Part of the Glue

A little over a month ago at the shift conference, Kurrent (a new web portal powered by unifyer) launched to the public for the purpose of developing leaders for spiritual formation among this next generation. This is a new global youth ministry network built specifically for youth leaders, volunteers, parents, and educators. You can watch the intro video here.  This new network is great because it can allow youth leaders the ability to receive online video training, resources and ideas that before were unavailable or hard to get to. This site also allows you to create your own group and create your own content specific for your ministry.

Our youth ministry has been dealing with some difficult circumstances over the last several years in regards to awareness.  We currently have a student ministry building that is literally located across the highway from the rest of our church.  We provide shuttles on Sunday morning for students to ride over there, however we still face the issue of awareness because we are not literally connected to the other church buildings.  Over the last several months and really the last year we have been building a campaign to close the back door to our ministry.  We built a website www.lyf.net in the fall of 2008 to bring about awareness online.  Just this past weekend our ministry hosted a ministry fair inside the commons of our church. We setup different booths with giveaways, information and giant displays that hopefully yelled “yes we do have a youth ministry…come and check us out.” We started telling better stories during our worship services by creating short 2-minute videos that tell the stories of serving and leading in our ministry. Below is one of the videos we recently showed.

More often than not a certain degree of clarity is often missing between people that create media for the church and people that lead and pastor the church.  I have run into this predicament on more than one occasion and have found that one of the reasons this happens is that both parties unintentionally fail to be painfully clear before the production of a media project.  I recently heard Bill Hybels speak on this issue of clarity in which he mentioned the line “just to be clear” when talking with others on exactly what is going to be done.  I’m slowly in the process of using this line “just to be clear” after discussing a project.  After discussing a project I am about to create I will say “just to be clear” I am going to do this and create that and it will help you accomplish your specific goal by doing this.

I recently finished reading Andy Stanley’s the Principle of the Path and decided that this principle really had a lot to do with my approach to being creative.  As a video producer I am constantly trying to be creative in the way I write, shoot or edit videos.  Not all the time, but sometimes I feel I lack in creativity and usually this is because I am not on a path.

Creativity is just one of those things you really have to work at.  A lot of people believe they are not creative, however the truth is being made in the image of God we are born with the ability and desire to create.  The difference from someone that is often labeled as a “creative” compared with someone who struggles to be creative is that the “creative” often chooses to work exceptionally hard at being creative and often times has a clear path to do this.

One example in describing this principle are body builders in the way they maintain their strength. You would never walk up to a body builder and ask, “so how did you get to be so muscular?”  You know they had to work at it and put extra effort to not just be heatlhy but to be stronger than the average person.  Their strength wasn’t an accident or lucky dna strand, they chose to take a path to maintain their strength.

To stay healthy you might need to work out X number of times a week, but to maintain creativity the path is not always as clear.  There are no real creative counselors that will sit down with you and give you a prescription for what to do in order to maintain a creative well, however there are some approaches that will foster creativity if practiced often and routinely.

As a Christian I believe that first I must ask God to be creative and must ask him to give me ideas.  Part of depending on God for strength is depending on God for creativity.

As a film-maker I believe that I must constantly be watching films of all kinds both independent, foreign, short and major blockbusters.  I must be reading books on film-making, screenwriting and cinematography.  There must be a large in-take of not only certain films but certain writings that will serve to not only inspire me but direct me in what has been done and what should be done.

As a lifelong learner I believe I must be reading blogs, books and magazines on various subjects and especially those of Christianity.   Having a cultural and spiritual well to draw from is extremely important. I also believe that I must be observing what other creative people are doing and following their example. Stealing other creative people’s ideas and making them my own is one example of this. One of my friends Matt Coleman of Unblind Productions was telling me about his screenwriters group that has really helped him be consistent in writing screenplays.  This group he created was able to foster an environment of creativity because of the objectives and goals they set in place.

As a leader I believe I must help others foster this creativity by writing blogs like this one, speaking about creativity and helping others create a creative path in order to maintain creativity.

What are ways you are able to maintain creativity?  I’d love to hear your thoughts….

Last year in a post I wrote about creating transitional statements when incorporating video into worship services.  I felt a need to write about this again because this is something our church has failed to do and I know others must be wrestling with this as well.  The idea behind creating a transitional statement is carefully crafting a well thought out sentence before or after a video during a service to segue into a message or after a special video. This statement depending on how it is crafted could potentially help the medium to loose or gain power in the context of the rest of the service.  Whether a youth pastor is speaking to teenagers or a pastor speaking to his congregation, a majority of the time the people sitting in the pews or chairs trust these pastors and in so doing trust what they say.  They not only trust what they say as part of their message they trust what they endorse.  If a pastor endorses what a video says, this video for some odd reason will have more potential for impact than if it was played with no explanation or endorsement.  Now this endorsement or explanation doesn’t have to be long in fact the shorter the better a lot of times.

Below are some thoughts to incorporate this idea.

Do:
treat the video as a message or a story not a video
ask a question after the video that can transition to what you are going to say
agree with a certain part of the video
write the transitional statement down and practice it

Don’t:
Don’t call attention to the video as amazing
Don’t call attention to whoever made it and brag on that person
Don’t ignore the video as if it has nothing to do with the message

Transitional Statement Examples:
Sound a little familiar?
Can’t we all relate with that?
Have you ever felt that way before?
What an incredible story of life change…isn’t God doing amazing things in this church

In the New Testament Jesus gives us the command to go and make disciples.  1 Thess 2:8 says that our desire was to share not only the gospel but our lives as well.  Discipleship is a foundational relational process and in my opinion is the most time-consuming, inconvenient and messy part of the Christian Life.  It requires intimacy, time and accountability and in the end may not always work out as planned. Discipleship is sharing your life and sharing your life is hard work.

As an artist for a church my job is to create and tell stories both fiction and non-fiction that inspire and move people in their faith and part of that being the work of discipleship. “Artists” in the generic being are often times looked at as someone who has something to say and thus uses their medium to say it. Whether writer, singer, film-maker all want to say something using their own creative medium or canvas.  The question I have been pondering however is can an artist really truly say something profound about anything they themselves have never experienced.  If I were to make a video about evangelism and had never shared my faith I would probably feel that I would not be doing this video justice by trying to say something about a subject in which I had no personal experience. Certainly this is not the case for everything, however the more and more I practice discipleship and the more I practice film-making the more I realize how to tell better stories about discipleship because of my personal experience.

When an artists creates something out of nothing a lot of times they draw from a well. The well figuratively speaking is filled with knowledge and personal experience. Now they can create with knowledge about a subject, however personal experience is part of the well that allows the artist the ability to critique the subject so that in telling the story they are not only telling a story they are saying something about that story.

Recently I have been doing a lot or re-thinking and reading about discipleship.  Last month I read organic disciplemaking which I thoroughly enjoyed how it spoke about discipleship as a highly creative process. Most recently I finished transforming discipleship which includes a triad model that I believe is revolutionary to say the least.  Both books I highly recommend and really got me thinking to ask some really difficult questions. When it comes to discipleship as a fundamentally relational process are some Christians exempt? I say this not to be sarcastic or point fingers but to deal with a question I have been thinking about a lot.

When I was in high school I had the opportunity to run sound and really head up all the technical needs on a volunteer basis for our youth ministry.  I felt that God was really using me to further His kingdom and I still believe He was during that time.  Looking back I knew I was hungry to disciple others but didn’t know how and so I saw myself as exempt from discipleship.   I thought I was exempt because I was doing my part by running sound and putting lots of hours in without ever getting paid.  I thought Discipleship was for the adults who were in their forties still unsure what that word really meant back then.  Later in college I discovered the power that meaningful personal relationships can play in discipling (helping others mature in Christ) others by investing not only the word of God but my life as well (1 thess 2:8). 

Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age. Matthew 28:19

This is our commission to go and make disciples…. we can’t ignore this.  What the commission does not say is go and work in a church or go and serve in some capacity in the church.  Yet this seems to be what happens from my observation.  If I work at a church or if I serve or volunteer (choir, tech ministry, usher etc…) than I have done my duty and therefore I am exempt from discipleship.  In an attempt to meet needs the church has often become an organization of specialization.  If you teach we can help you teach God’s word.  If you sing….come and sing in the choir.  Oh and if you can disciple people we can help you to do that too. Discipleship has become a specialization just like singing in the choir or working in the arts ministry.

I realize this may be offensive and yet the gospel is offensive and so is the great commission.  If we are to think that we are exempt because we just aren’t good at it or are better at something else in the church we are sorely mistaken.  I am not arguing that every person in the church lead a bible study.  Neither am I arguing that serving in the church is not important because it is very important in my opinion. What I am stressing is the need for the church to take discipleship seriously and call its people to invest in a few each year.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Over the last several months I have been trying to build our media team at my church. One area that I have encountered is the area of training.  Very few volunteers unless they do it professionally will be able to do a project start to finish without any help due to the nature of film/video and the nature of it. Because of the difficulty involved in training media volunteers I have developed several steps to train.

step 1. assess each volunteer individually
Do they have any experience or examples? Watch previous videos and offer critiques. Depending on their level of experience you might jump steps.

step 2. provide opportunities to practice
Give them a non-threatening assignment that can be just for fun.  This will help them to develop their eye and get a better grasp at how to use the camera.

step 3. accompany during shoots and assist
Schedule several shoots where you know your volunteers are available and can make the shoots. Have them help carry stuff, hold a boom or focus the camera.

step 4. determine their specific interest
Do they like motion graphics, editing, camera operating, interviewing, lighting, the whole thing???
Determining their specific need will help you to excel instead of forcing them to learn 3d animation.

step 5. help them do one project
Once your volunteers can get one project under their belt the process will be uphill from there if they feel they have the hang of it

When it comes to the world of media and the church, recruiting volunteers can be a tad tricky.  One hindrance to finding volunteers is that most people don’t see media as a typical place to serve.  Often times creative media types may already be serving in the children’s ministry or some other part of the church and simply don’t acknowldege the real validity to serving in a non-traditional role. Another hindrance is the skill sometimes required is very high.   Because motion graphics and video editing can be fairly difficult you can’t necessarily have anyone and everyone off the street helping with an after effects intro. Recently with the launch of our new website I was able to post an online group as well as a posting in the news section.   From these subtle advertisements I have already received numerous interests from people that have a desire to use their skills for the church.  Before the website we really had no great vehicle of recruitment so having an online connection point is crucial in my opinion. The truth is people love to use their skills and abilities to furthur God’s kingdom, its up to us to create a path for them to be able to.

This past week at work it has been relatively slow.  It’s not that there isn’t anything to do because there is plenty.  In fact I have three major projects that are all on hold as I wait to hear if I can move forward.   As I wait I have decided to work ahead on projects that will be due in 5 to 6 months.  This may sound ridiculous to work on a project that far ahead of time, however I find that having projects in the bag will allow for better margin when the time comes.  Having these projects done ahead of time will asure that I am “ready for anything” as David Allen calls it.   Recently I have been listening to Allen’s new book “Making it all work.”  This book is a follow up to David’s best seller Getting Things Done and is quickly becoming a favorite.   Did I mention that they finally released Things the best GTD program out there in my opinion.