Blog – Page 3 – Motion Worship – Video Loops, Countdowns, & Moving Backgrounds for the Christian Church

Worship Tracks: 5 Most Common Ableton Pitfalls

Ableton is an incredibly powerful tool, especially in worship music. Churches of all sizes around the world are using it during live services for a variety of purposes. It enables keyboardists to run synth patches, pianos, and other instruments. It can be used for complex automation of keys patches, tracks, and other instrumentation during a worship service. And of course, it can be used as a simp...

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3 Tips to Improve Your Church Screen Media in Youth Group

It seems that the youth room is often the most neglected when it comes to quality gear, sound systems, and stage setup. Obviously, most churches don’t have an infinite budget to spend on every single room in the building, so most attention is put towards enhancing the main worship center. However, improving the atmosphere, appearance, and experience in a room doesn’t need to cost a ton of mone...

4 Best Practices: Motivating Your Volunteer Worship Team

Many volunteers live for worship team rehearsals and playing on Sunday mornings. It’s where they get their energy and they’re absolutely ecstatic to be a part of the team. But unfortunately, it’s not that way for everyone. When worship team volunteers are excited and motivated to be a part of the worship band, your team thrives. But when it feels like a weekly “to-do” item, they’re not...

5 Tips for Being Efficient at Church Media Production

There are so many moving parts in church media production. As a media director, you’re constantly doing things on the fly – changing song setlists, replacing lyrics, reordering songs, switching backgrounds out, importing and adjusting sermon notes, etc. You know the story. That’s why it’s so incredibly important to have a good grasp on ways you can make your work more efficient. The quicke...

What Drum Equipment Needs to be Replaced at My Church?

Drums are supposed to be the life, dynamics, and foundation of any worship song. But usually… church drum sets sound BAD. If you’re reading this article, you probably are experiencing it firsthand. Obviously, as with anything sound-related, getting a good drum sound is a multi-facetted topic with endless factors including equipment, room, acoustic treatment, mics, mixing, the drummer who’s a...

How to Plan Ahead as a Church Tech Director

You’re the first one to band rehearsal and often the last one to leave. You may frequently be in charge of setup and teardown in addition to all the work you have to do during rehearsal and on Sunday morning for all services. Being a church tech director is a lot of work. We understand! Most church tech directors will agree that the most valuable thing to them is “time”. You need time ...

Pastoral Care: Things to Consider

Pastoral care is a tough job, primarily because it doesn’t rely on one individual but the whole community system and leadership structure of a church. You’re all working there for the sake of impacting peoples’ lives and helping them through times of need and crisis. But that’s incredibly difficult when people feel let down. A pastor misses a hospital visit, doesn’t get the memo on tr...

3 Tips to Be More Efficient with Sermon Prep

Being a pastor isn’t a typical day job. You’re pretty much on call 24/7, and it’s rare that you ever have the ability to devote 100% of your attention for an extended period of time to any one thing. That’s just the nature of the job. Being a pastor is a lot more than speaking on a Sunday. But… sermon preparation is incredibly important and it’s a weekly activity. While you probably...

Why is My Church’s Giving Decreasing?

Church giving is so important for your ministry to thrive. You know more than anyone how valuable congregational giving is for the growth of your church, and the investment in worship, youth, young adults, and other ministries. But giving isn’t always the easiest topic to deal with. Your church will almost certainly go through seasons where congregational giving is down. The question is - why is...

Working Ahead: Building a Sermon Calendar

Staying on top of your work as a pastor can be difficult at times. You wear a lot of hats, and depending on your church size and culture, you may be working what feels like much more than a single job. But your primary job as a pastor is to lead your congregation and “make disciples”. While preaching a sermon allows you to teach someone about a single concept or passage of scripture, “dis...

Preparing Your Church to Move Into a New Building

Finding a location to do ministry in is difficult. Church plants often struggle to find willing venues and schools to host Sunday morning church in, and even after finding a venue, it’s a lot of work to setup and tear down the necessary gear every Sunday. But it’s almost always worth it - despite the work, the commute, the long hours - you do it for the community of believers that call your ch...

Where to Find Great Affordable Church Media

The modern church relies heavily on media for worship music, lyric and sermon slides, sermon videos, livestreams, and social media. The reason is simple - media can aid in communicating a message clearly. Audio and visuals accompany messages to make them “stick” with people. Whether it’s premade and purchased videos and mini-movies, or separate media components for in-house video producti...

Emergency Volunteers: How to Handle Volunteer No-Shows

We all want to be able to rely on our teams. With staff members, you can usually assume they will be there when they’re supposed to. But when it comes to volunteers, things can get a bit problematic. Depending on the position they’re volunteering for, level of commitment, communication they’ve received, or just plain old forgetfulness, there may come a Sunday morning where you’re short vol...

Part-Time Worship Leaders: How To Get Everything Done

There’s a reason that “Worship Leader” is often a full-time role. It’s an integral part of the church, you’re driving an entire ministry on your own, and there’s usually more than 40 hours per week of work. But with smaller churches, or churches splitting the worship leader responsibility between 2 or more workers, it can be daunting to manage the workload in a part-time employment sit...

Church Volunteer Management: Volunteer Scheduling

Handing off church ministry responsibility to volunteers can be a huge benefit to your church. Introducing volunteers in more circles within the church often means the responsibility over details is alleviated from leadership, allowing them to focus on managing and directing the overall goals and mission of the church. However, while having volunteers is a great idea, actually making it happen ...

Picking Songs for Church: Staying Current With New Music

Picking songs for church can be a tricky task. There’s a ton of factors that play into finding the right set of songs, from the average age of attenders to worship culture, past songs, type of sound system and building, and so many more. The task gets especially difficult when it comes to new songs. They may be playing on the radio, but that doesn’t mean you can assume everyone knows them (or ...

Where to Focus My Time as a Part-Time Worship Pastor

If you’re working a part-time worship pastor role at your church, you almost certainly feel like you never have enough time to get everything done. Or, at the very least, you feel as though your time is aimed at getting tasks done, while no time is available for planning the creative direction of the ministry. If you are ever wondering how to more effectively manage your schedule as a worship pa...

Scheduling Volunteers for Their Strengths

Having a strong volunteer team can dramatically improve the experience for visitors at your church. A well-operated volunteer team means everyone is present, educated, and ready to go for their respective areas. But volunteers are needed for a diverse set of roles within the church – some dealing with kids, music, relations, guests, leadership, and so many more. For example, just because someone...

Making Church Drum Mics Sound Good: The Ultimate Guide

Drums are a doozie for tech directors and sound engineers. So many mics, so many cables… so much sound. And don’t even get us started on drummers (an article for a later point in time.) Micing a drum kit can get a bit confusing if you’re not completely informed on what you should be doing. Here are just a few frequently asked questions we’ve gotten from church tech directors: “Do I...

What is the Fundamental Pitch of a Snare Drum?

Snare drums receive the most amount of attention out of any piece of a standard drum kit when it comes to mixing – and for good reason. Snare drums are the backbone of the groove in any song, and in church worship music they are especially important. Not only does the snare serve as a “timing landmark” for a song or groove – giving structure to the pocket and rhythm section – it also pro...