We have made it to Chiang Mai, Thailand!  This is where ELIC hosts the Annual Thailand Conference for all its teachers and leaders in southeast Asia.  It’s a time of encouragement, training, worship, and relaxing before heading into the next semester.  I, for one, am incredibly honored and blessed to be here; and see and hear all the stories of these incredible people who live and teach in these countries.  We are helping with visuals and lyrics for the worship during the main sessions.

This is a beautiful place – lots of green and colored flowers, and lots of refreshing fruit smoothies.  The people are incredibly friendly, and always glad to talk.  I didn’t know this going in, but Chiang Mai has a pretty heavy tourism focus.  They have multiple McDonald’s, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Dairy Queen, etc, and a lot of people speak enough English so you can find anything you want around the city.  There are about 50,000 ‘authentic’ Thai massage salons; and plenty of taxi drivers wanting to give you a lift around town.

36 hours after my family celebrated Christmas, I had the privilege of traveling to Penza, Russia with SpokenFor (A non-profit organization helping orphans in Russia and around the world) and an incredible team of 59 people.

We had students, teachers, pastors, and entire families come from Faith Christian School, Coppell Bible Fellowship, and a few other schools and churches. Scott Werntz is the head of SpokenFor, and the Ministry of Education in Russia requested that he come over to put on a theatrical production for some English-speaking Russian students. What an incredible opportunity! Scott chose to put on “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever”. Pretty good choice!

In addition to the play, we also were there to minister and love on the kids that are in the orphanages in Penza. So, we loaded up 50 supply bags full of candy, costumes, games, and toys and headed over to Moscow. (Side note-Singapore Air rocks.)  We then took the 12-hour train ride to Penza, a region south-east of Moscow.

I went to help with the lighting and projection aspects of the play, and also because it was time to go back to Russia. I had been once before 9 years ago, and it was a blessing to be able to serve alongside Scott and his ministry again.  I had the chance this time to also spend time at one of the orphanages.  It’s heart-breaking but beautiful to see all those young kids just yearning for hugs and attention.  They always had a smile on their face!

Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who prayed for us, supported us, and helped this trip happen.  I can’t express how much of a blessing it was to serve like this.  I just wanted to show a few pictures – there are more here.  I could share what each day was like, and all the stories, but that would take all month.   Instead, if you see me this year at a conference or show, ask!  I’d be glad to share anything.

St. Basil’s Cathedral.  Talk about visual worship.

At the orphanage.

Myself, the Russian LD, and the mechanical lighting console from 1970.

No digital processing here folks!  But it did have two-scenes per side.  Kind of neat.

The theater did have 4 scanners – this was the controller.  Didn’t really use it though.

This guy is the man – Dima Shepelev.  Great servant and video producer.  He helped translate at the theater.

During the show.  The projection turned out pretty nice!

Beautiful snow everywhere.

We attended the local church in Penza, Russia – where we sang in both Russian and English.  AWESOME.

It got cold in Moscow.

Can you see the blue church?

Between the train cars in Penza.

Next month (January 2010), Stephen, Nate and I will be heading to Thailand and Hong Kong to help teach and encourage people who are serving in their local church, and who are leading their communities in visual worship.  I can’t express what an amazing opportunity this is.

We are traveling to China to share our hearts on visual worship and help equip the local communities.  WOW. We will be a part of a conference of about 500 people, and for a week we will be worshiping and serving along side these people.   I thank God for this.

I want to be open and honest and say we are not getting paid for this conference or trip, nor are our travel expenses being covered.  This is 100% on our own, and is even costing us some.  But we go because we love what God is doing, we have a heart to see the local church communities from around the world equipped and encouraged, and we are blessed when we get to be a blessing.  We are going to work with Biscuet, who is does a lot of the same visual worship leading as we do, but lives in China! He is involved with the organization ELIC which teaches the English language to the local communities and build relationships all over China, as well as the world.

Prayer is huge for us – please pray for safety and wisdom, and that we would be able to serve and show the love of Christ to everyone we meet.  Pray that we are able to show people from churches ways that they can bring visual worship into their community.  Pray that we leave changed ourselves.

Also, finances are a need.  I know it’s Christmas and asking this was hard for me, but I wanted to present the opportunity to help cover some of the expense.  Any donations to the organization will be put into a bucket for the three of us.  (Stephen Proctor, Nate Griffin, Camron Ware)

Information about giving:

-Go to ELIC’s website

-Fill out the form & put “ATC” at the bottom where it says “Any additional notes regarding the processing of this gift.”

We have about $1700 each to raise. The way ELIC has it set up, when you give, it goes into one bucket for the three of us. And yes, your gift is tax-deductible!

Thank you so much for supporting us in prayer and for considering a financial gift to support our trip!

Proctor shares more on this video:

Nate Griffin, Camron Ware & Stephen Proctor embark on a trip to Asia, early in 2010. Here are the details.
Music by Hammock.

Stephen Proctor wrote this up; and since we are a part of this together (with others of course), I didn’t see any sense to re-write it!  My heart is exactly in line with what Stephen says in the first 4 paragraphs, so check it out!

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There are many factors that contribute to this journey of “visual worship” I’m on.  New software versions, cool loops with that latest edgy effect, creative “out of the box” (or “in the box“…haha) projection techniques, etc… these are all good and noteworthy things. But one thing contributes more than any of those combined, and that is community.

Thankfully, in this day we have social media that easily and freely connects us all, and if you know what you’re doing, you can quickly find your way into a tribe of like-minded people who share the same passion. In the past few years, i have met some of the most creative, passionate people ever through social media. But when it goes beyond 140 characters or the occasional blog comment, that’s where the real conversations start to take place.

That’s why i love events like Echo, Gurus & Dirt. Because these are gatherings that are designed to connect creative leaders passionate about media & worship in the Church. Any given day at one of these events is jam-packed with mind-blowing seminars, inspiring keynotes & eye-opening resources that will make your head spin. At one of these events, I met Bill Swaringim, a church tech director from St. Louis and a fellow twitter follower. He proposed an interesting idea to Camron Ware & me:  a whole event dedicated to “visual worship”.

This being a dream of ours for a year now, we jumped onboard immediately. Bill took the initiative and ran with the idea! So here are a few details for what i hope to be the first of many “Visual Worship Roundtables”.

- When is it? //  January 14th, 2010

- Where is it? //  St. Louis, MO @ Windsor Crossing Community Church

- Does it cost anything? //  Yes. And only $25.

- Where can I register & get more information? //   VisualWorship2010.com

- What can I expect to get out of this event? //   This is not a “conference”, so it won’t follow any format like one. Most of the day will be an open dialogue where all are invited to participate. There will be structure, but it will be informal and designed to flow freely. With a bunch of creative-techs in the room, i’m sure we’ll cover topics on technology and gear. But this isn’t a “tech” event…there aren’t going to be any training sessions on software (though we might be using/demonstrating certain softwares throughout the day). We will definitely talk about ways that all of us have implemented technology throughout the year, such as VJ-ing, Environmental Projection, creating atmosphere, new content ideas, etc. But in the midst of touching on the “whats” & “hows”, our priority will be on the “why“. We hope to get into some deep & possibly controversial conversations on our philosophies of visual worship, theology, current Church culture, building stronger relationships, and ways to be more effective visual worship leaders. Hopefully through this experience we will draw closer to each other & to Jesus, to whom this is all for in the first place.

Some other questions you might ask:

- Q. I love a philosophical discussion just like the next guy, but I still have some questions about “gear”. Will there be any time or place to have my questions answered? //  A. Yes! While we don’t claim to have all the answers, we most definitely want to help you along your journey. Since everyone’s questions & situations are unique, we probably won’t address these in the large group setting. But there will be time during the day for individual conversations, no matter the topic. And if that’s not enough, then you’ll leave with everyone’s contact info.

- Q. Whoa! This event is just around the corner! I would love to come but it’s too short of a notice. Will there be more gatherings like this in the future? //  A. Yes. But we don’t know when yet. Hopefully a few of these will take place in 2010, and not just in the St. Louis area either. Watch this blog & the Events page for upcoming Roundtables.

- Q. Will this be a large event? //  A. My guess is no. And we’re fine with that. In fact, a smaller, more intimate setting will allow for more voices to be heard and for more flexibility in our conversations. But the more, the merrier, too! Numbers aren’t our focus…growing deeper in our understanding of visual worship IS. This will be an epic day, even if there’s 8 of us (and there will be at least that many!)

- Q. I’d like to host a Visual Worship Roundtable in my city. Is this possible? //  A. You bet your bottom dollar it is. Just e-mail me  ( proctor@worshipVJ.com )  and let’s talk.

- Q. Will this event be live-streamed? //  A. Despite our failed attempts in the past, yes, we are going to try our best to live-stream this event …and do it right this time!  :)   So on that day, tune in to live.worshipVJ.com.  (but we may have to call in Brad Zimmerman for this!)

- Q. I have another question that you haven’t covered. //  A. That’s not a question…it’s a statement. But i know what you mean. Just ask your question in the comments section.

thanks!

I want to highlight a couple of churches that have REALLY cool and beautiful worship spaces, that are a more traditional smaller, longer room with vaulted ceilings, lots of wood accents, and warm lighting.  The two churches are First United Methodist of  Mansfield, TX and Pinedale Christian Church of Winston-Salem, NC.  Both churches have a main sanctuary apart from this more traditional room, but these rooms are still used quite a bit for ministry, and both have worship services in them.

You don’t have to have giant white walls to surround your vision with appropriate imagery for visual worship. Every room is different; but I wanted you to see how Environmental Projection can even work in here.

FUMC Mansfield just completed installing their Environmental Projection system in their room (called the Chapel), and I wanted this to hopefully be an encouragement to you if your church happens to have a room like this, or if this is your main worship space.  The room has a 4000 lumen projector hitting the entire back wall behind the band.  The effect is beautiful!  There were a few challenges to overcome – such as making sure the audio and lighting did not shadows.  There is a center rear-projection screen for lyrics that is flush with the stone wall.  The stone wall is also a feature of the room that does dictate imagery that can be used.  But, it’s part of the room – and I like that. Brian Certain and his team at the church are a FANTASTIC group of people who get it, and it was a blessing to work with them.

I won’t tell you that you have to have a flat blank white wall.  But I will guide you through what imagery will look great, and what imagery might not look the way supposed to.

Pinedale Christian Church has a room that is almost identical, and this week while I was out sharing my heart and designing the system for their campus, I referred back to FUMC Mansfield and how the same look could be achieved.  The pictures were taken just during the demo; but the final result will be near exact to this.  The lighting and audio needs to be moved up, but that is a small task.

I love how this Awake Image fit perfect into the curved wood beams on the back wall.

In both rooms; that look is achieved with one projector.  I hope that’s an encouragement to you if your sanctuary looks similar. Now remember – it’s much more than simply shining a projector on a wall. There is a specific way to approach what type and how bright of a projector you need, as well as how to mask it and where.  The reason why these images look so cool is because we chose appropriate imagery that fit the room, the vibe of the church community, and style of worship that will be taking place.

The Planet Wisdom tour just kicked back in full-swing in Minnesota this past weekend; and wow!  What a fun, engaging, and powerful weekend.  Mark Matlock, The Skit Guys, Dutton, and special guest Dawson McAllister were there to teach, engage, and lead worship for a couple thousand students. (Fun back story:  Dawson McAllister was the founder of this conference back in the day, before it was called Planet Wisdom.  Mark met Dawson while doing illusions for the conference, and when Dawson stepped down, Mark took over.  I remember going to the conferences when Dawson was the speaker, Mark did illusions, and MercyMe was the band.)

I have the privilege of being the lighting designer, VJ, and semi-art/cohesiveness director for the tour and just wanted to take you through my process and journey of seeing the first themed image, to final result on stage and screen.

This year’s theme is “A walk with Christ to the cross.” It’s intense. Both Mark and Dawson paint a beautifully sad and loving picture of Christ’s journey to the cross, and the Skit Guys and Dutton reinforce the message through illustrations and worship.  My kind of theme!  As always, the conference has a journal that the students get and large banners and signs that match the theme and style of the journal and vice versa.  I wanted to take that same style, and translate that to on the stage, and on the screens. We also have stage pieces this year, to illustrate each scene in the journey of Christ to the cross.  (Last Supper, Garden, Cross…)  So, I wanted to integrate those as well.

Production gear was provided by B&L Sound and Lighting. Brian, the owner, has a great heart and passion for these kind of events.  B&L is much  more than a rental house – but also invests some thought into what you actually want to see in your event.  We have a great crew this year again – David Perkins on video director, Tim Pike on main screen graphics and content creation, Cody Clements on camera, Amy Work as stage manager, and Daniel Ellis on FOH audio. – and of course our fearless conference director – Mike Work.

Here is basically the  image I first saw a few months ago:  Jonathan Matlock and Mike Ellis did a great job on this.  I don’t think I have ever met Mike, but I was told he created the look and feel for the marketing material and the journal for the tour – so mad props!!!

Grungy, organic, rough…etc.  The font that was used in print was 28 Days Later – which I thought worked well.  (Not the Planet Wisdom font.)

So, from that image, I wanted to create a backdrop and truss coverings to match the organic and textured theme.

To Home Depot we go!  Weed Block.  $13 a roll.  3′ x 36′. Perfect size to hang from the upstage truss.  It’s a little porous, but it’s lightweight and can roll up and go in a road case.

I bought some basic semi-gloss white paint and a couple of very large brooms, along with 7 rolls of Weed Block.

Laid them all out on some grass behind the production warehouse; and went to town.  Some of the frames from last year’s set pitched in to help them not blow away.  I grabbed a giant broom and a bucket of paint and started painting. After they were dry, I put grommets and tie-line on the top of each panel so they could hang easily on the truss.

Setting up the upstage truss in the MercyMe warehouse – thanks to Stephen and John for helping!

Final result on the upstage truss.  Each strip of WeedBlock gets lit from the top and bottom with LED.

They took color REALLY well – especially when both sets of LEDs are on – top and bottom.

Next, I wanted to create something to put around the 6 free-standing truss towers we have.  Last year we used them with no coverings, and put LED’s in them to color the aluminum truss.  I didn’t want to do that exact thing, so I figured we could cover the towers, and grunge up the fabric.  So I went to Walmart and bought a few Twin-sized bedsheets, and a can of cheap flat black paint; and another big broom to use as my paintbrush.  Result:

Sorry I don’t any closeups…but you can see how the LED colored the un-painted portions of the fabrics and let the black create some negative texture.  Sweet!

Ok – set pieces done; at least as done as they can be with the time allotted.  I wanted to actually cover ALL the truss – upstage and downstage – but there wasn’t time or resources to go that far, so I moved on to the next thing:  Triple screens on stage.

The only way I wanted to even ATTEMPT to do screens on stage was having the projectors on the ground and not flown, and they had to be rear-projected.  That presented a problem because normally, we would need either a really short-throw lens just for the tour ($$$) or use standard lenses and not have a back drop. The solution was the Hitachi CP-A52/100. I bought 3 of the 2000 lumen models.  They are ULTRA-short throw projectors that cost the same as a lens.  This gave us the ability to cover a 7.5′  x 10′ screen from 3 FEET AWAY.  On the ground.  It was a done deal.  Coolest thing is that now you can move your projector and screen ANYWHERE on stage you want.  It’s totally stand-alone to the rig.

Woohoo!!!

3 screens; with a full black cyc backdrop right behind it.

Next – what in the world do we put on the stage screens and main screens? Content is huge.  imago community created some great triple-wide images to use during Mark’s and Dawson’s message – each one communicated a new scene with Christ. 

I then went into Photoshop and made some simple backgrounds for the main screens for lyrics during worship.  I didn’t want to have a lot of imagery behind the worship lyrics, given the fact that we have 3 screens on stage already. I created about 6 versions, each with the white brush strokes in different places.  Looked really great and simple I think.

And that brings us to the 3 screens on stage.  I setup my MacBookPro, running ProVideoPlayer, all hooked up to a TripleHead2Go.  I created playlists for each session, but VJ-ed during the responsive worship. Shift Worship had some PERFECT imagery for this theme of “Walk with Christ to the Cross.”  Jonathan Matlock was a huge player in helping these things come together.  Check out Jonathan’s pictures of the conference HERE.  Shout out to Zach Fonville, Awake Images, Igniter Media!!!

The conference will be at Irving Bible Church in Irving, TX on Feb. 19-20th and April 23-24, and in Washington DC on March 12-13th.  It’s for students, so bring your youth group!

Renewed Vision has again released software that is a game changer.  ProPresenter4 has AWESOME new features; which you can read all about here.

But, the main new feature I want to highlight is the Props layer.  This layer lets you import graphics/logos…etc into the software, and it sits on top of all other media, until you turn it off.  Pretty cool right?  Well; think of how this impacts churches and organization using Environmental Projection, and having to either physically or digitally mask their content.  Now, you can simply create a JPG or Photoshop PSD mask file, drag it Pro4, and you now have the ability to create black areas across your entire output!

So, instead of digitally masking content (or using an expensive media server), you now make one mask, import that into the Props layer, and you never ever have to digitally mask content again. If you created the PSD layers correctly, where there are no layers is where your image will show.

Like I said; it’s a game changer, because of the cost benefit, and because it is all within your presentation software you already use!

Thank you Greg, Brad, Matt, and the rest of the passionate, talented, and hard-working Renewed Vision team!!!!!  Follow:  @renewedvision and @propresenter

Stephen Proctor, Brad Weston and I had some fun outside NewLifeChurch in Little Rock, Arkansas.  I mean…why not?!  Giant building…a few projectors…

I thought it would be helpful to share what colors I use the most in worship lighting, and WHY.  Just as with imagery, I let the song/scripture/worship element drive where I go visually, but sometimes the lighting color needs to be the starting point , and the imagery can fit into that color.   I generally use 1, 2, or 3 similar colors; or a slight variant of one color.

If I can only have one lighting color (besides and no-color front light/specials) I generally like to use blue.  I figure, if there is no-color front light, I can dim that down for my warm looks, and the blue for my cool looks.  Next color I want to add is red.  After that, amber…

My take on worship lighting colors; and what mood they portray:

Red - Communion, death, blood, sacred, sadness.  Good Friday service.

Blue - calm, peace, serenity.  Typical for sky or night…

Amber/CTO – candle, warm, intimacy.  Lots of response songs.

Yellow - happy, joy, loud.   Easter service.

Purple/Magenta – royalty, majestic, color of Advent.  (Dark purple – Lent)

White - cleansed.  I like to pair red with pure white to communicate how we have been cleansed by the blood of Christ during certain worship elements.

I don’t use Green in worship.  To me, it comes across as weird, alien, money, and not fitting in worship songs necessarily.  If I’m doing green nature imagery, I go with amber lighting.

Yes, green can mean growth/life/renewal, but that’s just my opinion.  I never understand when I see Red and Green lighting used in worship at the same time.  They mean two completely separate moods.  Life and death.  Looks great on a Christmas card, and has powerful meaning (Christ’ life and death, brings us life…FROM death) but to me that doesn’t really translate to lighting to me.

What is your take on worship lighting colors?

Stephen Proctor (@worshipVJ - www.worshipvj.com)  just posted this; and I want to emphasize it here too.

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As my journey continues & I’m having more and more conversations about all-things-tech/church/culture/worship/etc…i have had a growing burden to gain a clearer understanding of what true, biblical worship is. i have much to learn and more scripture to dig into than i can comprehend, but here’s some of the main things i’ve picked up along the way:

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• Worship is our response to a revelation from God…specifically, Who He is, what He’s done, and what He’s promised to do.

• “We breathe in the wonders of God, and breathe out our response.” – paraphrasing Matt Redman

• Worship, by nature, is 3-dimentional (picture an X, Y, Z axis): UP (Godward/Intimacy), ACROSS (Communal/Relationships), and OUT (missional/Kingdom)…all three working in motion & together..never independently.

• ” ‘Missions’ exists because worship doesn’t.” – John Piper

• Worship stems from the heart…it’s not what we do, but how we live.

• “Religion (worship) that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit widows and orphans in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” – James 1:27 (ESV)

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If you have anything to add to this, please share it. But I’d like to bring attention & focus to one aspect of this conversation and ask:

What is “visual worship”?

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We feel like there is a giant pendulum swinging back towards using visuals in the worship service to tell stories, away from the ‘sola scriptura‘.  The danger that we feel is that without bringing these discussions up and talking about WHY we are doing any of this, the pendulum will, in a way, swing back to when the fear was that people were worshiping the actual images, instead of God.  Technology is making this VERY easy to do – projectors are affordable, lighting is popular – and we all want our worship services to be slick and polished…

Also, it seems that the ‘worship service’ has just a comfortable place in a lot of communities where the Body can worship – and while that’s not wrong – we feel that it might be seen as the only form of worship.

So, from the bottom of hearts; we are trying to learn, share, and grow ourselves, so we can journey with others and hopefully shine some light on how visual worship fits in today’s church communities.

For me; visual worship is using forms of visual expression (light/darkness – candles – still imagery – motion imagery – text/scripture – icons – paint – glass – color – fabric – etc..) to tell the story of Christ and worship and glorify God.  Simple as that.  I am approaching this from a corporate worship service setting, with fellow believers in Christ.  In order to glorify  God, I feel that you have to have relationship with Him first…

The visuals in worship are meant to be seen through, not watched.  They are there to, as impossible as it is, see some part of God and Christ that maybe you haven’t been able to visualize before.  It’s like…there is something in our spirit that is brought more to life with certain visual elements.  It’s like something is connected with our spiritual and physical.  Our feeble human attempts to represent the glory of God visually will never ever ever come close, but our heart behind what we do is what is important.