The last few months have been busy….we’ve added a new baby, I’m changing roles in my day job and I’ve been a lot more hands-on with the AV needs of our “contemporary” worship service.  If anything this has renewed my goal for this blog….the need to use Technology in Church…well.

The title of this entry is flow…flow…flow your boat…. and the reason is you have to pay careful attention to the flow of the service to use technology in church and use it well.  Too much tech and media will overload the service and limit other aspects of worship.

Currently the “praise and worship” service we have is experimenting with different aspects of flow as our congregation gives both positive and negative feedback and weekly adjustments are made to either change or keep certain elements.   Currently we are focusing on added elements that enhance the sermon and this includes video, internet, live drama, CD or movie clips…
The goal is to rotate elements so that we don’t over use any one over the other….no so much as a set rotation but as it fits the sermon.

I say all that to once again talk about flow…based on my previous work in both TV and radio the one thing we don’t want in a contemporary setting is “dead air”. which brings us back to flow…our goal is to have as few interruptions by someone needing to explain what happens next….but the the “flow” of the service transitions from one part to another….Here’s an example of one service’s flow…

Announcements (in this case video reporter” style quicktime videos filmed by our youth)

2 Praise and Worship songs

A brief greeting usually by one of the praise band members while music is transitioned between songs

Another Praise and Worship Song

Kid’s Sermon

Applicable media lead-in to sermon

Sermon with applicable presentation slides (the fewer the better)

Communion ( with a slower, applicable praise and worship song)

Closing Song (usually upbeat)

We’ll update more about flow as we go….look for more on churchnology.com