The following is a post from The Creative Pastor, aka Kendall Conner.
Last weekend, my wife and I had the opportunity to run media for a worship conference in our area. This is always an exciting time for us because it allows us to practice our gifts in different environments than our home church. Because we knew that this event would be packed full of worship leaders and media teams, we really wanted to make sure that we went the extra mile to create a sense of wonder in the space. You know—something different than what they’re used to seeing each week. After a bit of brainstorming, we came up with a simple idea that gave it that extra touch and it ended up looking awesome!
Our normal format for Sunday mornings at our church is to use one of Centerline’s Service Packs for all of our songs. We examine the speed of each song and then find a motion in the pack that matches that tempo. With this method, each song is assigned a unique background that matches its pace and feel.
To give our songs at the conference that little something extra, we decided to use two motions for each song—one for all the verses and one for the chorus. We chose two motions from the Service Packs that looked really great together and assigned them to the specific slides so that the motion would change as soon as those lyrics were clicked. Here are some examples:
For the song Starry Night (Chris August), we used Fractal Skies 02 for the verses and Fractal Skies 04 for the chorus.
For All To Us (Chris Tomlin), we used Orange Lights 03 for the verses and Orange Lights 01 for the chorus.
For How Great Thou Art, we used In The Clouds 01 for the verses and In The Clouds 03 for the chorus.
I discovered that it works really well when you have the transition speeds for the text and the background the same. Of course, we would use faster transitions for more upbeat songs and slower speeds for slow songs. Also, we tried to make sure that since we were pulling from multiple Service Packs that we stuck to motions that went with the central feel and theme of the event.
Other ideas that you could try would be alternating motions and stills during songs. I’ve seen this done with stills for the verses and motions for the chorus. It could also work by varying colors with the same motions/stills. Most presentation software gives you the ability to change the hue of your media or remove the color for a black and white look.
The greatest benefit that I saw from this technique was that it felt like the media was more of a part of the worship. As the musicians would transition to the various parts of the songs and the crowd was singing along, the media was right there with them. It was much more than just words on a screen—it seemed more like visual worship. It created an atmosphere that was simply incredible and I will be working this in on Sunday mornings from now on.
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“Kendall is the founder of TheCreativePastor.com—a blog centered around making church media simple. He is a graphic designer, video editor, and all-around media geek. He has served as the creative pastor at Pathway Church of God in Baltimore, MD since 2009.”
Have also heard this concept taught by Camron Ware. It’s a great idea, and can really add to the moment in worship when it’s used effectively.
Hey Brian – Thanks for the comment! For those who don’t know, Cameron Ware has a great site – Visual Worshiper – which deals with Environmental Projection, worship lighting, and worship VJ-ing. Check it out here: http://visualworshiper.com