Jerod at ChurchJuice.com has some great visual examples on how to create a good looking Facebook page for your church:
One of the biggest changes Facebook has made in recent memory is the switch to Timeline. With that came the ability to upload a cover photo that displays across the top of your Facebook Page. This large, central picture is sure to make a strong first impression to your Facebook friends. Yet, some churches aren’t utilizing that space the best they can.
Kevin D. Hendricks writes that the Olympics offer three lessons for churches:
1. Tell a Story: First and foremost, the Olympics is about story. Some people complain that ‘story’ is too much of a buzz word lately, but the fact remains that story matters. Despite complaints about NBC’s coverage of the Olympics, the stories of the athletes continued to be a major draw. That might be why NBC’s ratings are better than ever even though there were more viewing alternatives than ever before (to those who could get them).
You’ve probably at some point used stereo tracks (accompaniment tracks) in your worship and maybe even click tracks. The next step is multitracks.
It used to be that only the big churches and techie worship leaders were using multitracks – now they’re within reach of the average church, and stems can be run from ipods, ipads and smartphones as well as laptops.
Multitracks (also referred to as “stems”) are simply individually separated tracks – usually in WAV or MP3 format. Each track is a different instrument – a track for keyboard, drums, guitars, bass, etc. If your bass player is sick, simply play the bass stem for your song. Spice up your full band with loop and synth stems.
Last Sunday I enjoyed worshiping with the Trinity of Fairview praise team near Asheville, NC. Like many churches, worship leader Ed Frisbee has trouble maintaining a full band during the summer months and finds multitracks to be a life-saver. He used my new free multitracks for All Hail the Power and I played along on the piano with a guitarist and bass player.
Multitracks require that your band be using a click track with in-ear monitors. Read these WorshipIdeas articles to learn more about click tracks:
You can find a few worship multitrack websites on the net – some try to lock you into a particular software and prices are all over the board. Since the concept is fairly new for worship you’ll generally find only the most popular praise songs.
As a one-stop shop I like the multitracks at PraiseCharts.com mainly because they make sure their sheet music, charts and orchestrations follow their multitracks. Many churches are integrating multitracks into their bands, not necessarily using the multitracks in lieu of a band, so I think it’s important to have charts for your live musicians that match the stems. Watch their above video to get a visual idea about multitracks.
PraiseCharts multitracks are a little less expensive than other sites, each song has two key options and their MP3s are a higher bitrate of 160kbps (meaning they sound better). Their stems are flexible – produced and intended to be used cross platform in any software.
Try out my new, free multitracks for my arrangement of All Hail the Power. Download multitracks in E, F and G, import them into Garage Band, Protools, Logic, Sonar or your software of choice. Please comment below if you have any questions or suggestions.
The following is an excerpt from Engage by Nelson Searcy and Jason Hatley, with Jennifer Dykes Henson.
The first church I pastored was a small Baptist church in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was a 21-year-old kid. The night they voted to call me as pastor, a whopping fifteen people were in attendance. Later I learned the plan that night had been either to vote me in or to vote to merge with the church down the street. They went with me, but I’m still not sure they made the right decision. Fortunately, God began to bless that little church and it started to grow. After a few long, hard seasons, we were averaging almost 100 people per week. Since attendance was so “high” every Sunday, I went to the deacon board with a proposal: we needed to hire a part- time minister of music. They reluctantly agreed.
Research and analysis done by many psychologists shows that humans get an itch for significant change every 7 to 10 years. Some believe part of this is related to how our cells regenerate every 7 years. We change half of our main friendships every 7 years.
Obviously all this is a bit subjective, but based on the experience of most of us, this holds true. Something about our mind is “trained” to desire significant changes almost every decade, including our jobs.
Willow Creek Community Church Pastor Bill Hybels, speaking during the opening session of a global leadership summit, took the occasion on Thursday to say that he and his church elders were formally engaged in a succession process.
“The elders at Willow Creek are quite aware that I turned 60 this last year … They know my family history of heart disease. They know that I travel into high risk areas so they brought the subject matter of succession several times in recent years,” Hybels explained to several thousand in attendance at his church in South Barrington, Ill., and a huge online audience watching the Willow Creek Association Global Leadership Summit.
Ever wonder why your congregation isn’t singing? Your songs may be the culprit.
Find a congregational praise song with a great melody and lyrics and you’re set, right? Not quite. Many new worship songs only sound good when sung by professional singers, not average congregations. I believe this is one of the biggest problems with today’s music, and why your congregation might not be singing like you think they should.
Right now, pick up a songbook with the latest cutting-edge worship songs. Just look at the typical melody — it’s a syncopated frenzy, and probably way out of your congregation’s vocal range. How can the average person sing that? They can’t, at least not with any confidence. And isn’t one of our goals as worship leaders to encourage our congregations to sing, and sing with all they’ve got?
The next time you sing one of these hot songs in your church, listen closely to the congregation (or record the service.) You’ll probably be shocked to hear your congregation struggling to keep up.
One time at my previous church I led worship from the keyboard for a small prayer meeting of about 20 people, and my eyes and ears were opened. One chorus in particular was a complete train wreck — no one could follow the melody because almost every note was on the off beat. I hadn’t noticed during church with the band blaring, but the problem was quite obvious in this casual setting. The song had great words and a nice melody, but the extreme syncopation was nearly impossible for the average person to sing. From then on I tried to select songs that were reasonably simple to sing and within a normal vocal range. Maybe that’s why hymns are making such a comeback – they’re full of quarter notes!
Size up your congregation, too. A church body filled with 20- and 30-year-olds can handle much more adventurous songs than an older congregation. If your congregation is rhythmically challenged, find songs that, while still contemporary, can bridge the gap. “Our God” and “Here I Am to Worship” are so popular because they come from the more contemporary world yet can cross over to more traditional settings – they’re simply singable.
Bottom Line: Choosing worship songs that are singable by normal mortals will create a more unified, participatory worship experience for your church.
Last Sunday I enjoyed worshiping with the praise team at Trinity of Fairview near Asheville, NC. They premiered my new arrangement of All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name (download it for free.)
Trinty runs about 700 with a choir of around 40. Music director Ed Frisbee leads along with a typical 3 part vocal praise team (soprano, alto and tenor.) Vocal talent is above average for a church this size and I was surprised at how polished the choir was and how well they blended.
The unique octagonal worship space sets Trinity apart but does cause acoustic problems. Ed’s invested in acoustic treatments to help the sound.
Like most ministries in the summer, Ed struggles to maintain a full band and uses multitracks powered on his Macbook with Ableton Live to fill in the holes. The band uses Aviom for their in-ear system. I’ll be talking about multitracks soon but you need to lay the groundwork first with click tracks.
Ed stresses to the choir the importance of not being a performance group but a worship leading group. They use Prism music choir arrangements along with top CCLI worship songs. This past Sunday’s set list:
This page is an example of trendy Personal Blog. It has the different header and specific Grid layout of posts. You can import it for your site based on Impreza.