I’m currently packing my family to move at the end of the month so time for blogging has been hard to find.

We have focused a lot on the presentation part of church technology so far but we have stayed away from product reviews or giving any preference to one piece of software over the other. We have chosen to stay vendor neutral for a number of reasons and we will strive to continue in that effort. I say all of that to say this I have found a new tool I didn’t know existed, and its free. Most, if not all, of the well known church presentation applications are both primarily for Windows and usually rather expensive. They all do similar things-lyrics, bible verses, some video formats, audio etc. They all allow added control not available with Microsoft Powerpoint. Mediashout had a Macintosh version when the company first released their software but later releases were Windows only. OpenSong is not only free and on Windows but also allows churches to present lyrics, Bible verses, as well, but on a MacBook , MacBookPro, and even the older iBook and PowerBook. Later, I will have a post comparing the different Church Presentation Applications for Windows, but for now if you are a Mac user….OpenSong sings for FREE

Most people who know me understand that I like to do a lot of things myself. Churches are the same way. We don’t want to spend money on things that we feel that we are capable of doing or we have a well meaning “friend” who can help us. While there are things that can be done by laymen in the church or someone who has worked with electronics before, there are just some things that should be left to professionals. Equipment that hangs from the ceiling is generally that type.

Take, for example, the hanging of speakers in the sanctuary or your youth building. One might think, “It can’t be that hard to do. I can take the speaker out of the cabinet, drill two or three holes in the top of the cabinet, place some washers on both sides and place an eye bolt to connect some chain that is connected in the roof. That should be sufficient to hold the speaker cabinet, shouldn’t it?”

What you don’t realize is that the most speakers are made of medium density fiberboard (MDF), GLUED together and held with a few screws in key positions. Unless you are spending BIG money (translation: thousands per speaker box) the speakers are wood pulp pressed together into sheets. While it works well for most applications, hanging from homemade mounting devices is not what these manufacturers designed the speaker box for. They were designed to be placed on stands or on a platform. Major manufacturers understand that some people are going to hang these speakers in a manner not unlike that described above. They, however, are responsible enough to manufacture the speaker box with enough strength to hold its’ weight for some time.

What happens though if a cheaper speaker is chosen, as often is the case, and they are not put together quite as well? Well, the weight of the speaker and the cabinet could cause the glue to fail and the cabinet becomes a 60 pound weight crashing to the ground, breaking a pew, chair, or worse. Or even the best manufacturer’s glue won’t hold forever. After 10 years, do you really want to have a speaker fall apart when you least expected it. Safety should never be sacrificed in the name of finances.

There are many things that you can do to save money for your ministry. You can run the cable yourself or terminate the cable ends if you have someone with that type of expertise. You can rack mount your amplifiers and support gear before the final installation.

If you must do it yourself, spend the money and make sure that you purchase speakers that have “rigging points.” These are threaded inserts that are engineered to support the weight of the speaker cabinet for the life of the cabinet. They are usually made of real wood or have cabinets that are reinforced internally to assist in the support of the weight.

Thanks for reading and as always, email us at Churchnology@churchnology.com if you have any questions regarding the use of technology in your church or ministry. We are here to help.

We have already covered a lot of different topics in the brief beginnings of Churchnology. The purpose of Churchnology is “Using Technology in Church…Well”, so for this post we aren’t going to talk much about church…or really technology….maybe a little, but really I want to focus on the last word in our tagline…WELL. The creation of this blog comes from two separate angles…first, DC and I both have a heart for using technology in worship services/ and programming events and secondly, we both are professional technologists in our day jobs and are very detail oriented when it comes to the use of technology and we are applying that to churches in this blog. Now, due to the fact we both recognize we are detail oriented (read: picky) to the “professional use” of technology, I feel led to report the following Churchnology axiom : Most people using technology in church, wait for it, are NOT PROFESSIONALS.

There used to be several over the counter medicine ads where a well known soap opera actor would be dressed as their character and be pushing this pill or that rub and had the tag line…”I’m not a Doctor, but I play one on TV…” That tends to be the same problem we have in the church…the person running the sound board might be a plumber, or the person loading the songs into the chosen presentation software might be a used car salesman….or worse might be gasp! the Pastor… These people are professionals but they are not professional media ministers or sound technicians or even presentation developers. In our need to make things perfect we need to focus on the people that make things happen just as much if not more than the actual technology being used. They are NOT PROFESSIONALS, so as DC has stated in previous posts this is where its really important to take Baby Steps….

Some suggestions-

Schedule training sessions-If you are including something new in to the tech mix train your people how to use it weeks in advance and have multiple people trained , just in case.

If you have enough people that are part of your media ministry team cross train if possible, show your computer people how to run the basics of your sound board and vise versa.

Make a detailed list that’s posted of “in case of failure” what can be omitted “on the fly”. An example- if the tape recorder fails mid service, let it fail but don’t let the house sound suffer. If there is a miscommunication on the song order on the slides stop the presentation go to black and resolve the issue with the congregation never knowing there was ever a problem…

I’ve been applying a little saying to my work for the last 10 or so years…Be A Duck!!!! ( no for you who know me does this have ANYTHING to do with a trio of movies about a kid hockey team!!!) To most people a duck is one of the most peaceful creatures floating on top of a lake or river…but drop the camera below water and you see the true story….on top peaceful floating, underneath paddling like crazy….that’s how technology should work…to everybody on top peaceful everything going off on cue and with no problems….below the water everything is moving 1000 mph and if it breaks you adapt and keep moving, quality never suffering….like a duck. It’s a well known fact both DC and I go into any project with not only a Plan A, and Plan B but also a Plan Y and Plan Z.

I say all that to say this…we strive to make technology work in church and work WELL…but some of that is reliant on training in most cases volunteers to do something well they don’t normally need to know how to do….and that will bring another post soon about training your volunteers to do both sound, video, web and other parts of integrating technology into church we haven’t even talked about yet.

Heads High, Stand Tall, Fly Straight