Blog – Motion Worship – Video Loops, Countdowns, & Moving Backgrounds for the Christian Church

Children’s Pastor Preparation 101

Preparation is key when it comes to children’s ministry. There’s a drastic difference in the quality of your Sunday school experience between a prepared and well-structured hour vs. a chaotic attempt to simply keep kids from hurting each other or breaking things (although that will probably always be a concern...) But the difference between those two outcomes relies on the baby-steps you take throughout the week to make sure your prepared for the weekend. It doesn’t require much time, b...

Custom Title Slides | ProPresenter in 5 Minutes

Custom Title Slides | ProPresenter in 5 Minutes This “ProPresenter in 5-minutes” series is hosted by Chris Fleming, Motion Worship Creative Director, professional drummer and music director from Minneapolis, MN. In this collection of concise tutorials you will learn about the ProPresenter interface, how to customize slides, build a library of songs, compile a full church service, and tons more! In this specific video tutorial, Chris will walk you through how to customize title slides w...

Key Qualities of Great Ministry Leaders

As someone who works alongside church staff and leaders all the time, I understand how challenging and intimidating it can be to simply get started. That first church plant. That first job in leadership. Whatever it is, that first step can feel like your scaling mountains just to begin. And then it finally happens. You’re running a ministry, or in leadership in some capacity. You make a paycheck. You’ve been doing it for 5 years, 10 years, or however long. You lose sight of the struggle y...

Recruiting Parents to Volunteer in Youth Ministry

In youth ministry, you usually want to take all the help you can get. A lot of times, those extra hands can be additional staff members or recent high school graduates, but it’s important to have parents involved in your youth ministry for several reasons. Parents have a unique perspective and place to be involved when it comes to youth ministry. They have a personal vested interest in seeing their kids and their peers grow in their faith, they have plenty of life experience, and are also a...

How to Measure Success in Kid’s Ministry

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was an easy button we could press or formula we could use to determine whether or not our Kid’s ministry is thriving and seeing success? Unfortunately, measuring success in ministry simply doesn’t work that way. I actually think many pastors and children’s directors feel a little out of touch with whether their children’s ministry is thriving or not. It can be difficult to gauge success, because unlike a business who’s only goal is increasing reve...

Building Basic Click Tracks for Worship | Ableton in 5 Minutes

Building Basic Click Tracks for Worship | Ableton in 5 Minutes This "Ableton in 5-minutes" series is hosted by Chris Fleming, Motion Worship Creative Director, professional drummer and music director from Minneapolis, MN. In this collection of concise tutorials you will learn how to use click tracks, guide cues, and multitracks in your setlists. In this specific video tutorial, Chris will walk you through the most basic method of setting up click tracks for your weekend setlist in Ableton!

Ring In a Meaningful New Year’s with Your Kid’s Ministry

It’s the new year and there is much to celebrate, reflect upon, and look forward to in your kid’s ministry. While New Year’s can sometimes feel like a more adult holiday, it can be a fun and poignant opportunity for you and your kids to remember and celebrate God’s faithfulness over the year. Plus, with perhaps a few new faces in your attendance since Christmas, New Year’s is a great time to connect with and welcome new kids into your special community. Keep It Fun In our culture...

How to Manage Church Subscriptions as An Admin

Subscriptions are vital resources for the church. From Multitracks to that fancy presentation software, from Canva to sermon websites, many church employees make strategic use of subscriptions to create polished deliverables and simplify their workflow. As the church admin, you might not be the one making personal use of these subscriptions, but most of the time, you’re the one responsible for keeping them organized and paid. This can become complicated, especially with employee transitions. H...

6 Ways to Keep Christmas Visitors Coming Back

Around holidays like Christmas and Easter, churches can expect packed attendance, full of faces both familiar and new. While it’s exciting to see new people in our rows, how can churches create a Christmas Eve experience that goes beyond a “one-hit wonder” and entices newcomers to come back for more? Ideally, the message of the gospel does the compelling work of winning hearts, but organizationally there are things that churches can do to make it easy (and exciting!) for new visitors to...

5 Strategies for Managing (and Preventing) Christmas Ministry Burnout

Christmas is one of our busiest seasons for those in ministry. That’s just the way it is. For many churches, the Christmas season means a month of events, service opportunities, and services, media, and more opportunities to celebrate advent. For this reason, Christmas is an incredible opportunity for churches. Come the month of December, our culture at large, not just the church, is ready for the holidays and the hope, excitement, and joy that comes with Christmas. As we remember and celeb...

How to Get Young Adults to Your Church

Every church has a specific age range that occupies most of their attendance. Several churches are great at working with young adults, while others may cater more to retired couples and elderly people. Before we talk about what you can do to expand your church’s reach to other generations, know this - God has placed you in your role to minister to and grow people of all ages, backgrounds, and circumstances. The work you are doing right now in the lives of your current congregation members m...

When and Why (or Why Not) to Split Up Your Middle and High School Ministries

Middle school and high school might be generally categorized as “youth” but anyone who works with students knows that there’s a big difference between an 11-year-old sixth grader and an 18-year-old high school senior. For youth pastors, one of the most pressing questions you face is whether or not to split up your youth ministry between middle and high school students or whether to keep them together. While there is no right or wrong answer, here are some things to consider to see if makin...

4 Things to Consider as You Plan Your Christmas Services

It’s officially fall, which, in ministry-world, means Christmas is just around the corner. As we all know, the holiday season is a huge deal for churches and it pays to be prepared. Here are four tips to give you direction and help keep you grounded as you take on one of the busiest and most beautiful times of the year. 1) Know Your Point Just like with any sermon series, the first thing you need to know is your core idea. What will be your take for this Christmas season? What message...

5 Very Common Church Presentation Mistakes

Working as a media or tech director at a church is a stressful job. You’re usually there before anyone else, and stay longer than everyone else. You are never in the spotlight and rarely get the acknowledgement you deserve for how much you hold the service together. To be honest, the entire thing couldn’t happen without you. The band, the lights, the speaker system, the microphone, mixing, the sermon, sermon notes, etc. – it all heavily depends on you and your team to operate efficiently a...

How to Keep Church Media Up to Date and Relevant

Churches change incredibly fast. The type and style of music, the lighting setups of all the major “big” churches who set the pace for mainstream church culture, and the type of media we use on our screens. Any of us who’ve worked behind the scenes in some capacity have all seen the phases of development from a creative standpoint. Old CCM and choral music to modern day worship, nature-based natural images to abstract fast-paced motion backgrounds, etc. The gist is – church production...

3 Steps to Build a Small Group Ministry with Roots

Small groups are the lifeblood of church communities. While big Sunday services might draw people in and introduce them to Jesus, small groups take discipleship to the next level. It’s within groups that people find meaningful friendships, experience spiritual development, and learn to put their faith into action seven days a week. If your church doesn’t have small groups yet or is looking to revamp your existing small group ministry, here are some tips to help you build a movement that w...

Tips for Making a Fall-Themed Church Stage Design

Fall is around the corner already! Between fall kickoff, youth events, the start of small groups, and all other activities your church may be vamping up, fall can be a really busy season for most ministries. The “back-to-school” mentality gets kids excited, which can also give parents a bit more headspace to get involved in church activities. With all that said, you want your fall church services to really shine, and there’s no better way to do that than to give a face lift to your chur...

3 Tips for Making Your Students’ Parents Your Best Advocates

As a youth pastor, building relationships with parents is just as essential as building relationships with your youth. Parents play a huge role in the spiritual development of your students, so it’s important to develop trust and respect so you and parents can make an impact together. There’s always room to improve engagement, and these tips offer actionable ways to improve communications and develop relationships that last: Communicate Early and Often Communication is the number on...

8 Tips for Finding and Hiring Pastoral Staff

Adding new members to your team can feel like a daunting task. There’s no one clear path to finding candidates, especially when you’re looking for someone that can be both competent for the role and fit in with your staff’s culture and church’s mission. However, with a bit of planning, strategy, and a whole lot of prayer, even that tall order is totally achievable. Here are eight way tips for a successful pastoral search: Know What You’re Looking For Before you can search, you ne...

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Tips for Getting a Professional Mix at Small Churches

I’m continuously surprised by how many FOH engineers I’ve met at churches that show no interest in improving or caring about the sound on a Sunday morning. They just want to make sure everything is on, pull up their presets, and purely play a game of damage control if necessary. But there’s clearly no drive to really focus on getting their mixes sounding professional and trying to strive for continuous improvement. If you’re here for this blog post, congratulations - you’re probably...