 Commandments will still provide plenty of valuable information you can use. Plus, you’re already ahead of the curve and won’t have to work as hard!
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My hope is that this foundation will enable your church to create art and media that properly reflect the beauty, the urgency, and the transformative power of the Gospel. Ready to go? Let’s do it.
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Commandment #1
BE YOURSELF
“Be yourself.” The reason we hear this statement so often is that people understand that each one of us is unique. We’re not carbon copies. Growing up, I didn’t particularly like myself so I did my best impression of others. But after I began serving Christ, I realized that he created me with unique abilities and skills. Your church is no different. Your church is unique, with its own strengths, weaknesses and personality. So be yourself. This first Commandment sets the stage for all the others. It isn’t super-spiritual advice, it’s about making a realistic appraisal of who
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your church is. The worst thing you can do when starting a media ministry is to try to be like someone else. Unfortunately, that’s what most of us do, isn’t it? We attend a conference or another church service and see what someone else is doing and we say to ourselves, “Wow! We should do that in our church!” I’m not saying being inspired by others is wrong - because it’s not. In fact an essential element of creativity is building upon the efforts of others. But doing something simply because someone else is doing it successfully is not honest. It’s not authentic. And that is the core of the first Commandment: Be yourself. You need your own reasons and motivations for your media decisions. So who are you? And who is your church? Hopefully you know your church pretty well, so this should be an easy assessment. Here’s how I filled out the profile for my church: Personality Traits: ! Just starting out ! Hard-working ! Artistic ! Ambitious ! Located in small suburb outside the big city Strengths:
Doing something simply because someone else is doing it successfully is not honest. It’s not authentic.
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! Video ! Preaching ! Website and Graphics ! Worship Weaknesses: ! Ambitions that we may not be able to reach ! A venue -- a movie theatre -- that presents challenges (set up, lighting, no internet etc.) ! Dumping too much work on one person and overloading that person As you can see, this list isn’t exhaustive but it paints a clear picture of what kind of church we are and what you might expect from us on a Sunday morning. Have you finished your own list yet? No? Okay, I’ll wait. Open up a document and begin putting some thoughts on paper. Done? Great. At this point your list doesn’t have to be complete. Keep that document handy and add more as your vision and your church continue to grow and change. This “Who Are You” list won’t provide you with the magic answer every time a media problem or question arises, but it will help you decide where to expend your efforts.
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The more informed you are now, the more prepared you will be to tackle the next project.
COMMANDMENT #1 KEY POINTS
1. Understand your church’s personality, strengths and weaknesses. 2. Know your identity. Identity is crucial to creating media that matters so don’t take this step lightly.
IS YOUR CHURCH MAKING THESE MISTAKES?
! Are you trying to be like another church because they did something really cool? ! Are you doing things just because big churches are doing them?
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Commandment #2
BUILD YOUR BRAND
Branding is a visual representation of your identity. Let that sink in. I’ll say it again. Branding is a visual representation of your identity. For some reason, the word branding has carried a negative connotation in the church. It shouldn’t. Commandment #1 made you take an honest look at your church and write down who you are. Branding simply gives that identity a visual representation. Branding represents your values and characteristics in colours, images and fonts.
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If this seems a little abstract consider what Jesse Bryan, the Creative Director at Mark Driscoll’s church Mars Hill, said about their branding choices, “A lot of our stuff you can categorize as masculine. We want to make sure that guys can connect with it.” Even your choice of colours and fonts communicates traits about your church. This isn’t a book about how to create your own brand, but if you’re starting from ground zero consider what Phil Cooke said in his book Branding Faith: “In this media-driven environment, influence has shifted from the power of church and community to the power of corporate brands, and they wield enormous power.” This statement is tremendously unsettling. When corporations replace community, people suffer. But if the church understands the trend toward branding, it can take advantage of the trend toward a better end. Large corporations have a profit motive and use branding to create customers. The church can use branding to draw people to itself and ultimately to create followers of Jesus Christ. Let’s face it: society is media-driven, and in a culture of media it’s not about what your church does; it’s about how it is perceived.
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To be clear, branding isn’t about manipulation. It's about helping people recognize who you are and how you can impact their lives. Cooke says that people establish a gut-level connection with people and brands, long before they buy into their message. Knowing this, you can see that building your church’s brand is vital. If you want training on how to actually do this, our knowledge base is growing daily, so check back here often. But before you start designing or evaluating what branding you currently have, let’s look at the three steps you must consider and accomplish to build a powerful brand for your church:
a) IDENTIFY YOUR AUDIENCE
The first Commandment taught us to identify our church’s values and personality. It’s good that we know these things because our branding needs to accurately represent who we are. And while we should never compromise who we are, we also must consider our audience. When you’re building your brand, understand that it’s not about the message you send, it’s about the message people receive. So ask yourself these questions about your audience: ! Who is my church’s target audience? ! What are their cultural backgrounds and life experiences through which they will filter the church’s message? ! What are biases they have toward church?
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! What are they most looking for in a church? ! Many people aren’t looking for a church at all, so what are they most looking for in life?
b) CONTROL THEIR PERCEPTION
Before a person ever walks into your sanctuary, before they ever shake the hand of a greeter, before they ever hear the pastor preach a message, they will interact with your church’s brand. In this mediasaturated society, people will Google you before they phone you; they will look you up on Facebook before they look you up in person. Your job is to be prepared when people go looking for your church. In the few precious seconds you have their attention, show them what they need to know about you. To accomplish this, as you are building your church’s brand, ask yourself these questions: ! How do I want people to feel about my church when they first interact with our brand? ! If perception is everything, how can I control people’s perception with our branding? ! What do I want people to think of when they think of our church? ! Recognizing that many people view church negatively, how can I show (and not tell) them that we are different?
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c) CAPITALIZE
I love what Phil Cooke says about brands: “Truly successful brands give the impression that there is simply no substitute for what they offer.” Your church was started with a purpose. A need was recognized in your community and the church was planted to fill that need. We all know that the church facilitates something everyone needs: a relationship with Jesus Christ. But your church offers this in a way that is unique to you and unique to your community. If you successfully accomplished the first two steps (identifying your audience and controlling their perception), it is now time to capitalize on that. At this point you’ve attracted people and earned some of their trust by honestly representing your church's values. There are people in your community that NEED to be part of your church. You know that. Next, you have to ensure that they will become part of your church. The following questions will help you capitalize on your brand: ! What does our church offer that people want? ! What does our church offer that people need? ! How can we present this offer in ways that are honest, engaging and direct? ! What can we do to make people feel as comfortable as possible in their decision to visit a place they’ve never been before?
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! How can we capitalize on reaching people already attending our church? How can we build our existing community even stronger with our branding?
COMMANDMENT #2 KEY POINTS
1. Your brand represents your identity. 2. People will interact with your brand long before they hear your message. 3. Don’t start with your message; start with your audience. 4. It’s not about facts; it’s about perception.
IS YOUR CHURCH MAKING THESE MISTAKES?
! Have you thought of branding in a negative way? ! Are you thinking about yourself and your message and not considering your audience? ! Are you not building your brand?
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Commandment #3
STAY CONSISTENT
Recently my wife and I attended church with her parents. The church they attend is the biggest one in the city. During the service, a lot of things were done exceptionally well. The worship team provided a meaningful worship set; the pastor preached an engaging message and the church used media effectively. They presented well-produced video announcements and a video testimony of a young adult who was undergoing baptism. In one glaringly obvious way, however, the church dropped the ball. None of their branding or design was consistent. Across every medium, the brand changed. Their offering cards had one design. Their announcements had a different design. Their bulletins had yet another design. There was no unity, no solid sense of identity. It made for a disjointed experience for me as a first time visitor. There is a danger that people new to church may feel overwhelmed by the novelty of the experience. The music is unfamiliar, the faces are
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unfamiliar, and they are not accustomed to the service. By branding yourself consistently, you offer visitors a “familiar face,” a repeated visual that offers recognition in an otherwise unfamiliar environment. REMEMBER: It’s all about perception, and branding is the visual representation of your church. Even if this church was doing a fantastic job fostering unity, I couldn’t recognize it because of the lack of unity in the branding. And perception is what matters. I cannot stress how important brand consistency is within your church. Brand inconsistency is like the guy who always acts differently with different people. When he’s at church he acts one way. When he’s at work he acts another way. When he’s with his family he acts another way. Don’t be that guy. Earlier, we talked about doing media the right way, and this is how you can set yourself apart. Very, very, few churches maintain brand consistency. If your church can identify itself (Commandment #1), build its brand (Commandment #2) and stay consistent with that brand (Commandment #3), you will ensure that you have a recognizable face in your community. Is brand consistency really a big deal? Consider this: My friend is a manager at Starbucks and he told me that after thirty years of being in the business, Starbucks is still intentional,
Brand inconsistency is like the guy who always acts differently with different people.
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down to the least product display, with brand consistency and brand evolution. No matter what Starbucks you visit, it always feels familiar. You may stop in for coffee at a Starbucks halfway across the world, but you are meant to feel at home. The retailer wants you to experience what insiders call a “perfect moment.” Why shouldn’t the church offer perfect moments? Why shouldn’t people feel at home during your services? If you’ve followed the first two Commandments, it means that you’ve worked hard to understand who you are as a church and you are building a brand that accurately represents you. But every time you overlook your brand and go in a different direction, you split your identity and it confuses people (you also undercut all the hard work you’ve done.) How would you feel if you walked into a Starbucks and their cold drinks were on a menu that looked like McDonalds’ menu, their hot drinks were on a menu that looked like Dunkin Donuts’, and their sandwiches were on a menu that looked like Tim Hortons’? You may not consciously recognize why, but something would feel wrong. People prefer what they like and they like what they know. Everyone recognizes the corporations, the restaurant chains and the major retailers by their logos. The church should be no different. Branding can make the church as recognizable and familiar as the Tim Hortons on the corner.
Why shouldn’t the church offer perfect moments? Why shouldn’t people feel at home during your services?
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NOTE: I’m not advocating that everything your church produces must always conform to strict guidelines. For instance, when we were visiting that church with my in-laws, the church was in the middle of a message series based on a popular pastor's book. They had downloaded the graphics from his website and were using those during the message. There are times when the rule of consistency is meant to be broken, but for all major publications, such as bulletins, websites, announcements, offering cards. etc., branding must be consistent. The reason churches divert from their branding and design is because it’s easy to do so. Someone finds a cool pre-made graphic and, instead of making it fit into their design, they adopt it outright. Brand consistency is difficult because your brand has limitations (certain colours and fonts). Your church will have to work harder to maintain consistency because working to stay within your brand’s limitations is more difficult than borrowing graphics as you run across them. But if you commit to staying consistent with your church’s branding, you will build a brand that people instantly recognize and associate with all your good qualities. If, however, you take the easy road and borrow everything from others, your patchwork branding will have no impact and your recognition will be diluted. Learn from Starbucks and be intentional at every level.
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COMMANDMENT #3 KEY POINTS
IS YOUR CHURCH MAKING THESE MISTAKES?
! Are you not staying consistent with your branding? ! Are you taking the easy route and borrowing everything from others?
1. Stay consistent. 2. It’s okay to sometimes use special branding for a big event or sermon series (just make it a special thing and not the norm). 3. Never use inconsistent branding for your church’s key elements (website, bulletin, social media etc.).
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Commandment #4
CHOOSE YOUR MEDIA
Okay. We’ve come a long way. This next Commandment is a fun and easy one. If you’ve completed the first three Commandments and continued to follow them, you’ve built a great foundation. Now it’s to time to start doing some fun stuff! The best advice I can give if you are just starting out is to start small. There are dozens of different media avenues you could start implementing in your church, and sometimes it feels that if you’re not doing them all, you’re not doing media well. But that isn’t true. In fact, I’ve found the opposite to be true. You don’t need to have a podcast, a website, a church app, a church magazine, video announcements, baptism videos, testimony videos, message trailers, offering videos, filmed skits, Twitter, YouTube,
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Facebook, Vimeo, and Instagram accounts AND advertising spots on the radio. Here’s my story as Media Director. When I started out I wanted to prove that I was worth the money they were paying me, so I did everything I mentioned above. Immediately. Not only did I do all those things, but I did them while following Commandments 1-3. I thought as long as I understood who we were, built our brand and kept it consistent, nothing could go wrong. It could. Commandment #4 may be an easy one, but it’s just as important to your media ministry’s success as the others: choose your media carefully. Instead of doing everything satisfactorily, do a few things exceedingly well. After I tried to do everything and anything, I realized I couldn’t keep up with the workload and funneled my efforts down to a handful of media: videos, the website and the app (along with a couple of social media accounts). For the majority of smaller churches, your time limitations are just as restricting as your financial limitations, especially when it comes to media. If you try to do everything, you’ll eventually start neglecting things. This will reflect poorly on both you and your church.
Instead of doing everything satisfactorily, do a few things exceedingly well.
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So consult the list above and choose media that excites you. I wanted to make beautiful videos, so that was one area I focused on specifically. When I began, I was just copying others because that’s all I knew how to do. Slowly I began injecting my own ideas. Then I began working with motion graphics and now I’m starting to work in 3D. By increasing my skills in this one area instead of spreading them out, our church is producing excellent videos instead of lots of mediocre media. Don’t fall into the trap of doing too much too soon. If you’re starting a website, focus on making it the best it can be, and when it is done, move on to something else. Start small and gradually expand your efforts.
COMMANDMENT #4 KEY POINTS
1. Select a few kinds of media and make them awesome. 2. Start small and gradually expand your efforts.
IS YOUR CHURCH MAKING THESE MISTAKES?
! Are you trying to accomplish too much too soon? ! Are you doing many things adequately when you could be doing a few things fantastically?
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Commandment #5
HAVE A SYSTEM
In the church we're not always afforded the luxury and resources that foster and fund creativity. Recently, I was meeting with a like-minded pastor over coffee and he articulated it perfectly. Concerning the church and media he said, "It's all about being quick and dirty." Quick and dirty. Those aren't exactly glowing terms. In fact, if somebody used adjectives like those to describe a project of mine, I would be quite deflated. Yet this is the reality of church and media. This fifth and final Commandment is an important one because church media can become overwhelming very quickly. Many times, people will come to me and say they saw an awesome video somewhere on television and ask if I can create something like that
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for our church. Unfortunately, people don’t realize that it took hundreds of thousands of dollars and a whole crew of people to make that television video. They don’t realize that the equipment used in that video cost more than their church’s building. It is true that most of the time you will be severely underfunded and understaffed when it comes to creating media for your church. But that doesn’t mean you can’t create media that rivals that of professionals. Hopefully, that’s why you came to Pro Church Tools in the first place. Here, it’s all about church media done the right way. And the way to do it right is to have a system. This is the system I use. Feel free to borrow it and edit it for your own use:
a) BE READY FOR THE NEXT PROJECT BY ALWAYS KEEPING AN EYE OPEN
Be concerned with the work done before the actual work starts. During every movie I watch, every design I see, every song I hear and every book I read, I’m carefully looking between the lines and collecting data. What made that shot beautiful? What made that design work? What can I learn from it?
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As Media Director, I’m usually a one-person crew and I can’t afford to be unprepared when the next project comes. I always have several conceptual ideas in my files ready to go and with every project I’m trying to learn something new.
TAKEAWAYS:
! Always be learning. ! Always be prepared for the next project. ! Always be watching with an eye open trying to see what you could be doing better.
b) FOR THE SIMPLE THINGS, HAVE A ROUTINE
Your time is limited. If you’re creating media for your church, there are always a lot of different projects on the go. You have to know where to invest your time and creative energy or it will just go to waste (I’ve experienced this myself on many occasions). The final points in my system determine where I spend my time. But, these points also ensure that all my tasks are completed with the same level of excellence. In this way I can spend my time where I want to and where I need to but still complete tasks at a high level of competency. It starts with my simple projects. All my simple projects are streamlined.
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For instance, each week I have to edit and upload the message and our weekly podcast. These edits involve mixing, eq-ing, adding intros and outros, leveling, uploading to the server, entering into the website and adding them to the app. It’s a simple process, but it can take up a good chunk of time. I realized that I was devoting too much time to this weekly project, so I learned to streamline the process. Now, with the use of templates, I can run this task in the background and get it done quickly and without a lot of attention. There are plenty of small things that can take up a big part of your time. If you’re not careful, you will spend a whole day on nagging tasks and wasted a day that could have spent working productively. NOTE: Sometimes the simple projects will take up your time and there is just no way around it. Especially when you’re starting out, you’ll have to learn for yourself what works and what doesn’t.
TAKEAWAYS:
! Spend your time and creative energy where it counts. ! Develop streamlined routines to complete necessary simple tasks with ease and excellence.
c) FOR THE COMPLEX THINGS USE TEMPLATES
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This is a secret that only a few people know. Now you are one of those people. I want you to be prepared and equipped to succeed. As Commandment #4 says, choose your media. Creating videos is my strongest skill. I may have to consult a tutorial or two, but for most projects I can create the video from the ground-up myself. But for almost everything else, I use templates. Shocker! I don’t have the time or funding to create everything from scratch, and so my secret is to use pre-made templates that I can customize. “But Brady how can you use pre-made templates and still have consistent branding? Aren’t you forgetting Commandment #3?” Great question! Using templates is helpful, but only if you have the necessary skills to customize them for your own needs. For instance, I have completed several motion graphics projects from scratch (the two best were the ones available in the Pro Church Toolkit you received). However, those took many, many hours to complete and I simply don’t have that kind of time to invest in each motion graphics project. Now when a motion graphics project comes down the line, I grab a great template that fits our needs and tweak it to fit our branding. The same goes for websites. I know enough basic code to tweak a design to do what I want - but I am no website designer.
I don’t have the time or funding to create everything from scratch, and so my secret is to use premade templates that I can customize.
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The key is to know the basics about every program while being the master of a select few.
TAKEAWAYS:
! Be the master of a few areas. ! Be capable of customizing templates for the rest. ! If you’re always watching and learning as in step a), you’ll be able to find the perfect template and customize it so it looks like you created it yourself.
d) FOR THE SPECIAL THINGS GO ALL OUT
Every once in a while a special project comes along and that is the time to go all out. Every year my church produces a vision video. It captures everything we’ve done, are doing and want to do in the upcoming year. For this project, I always go all out. No templates, no shortcuts and nothing held back. And because I’ve spent my time and creativity appropriately for other projects I’m never drained. There will be certain projects that become special for your church. There will be certain times of the year you look forward to and certain productions that you will go all out on.
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The importance of having a system is to prioritize your tasks and projects so you can expend your time and creativity in the right amount for the right things. Not everything can be a home run. Not every project can change the world. Sometimes stuff just needs to get done. Don’t waste your creativity and time on those projects. Just get them done. But when the time comes for that special project, go all out and make something you can be proud of, something you can call your own and something that will impact your community.
! Are you unprepared for new projects that come along because you aren’t being a keen observer?
COMMANDMENT #5 KEY POINTS
1. To optimize your media ministry you need a system. 2. Systems take time. Borrow from mine and work on yours until you get something brilliant.
TAKEAWAYS:
! A system is necessary to categorize your projects - some things are more important than others. ! Not everything can be a home run. ! If you spend your time and creativity wisely, you’ll be ready for the perfect pitch and you’ll knock it out of the park.
IS YOUR CHURCH MAKING THESE MISTAKES?
! Are you wasting time on projects that should be routine?
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So where do we go from here? Well there you have it, The 5 Commandments of Church Media. I hope this small e-book has been helpful for you. But this is just the start. Pro Church Tools is a place to learn how to create powerful media for your church. This is your foundation, and the next step is to actually start implementing the Commandments and creating media that properly reflects the beauty, the urgency, and the transformative power of the Gospel. So what do you want to learn next? Is there a particular skill or media thing you want to learn? Send me an email and I’ll do my best to write an article or make a video on that subject. Click here to send me an email! I post a couple of times a week, but I love hearing from readers and getting to respond to particular problems. So don’t be shy, email me! Click Here!
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Also I’d love to hear your feedback on this book. What did you like? What did you not like? What should I add to future versions? Give me feedback here! Finally, if you want to connect on a regular basis, follow me on Twitter and subscribe to the Pro Church Tools YouTube channel. And of course, LIKE our Facebook page! Time’s up, let’s go out and do it.
Brady Shearer!
Founder, Pro Church Tools! Expert media training for every church
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of church media
from pro church tools written by brady shearer
© 2013
Brady Shearer
This report is free and is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. However, I would request you do not email this PDF to a friend; instead, please send them to http://prochurchtools.com where they can get their own copy of the e-book for free. Thanks very much.
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Maybe you're like me. I am compelled to create. And while I'm not always satisfied with what I create, I am compelled nonetheless. When I was young, creativity came naturally. I would paint and draw, dress up and act, and write songs and sing. Star Wars was my favourite movie. I would tie together pieces of coloured cardboard and wood to construct blasters. All towels became capes, and every element in our living room became a part of the galactic universe (the couch was the Death Star by the way). My mother recognized my creativity and nurtured it. My earliest years are a bright memory of acting out dreams. But as I grew older, my interests began to shift. I discovered sports and immersed myself in basketball. Creative activities were abandoned during my school years and replaced with travelling around North America for weekend tournaments and summer camps. Basketball became the most important thing in my life. And though I enjoyed it, I always felt as if something were missing.
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I didn’t find what I was missing in church. At that time, church did not interest me. My family attended a small church, with a congregation of fewer than twenty people. The worship “team” consisted of the pastor's wife strumming an acoustic guitar while holding an egg shaker. School, however, did interest me. I excelled at both sports and academics. I became obsessed with athletic performance and grades. What mattered most to me were my point-per-game averages, my grade point average and the Toronto Raptors. I suppose it could have been worse. But everything changed in my freshman year of high school. I was invited to a weekend retreat by a friend who attended her church’s youth group. During that weekend, I surrendered my life to Christ and the creative drive within me was reborn with a passion greater than before. Instead of an unfocused childhood pursuit, this newly awakened creativity was aimed and driven. I wasn’t creating out of spontaneity, but out of purpose. Christ awakened something powerful within me, and every creative effort became measurably aimed. It started with music. First, I learned to play drums. I saved up ten dollars and walked down to the local music store during lunch break. I bought my first pair of drum sticks. They were painted black with bright orange flames. Very tasteful.
Christ awakened something powerful within me, and every creative effort became measurably aimed.
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I couldn’t afford real drums (saving up for the drum sticks was hard enough) so I was forced to improvise. My mother had a series of old, leather-bound books that were used only for decoration, so I would take three or four from the shelf, arrange them on the coffee table, and use each one as a different kind of of drum. My mother didn’t mind; the books cost less than a dollar a piece at the second-hand store, and as long as they kept me from pounding away on her precious couches, she was satisfied. Actually, my mother was thrilled that I was once again tapping into my creative side. My father, on the other hand, was less pleased. It was he who had presented me with my first basketball. He was the one who drove me to the park to shoot hoops. He taught me how to dribble and bought my first basketball-hoop for the driveway. And he was the one that drove the interminable hours to every game, camp and practice, giving his son every chance to succeed. My father is a lot of things, but a Creative isn’t one of them. And I know that in my sophomore year of high school, when I chose to quit basketball for youth group, he was glad to see my budding relationship with Christ, but was saddened that I had put our shared activity behind me. Thus, it will probably come as no surprise that when I approached my dad about buying my first drum kit, he was not overjoyed. I told him it would cost $450 and he told me that I would have to save up. Four hundred and fifty dollars is a lot of money for a teenager. At least it was for me. It took countless hours of babysitting and “volunteering
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for money” at the local library to save up the cash. By the summer I had finally saved up enough money to buy that precious first drum kit. It was a Westbury kit (they don’t make them anymore) with candy-apple red wrap. I bought the kit from a kid in town and, in hindsight, I’m pretty sure I got ripped off. But at the time, that was the farthest thing from my mind. After all the hard work, the saving and the practicing on books, I finally had my own drum kit. I vividly recall sitting in English class - the last class of the day - with my heart racing. I was incapable of sitting still through the seventy-five minute class because I knew I would soon be going home to play the drums. As you can imagine, most of my free time was spent banging around on my kit. Our house was small, and the noise upstairs must have been deafening. My family practiced patience.
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Each road of my creative journey could probably be expounded into a story like this one. But for the sake of brevity, I’ll save the expounding for the story of my first drum kit only. From drums, I moved to my first electric guitar, my first bass guitar, my first, second and third pedal boards, and my first recording software (Cubase, then Logic, then Ableton). I got my first MIDI keyboard, recorded my first album, and then my second album. Next, I moved into different creative avenues. I bought a DSLR camera, a MacBook Pro and a set of video-editing software. I created a vision video for my church, was hired to create videos for other churches, and accepted a position as church Media Director. I developed a social media strategy, drafted a branding set, and composed my first motion graphics mini-movie. Today, I’m married to my best friend, finishing my degree in theology, and Media Director at a local church. I’ve also started my own platform called Pro Church Tools to help other people learn the things I’ve learned, saving them the innumerable hours and countless mistakes I’ve made.
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I tell my story because I want you to know me. I don’t know everything. I’m just a person who is on the same road as you are. I make the same mistakes (probably more) and I’m doing my best to live a life worthy of the call Christ has given me. That being said, I am frustrated with the media many churches are creating. I am tired of Christians and churches being the butt of every music, film and design joke in the media. I am sick of the indictment that small churches are incapable of creating beautiful and compelling media because they are small. And what grieves me most is that stories that don't need to be told continue to be broadcasted to the world. Backed by legions of creative teams and obscene levels of funding, our televisions, computers, and movie theatres are brimming with messages that don’t deserve our time -- empty messages that are degrading and demoralizing to our culture. And then there's the church. We have the most beautiful and life-changing message of all time, but you wouldn't know it by the media that we produce. Often, our media is less engaging than the notice for the garage sale down the road.
Often, church media is less engaging than the notice for the garage sale down the road.
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If you’re reading this e-book, you probably have many of the same frustrations. These frustrations may include the following: ! You see your church's efforts, but they are not producing the results you’d hoped. ! You have a deep desire to use or create compelling media that points to Christ, but you’re not sure how to do that. ! You don’t have the resources necessary for the huge financial commitment that media demands. ! You are busy, and don't have the time to commit to high-quality media ! Media is a huge subject that includes many different streams. You wonder, where do I start? What is most important? These are real frustrations I have struggled with. This is my vision: ! I believe that every church and ministry can create and use media well in their unique context ! I believe it doesn’t take a huge financial commitment to create stunning media ! The only thing churches need is the right training. And you’ve found the right place!
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If I can do it, you can do it.
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These are some pretty big claims. So where do we start? Well the best place to start is this e-book! Congratulations! Everything you need to get started in the world of church media is in your hands right now. As I said, implementing media takes time and money, but my goal is to minimize these factors as much as possible. The best way to do this is to have a set of guidelines that you can consult every time you make a big media decision. If you are familiar with church planting, starting a new program or running your own business, you know that one of the keys to success is to have measurable goals that inform your decisions. Your media ministry is no different.
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This e-book is all about guiding your media decisions, and I’ve called that guide The 5 Commandments of Church Media. These 5 Commandments are meant to serve as your foundation. One of the worst things you can do when implementing media is to start building without a foundation. Huge Mistake Churches Make: They use media because they think it’s important to use media. For example, they grab videos off the Internet and play them during services. For some reason, churches think that by inserting a pre-made video into their service they will somehow be current, relevant and effective. False! That’s like saying, “As long as someone is preaching each Sunday, no matter who it is or what they are preaching on, it’s okay!” Inserting pre-made media won’t automatically disqualify you from being effective, but, as with anything else, it is useless unless done purposefully - not done because it’s trendy or expected. The above situation is just one example. The point I’m making is that you need a guide to consult when you’re making a decision. These 5 Commandments are meant to be customized for your church. Each Commandment is a philosophy or principle that your church can work out for itself. These 5 Commandments will work for any church. But they will work best when you take the core of each Commandment and apply it to your particular context.
One of the worst things you can do when implementing media is to start building without a foundation.
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Before we get started, here are a few introductory points. 1. This guide assumes you are a church with finite resources and funding. If your ministry has unlimited financial resources and staff, you can close this book right now. But for those who need to capitalize on every hour and every dollar spent, this guide is for you. These Commandments are the guidelines and principles that inform everything I produce. They are tried and true. They are not gimmicks. They are not empty words phrased to sound meaningful. I rely on these Commandments and they have worked brilliantly for me. I’m convinced they will do the same for you. These Commandments are not high-minded theorems or abstract philosophies. They are actionable steps that you can put into place right away. So take notes and take actions! This guide is mainly written for the church that is starting with nothing and wants to launch their media ministry. But if your church has already been using media for a while and wants to improve, that’s great too. These 5 Commandments will still provide plenty of valuable information you can use. Plus, you’re already ahead of the curve and won’t have to work as hard!
2.
3.
4.
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My hope is that this foundation will enable your church to create art and media that properly reflect the beauty, the urgency, and the transformative power of the Gospel. Ready to go? Let’s do it.
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Commandment #1
BE YOURSELF
“Be yourself.” The reason we hear this statement so often is that people understand that each one of us is unique. We’re not carbon copies. Growing up, I didn’t particularly like myself so I did my best impression of others. But after I began serving Christ, I realized that he created me with unique abilities and skills. Your church is no different. Your church is unique, with its own strengths, weaknesses and personality. So be yourself. This first Commandment sets the stage for all the others. It isn’t super-spiritual advice, it’s about making a realistic appraisal of who
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your church is. The worst thing you can do when starting a media ministry is to try to be like someone else. Unfortunately, that’s what most of us do, isn’t it? We attend a conference or another church service and see what someone else is doing and we say to ourselves, “Wow! We should do that in our church!” I’m not saying being inspired by others is wrong - because it’s not. In fact an essential element of creativity is building upon the efforts of others. But doing something simply because someone else is doing it successfully is not honest. It’s not authentic. And that is the core of the first Commandment: Be yourself. You need your own reasons and motivations for your media decisions. So who are you? And who is your church? Hopefully you know your church pretty well, so this should be an easy assessment. Here’s how I filled out the profile for my church: Personality Traits: ! Just starting out ! Hard-working ! Artistic ! Ambitious ! Located in small suburb outside the big city Strengths:
Doing something simply because someone else is doing it successfully is not honest. It’s not authentic.
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! Video ! Preaching ! Website and Graphics ! Worship Weaknesses: ! Ambitions that we may not be able to reach ! A venue -- a movie theatre -- that presents challenges (set up, lighting, no internet etc.) ! Dumping too much work on one person and overloading that person As you can see, this list isn’t exhaustive but it paints a clear picture of what kind of church we are and what you might expect from us on a Sunday morning. Have you finished your own list yet? No? Okay, I’ll wait. Open up a document and begin putting some thoughts on paper. Done? Great. At this point your list doesn’t have to be complete. Keep that document handy and add more as your vision and your church continue to grow and change. This “Who Are You” list won’t provide you with the magic answer every time a media problem or question arises, but it will help you decide where to expend your efforts.
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The more informed you are now, the more prepared you will be to tackle the next project.
COMMANDMENT #1 KEY POINTS
1. Understand your church’s personality, strengths and weaknesses. 2. Know your identity. Identity is crucial to creating media that matters so don’t take this step lightly.
IS YOUR CHURCH MAKING THESE MISTAKES?
! Are you trying to be like another church because they did something really cool? ! Are you doing things just because big churches are doing them?
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Commandment #2
BUILD YOUR BRAND
Branding is a visual representation of your identity. Let that sink in. I’ll say it again. Branding is a visual representation of your identity. For some reason, the word branding has carried a negative connotation in the church. It shouldn’t. Commandment #1 made you take an honest look at your church and write down who you are. Branding simply gives that identity a visual representation. Branding represents your values and characteristics in colours, images and fonts.
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If this seems a little abstract consider what Jesse Bryan, the Creative Director at Mark Driscoll’s church Mars Hill, said about their branding choices, “A lot of our stuff you can categorize as masculine. We want to make sure that guys can connect with it.” Even your choice of colours and fonts communicates traits about your church. This isn’t a book about how to create your own brand, but if you’re starting from ground zero consider what Phil Cooke said in his book Branding Faith: “In this media-driven environment, influence has shifted from the power of church and community to the power of corporate brands, and they wield enormous power.” This statement is tremendously unsettling. When corporations replace community, people suffer. But if the church understands the trend toward branding, it can take advantage of the trend toward a better end. Large corporations have a profit motive and use branding to create customers. The church can use branding to draw people to itself and ultimately to create followers of Jesus Christ. Let’s face it: society is media-driven, and in a culture of media it’s not about what your church does; it’s about how it is perceived.
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To be clear, branding isn’t about manipulation. It's about helping people recognize who you are and how you can impact their lives. Cooke says that people establish a gut-level connection with people and brands, long before they buy into their message. Knowing this, you can see that building your church’s brand is vital. If you want training on how to actually do this, our knowledge base is growing daily, so check back here often. But before you start designing or evaluating what branding you currently have, let’s look at the three steps you must consider and accomplish to build a powerful brand for your church:
a) IDENTIFY YOUR AUDIENCE
The first Commandment taught us to identify our church’s values and personality. It’s good that we know these things because our branding needs to accurately represent who we are. And while we should never compromise who we are, we also must consider our audience. When you’re building your brand, understand that it’s not about the message you send, it’s about the message people receive. So ask yourself these questions about your audience: ! Who is my church’s target audience? ! What are their cultural backgrounds and life experiences through which they will filter the church’s message? ! What are biases they have toward church?
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! What are they most looking for in a church? ! Many people aren’t looking for a church at all, so what are they most looking for in life?
b) CONTROL THEIR PERCEPTION
Before a person ever walks into your sanctuary, before they ever shake the hand of a greeter, before they ever hear the pastor preach a message, they will interact with your church’s brand. In this mediasaturated society, people will Google you before they phone you; they will look you up on Facebook before they look you up in person. Your job is to be prepared when people go looking for your church. In the few precious seconds you have their attention, show them what they need to know about you. To accomplish this, as you are building your church’s brand, ask yourself these questions: ! How do I want people to feel about my church when they first interact with our brand? ! If perception is everything, how can I control people’s perception with our branding? ! What do I want people to think of when they think of our church? ! Recognizing that many people view church negatively, how can I show (and not tell) them that we are different?
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c) CAPITALIZE
I love what Phil Cooke says about brands: “Truly successful brands give the impression that there is simply no substitute for what they offer.” Your church was started with a purpose. A need was recognized in your community and the church was planted to fill that need. We all know that the church facilitates something everyone needs: a relationship with Jesus Christ. But your church offers this in a way that is unique to you and unique to your community. If you successfully accomplished the first two steps (identifying your audience and controlling their perception), it is now time to capitalize on that. At this point you’ve attracted people and earned some of their trust by honestly representing your church's values. There are people in your community that NEED to be part of your church. You know that. Next, you have to ensure that they will become part of your church. The following questions will help you capitalize on your brand: ! What does our church offer that people want? ! What does our church offer that people need? ! How can we present this offer in ways that are honest, engaging and direct? ! What can we do to make people feel as comfortable as possible in their decision to visit a place they’ve never been before?
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! How can we capitalize on reaching people already attending our church? How can we build our existing community even stronger with our branding?
COMMANDMENT #2 KEY POINTS
1. Your brand represents your identity. 2. People will interact with your brand long before they hear your message. 3. Don’t start with your message; start with your audience. 4. It’s not about facts; it’s about perception.
IS YOUR CHURCH MAKING THESE MISTAKES?
! Have you thought of branding in a negative way? ! Are you thinking about yourself and your message and not considering your audience? ! Are you not building your brand?
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Commandment #3
STAY CONSISTENT
Recently my wife and I attended church with her parents. The church they attend is the biggest one in the city. During the service, a lot of things were done exceptionally well. The worship team provided a meaningful worship set; the pastor preached an engaging message and the church used media effectively. They presented well-produced video announcements and a video testimony of a young adult who was undergoing baptism. In one glaringly obvious way, however, the church dropped the ball. None of their branding or design was consistent. Across every medium, the brand changed. Their offering cards had one design. Their announcements had a different design. Their bulletins had yet another design. There was no unity, no solid sense of identity. It made for a disjointed experience for me as a first time visitor. There is a danger that people new to church may feel overwhelmed by the novelty of the experience. The music is unfamiliar, the faces are
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unfamiliar, and they are not accustomed to the service. By branding yourself consistently, you offer visitors a “familiar face,” a repeated visual that offers recognition in an otherwise unfamiliar environment. REMEMBER: It’s all about perception, and branding is the visual representation of your church. Even if this church was doing a fantastic job fostering unity, I couldn’t recognize it because of the lack of unity in the branding. And perception is what matters. I cannot stress how important brand consistency is within your church. Brand inconsistency is like the guy who always acts differently with different people. When he’s at church he acts one way. When he’s at work he acts another way. When he’s with his family he acts another way. Don’t be that guy. Earlier, we talked about doing media the right way, and this is how you can set yourself apart. Very, very, few churches maintain brand consistency. If your church can identify itself (Commandment #1), build its brand (Commandment #2) and stay consistent with that brand (Commandment #3), you will ensure that you have a recognizable face in your community. Is brand consistency really a big deal? Consider this: My friend is a manager at Starbucks and he told me that after thirty years of being in the business, Starbucks is still intentional,
Brand inconsistency is like the guy who always acts differently with different people.
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down to the least product display, with brand consistency and brand evolution. No matter what Starbucks you visit, it always feels familiar. You may stop in for coffee at a Starbucks halfway across the world, but you are meant to feel at home. The retailer wants you to experience what insiders call a “perfect moment.” Why shouldn’t the church offer perfect moments? Why shouldn’t people feel at home during your services? If you’ve followed the first two Commandments, it means that you’ve worked hard to understand who you are as a church and you are building a brand that accurately represents you. But every time you overlook your brand and go in a different direction, you split your identity and it confuses people (you also undercut all the hard work you’ve done.) How would you feel if you walked into a Starbucks and their cold drinks were on a menu that looked like McDonalds’ menu, their hot drinks were on a menu that looked like Dunkin Donuts’, and their sandwiches were on a menu that looked like Tim Hortons’? You may not consciously recognize why, but something would feel wrong. People prefer what they like and they like what they know. Everyone recognizes the corporations, the restaurant chains and the major retailers by their logos. The church should be no different. Branding can make the church as recognizable and familiar as the Tim Hortons on the corner.
Why shouldn’t the church offer perfect moments? Why shouldn’t people feel at home during your services?
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NOTE: I’m not advocating that everything your church produces must always conform to strict guidelines. For instance, when we were visiting that church with my in-laws, the church was in the middle of a message series based on a popular pastor's book. They had downloaded the graphics from his website and were using those during the message. There are times when the rule of consistency is meant to be broken, but for all major publications, such as bulletins, websites, announcements, offering cards. etc., branding must be consistent. The reason churches divert from their branding and design is because it’s easy to do so. Someone finds a cool pre-made graphic and, instead of making it fit into their design, they adopt it outright. Brand consistency is difficult because your brand has limitations (certain colours and fonts). Your church will have to work harder to maintain consistency because working to stay within your brand’s limitations is more difficult than borrowing graphics as you run across them. But if you commit to staying consistent with your church’s branding, you will build a brand that people instantly recognize and associate with all your good qualities. If, however, you take the easy road and borrow everything from others, your patchwork branding will have no impact and your recognition will be diluted. Learn from Starbucks and be intentional at every level.
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COMMANDMENT #3 KEY POINTS
IS YOUR CHURCH MAKING THESE MISTAKES?
! Are you not staying consistent with your branding? ! Are you taking the easy route and borrowing everything from others?
1. Stay consistent. 2. It’s okay to sometimes use special branding for a big event or sermon series (just make it a special thing and not the norm). 3. Never use inconsistent branding for your church’s key elements (website, bulletin, social media etc.).
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Commandment #4
CHOOSE YOUR MEDIA
Okay. We’ve come a long way. This next Commandment is a fun and easy one. If you’ve completed the first three Commandments and continued to follow them, you’ve built a great foundation. Now it’s to time to start doing some fun stuff! The best advice I can give if you are just starting out is to start small. There are dozens of different media avenues you could start implementing in your church, and sometimes it feels that if you’re not doing them all, you’re not doing media well. But that isn’t true. In fact, I’ve found the opposite to be true. You don’t need to have a podcast, a website, a church app, a church magazine, video announcements, baptism videos, testimony videos, message trailers, offering videos, filmed skits, Twitter, YouTube,
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Facebook, Vimeo, and Instagram accounts AND advertising spots on the radio. Here’s my story as Media Director. When I started out I wanted to prove that I was worth the money they were paying me, so I did everything I mentioned above. Immediately. Not only did I do all those things, but I did them while following Commandments 1-3. I thought as long as I understood who we were, built our brand and kept it consistent, nothing could go wrong. It could. Commandment #4 may be an easy one, but it’s just as important to your media ministry’s success as the others: choose your media carefully. Instead of doing everything satisfactorily, do a few things exceedingly well. After I tried to do everything and anything, I realized I couldn’t keep up with the workload and funneled my efforts down to a handful of media: videos, the website and the app (along with a couple of social media accounts). For the majority of smaller churches, your time limitations are just as restricting as your financial limitations, especially when it comes to media. If you try to do everything, you’ll eventually start neglecting things. This will reflect poorly on both you and your church.
Instead of doing everything satisfactorily, do a few things exceedingly well.
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So consult the list above and choose media that excites you. I wanted to make beautiful videos, so that was one area I focused on specifically. When I began, I was just copying others because that’s all I knew how to do. Slowly I began injecting my own ideas. Then I began working with motion graphics and now I’m starting to work in 3D. By increasing my skills in this one area instead of spreading them out, our church is producing excellent videos instead of lots of mediocre media. Don’t fall into the trap of doing too much too soon. If you’re starting a website, focus on making it the best it can be, and when it is done, move on to something else. Start small and gradually expand your efforts.
COMMANDMENT #4 KEY POINTS
1. Select a few kinds of media and make them awesome. 2. Start small and gradually expand your efforts.
IS YOUR CHURCH MAKING THESE MISTAKES?
! Are you trying to accomplish too much too soon? ! Are you doing many things adequately when you could be doing a few things fantastically?
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Commandment #5
HAVE A SYSTEM
In the church we're not always afforded the luxury and resources that foster and fund creativity. Recently, I was meeting with a like-minded pastor over coffee and he articulated it perfectly. Concerning the church and media he said, "It's all about being quick and dirty." Quick and dirty. Those aren't exactly glowing terms. In fact, if somebody used adjectives like those to describe a project of mine, I would be quite deflated. Yet this is the reality of church and media. This fifth and final Commandment is an important one because church media can become overwhelming very quickly. Many times, people will come to me and say they saw an awesome video somewhere on television and ask if I can create something like that
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for our church. Unfortunately, people don’t realize that it took hundreds of thousands of dollars and a whole crew of people to make that television video. They don’t realize that the equipment used in that video cost more than their church’s building. It is true that most of the time you will be severely underfunded and understaffed when it comes to creating media for your church. But that doesn’t mean you can’t create media that rivals that of professionals. Hopefully, that’s why you came to Pro Church Tools in the first place. Here, it’s all about church media done the right way. And the way to do it right is to have a system. This is the system I use. Feel free to borrow it and edit it for your own use:
a) BE READY FOR THE NEXT PROJECT BY ALWAYS KEEPING AN EYE OPEN
Be concerned with the work done before the actual work starts. During every movie I watch, every design I see, every song I hear and every book I read, I’m carefully looking between the lines and collecting data. What made that shot beautiful? What made that design work? What can I learn from it?
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As Media Director, I’m usually a one-person crew and I can’t afford to be unprepared when the next project comes. I always have several conceptual ideas in my files ready to go and with every project I’m trying to learn something new.
TAKEAWAYS:
! Always be learning. ! Always be prepared for the next project. ! Always be watching with an eye open trying to see what you could be doing better.
b) FOR THE SIMPLE THINGS, HAVE A ROUTINE
Your time is limited. If you’re creating media for your church, there are always a lot of different projects on the go. You have to know where to invest your time and creative energy or it will just go to waste (I’ve experienced this myself on many occasions). The final points in my system determine where I spend my time. But, these points also ensure that all my tasks are completed with the same level of excellence. In this way I can spend my time where I want to and where I need to but still complete tasks at a high level of competency. It starts with my simple projects. All my simple projects are streamlined.
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For instance, each week I have to edit and upload the message and our weekly podcast. These edits involve mixing, eq-ing, adding intros and outros, leveling, uploading to the server, entering into the website and adding them to the app. It’s a simple process, but it can take up a good chunk of time. I realized that I was devoting too much time to this weekly project, so I learned to streamline the process. Now, with the use of templates, I can run this task in the background and get it done quickly and without a lot of attention. There are plenty of small things that can take up a big part of your time. If you’re not careful, you will spend a whole day on nagging tasks and wasted a day that could have spent working productively. NOTE: Sometimes the simple projects will take up your time and there is just no way around it. Especially when you’re starting out, you’ll have to learn for yourself what works and what doesn’t.
TAKEAWAYS:
! Spend your time and creative energy where it counts. ! Develop streamlined routines to complete necessary simple tasks with ease and excellence.
c) FOR THE COMPLEX THINGS USE TEMPLATES
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This is a secret that only a few people know. Now you are one of those people. I want you to be prepared and equipped to succeed. As Commandment #4 says, choose your media. Creating videos is my strongest skill. I may have to consult a tutorial or two, but for most projects I can create the video from the ground-up myself. But for almost everything else, I use templates. Shocker! I don’t have the time or funding to create everything from scratch, and so my secret is to use pre-made templates that I can customize. “But Brady how can you use pre-made templates and still have consistent branding? Aren’t you forgetting Commandment #3?” Great question! Using templates is helpful, but only if you have the necessary skills to customize them for your own needs. For instance, I have completed several motion graphics projects from scratch (the two best were the ones available in the Pro Church Toolkit you received). However, those took many, many hours to complete and I simply don’t have that kind of time to invest in each motion graphics project. Now when a motion graphics project comes down the line, I grab a great template that fits our needs and tweak it to fit our branding. The same goes for websites. I know enough basic code to tweak a design to do what I want - but I am no website designer.
I don’t have the time or funding to create everything from scratch, and so my secret is to use premade templates that I can customize.
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The key is to know the basics about every program while being the master of a select few.
TAKEAWAYS:
! Be the master of a few areas. ! Be capable of customizing templates for the rest. ! If you’re always watching and learning as in step a), you’ll be able to find the perfect template and customize it so it looks like you created it yourself.
d) FOR THE SPECIAL THINGS GO ALL OUT
Every once in a while a special project comes along and that is the time to go all out. Every year my church produces a vision video. It captures everything we’ve done, are doing and want to do in the upcoming year. For this project, I always go all out. No templates, no shortcuts and nothing held back. And because I’ve spent my time and creativity appropriately for other projects I’m never drained. There will be certain projects that become special for your church. There will be certain times of the year you look forward to and certain productions that you will go all out on.
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The importance of having a system is to prioritize your tasks and projects so you can expend your time and creativity in the right amount for the right things. Not everything can be a home run. Not every project can change the world. Sometimes stuff just needs to get done. Don’t waste your creativity and time on those projects. Just get them done. But when the time comes for that special project, go all out and make something you can be proud of, something you can call your own and something that will impact your community.
! Are you unprepared for new projects that come along because you aren’t being a keen observer?
COMMANDMENT #5 KEY POINTS
1. To optimize your media ministry you need a system. 2. Systems take time. Borrow from mine and work on yours until you get something brilliant.
TAKEAWAYS:
! A system is necessary to categorize your projects - some things are more important than others. ! Not everything can be a home run. ! If you spend your time and creativity wisely, you’ll be ready for the perfect pitch and you’ll knock it out of the park.
IS YOUR CHURCH MAKING THESE MISTAKES?
! Are you wasting time on projects that should be routine?
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So where do we go from here? Well there you have it, The 5 Commandments of Church Media. I hope this small e-book has been helpful for you. But this is just the start. Pro Church Tools is a place to learn how to create powerful media for your church. This is your foundation, and the next step is to actually start implementing the Commandments and creating media that properly reflects the beauty, the urgency, and the transformative power of the Gospel. So what do you want to learn next? Is there a particular skill or media thing you want to learn? Send me an email and I’ll do my best to write an article or make a video on that subject. Click here to send me an email! I post a couple of times a week, but I love hearing from readers and getting to respond to particular problems. So don’t be shy, email me! Click Here!
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Also I’d love to hear your feedback on this book. What did you like? What did you not like? What should I add to future versions? Give me feedback here! Finally, if you want to connect on a regular basis, follow me on Twitter and subscribe to the Pro Church Tools YouTube channel. And of course, LIKE our Facebook page! Time’s up, let’s go out and do it.
Brady Shearer!
Founder, Pro Church Tools! Expert media training for every church
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