Greg Atkinson

Today I spoke at Prestonwood again – this time to the teaching team. What a cool bunch of godly men! I did my seminar entitled “Communicating to Those that Listen with their Eyes”. My website is being redone and will soon have all my handouts in PDF form for you to download.

Tonight, as I do every Tuesday night, I played keys with a ministry I’m a part of called i55. We had an awesome time of worship. I love i55 because it’s something that we are able to do as a family (my wife and 3 kids come each week, too).

I’m finishing packing and then heading to bed. Tomorrow, Anthony Coppedge and I are off to Phoenix to speak at MinistryCOM. If you’re reading this and attending MinistryCOM, please stop by my class and say “hi”.

SermonSpice’s free monthly download is a short clip entitled “Wholehearted” from the new movie I’ve been mentioning: Facing the Giants.

The pastoral staff of Sherwood Baptist – the church in Georgia that produced “Facing the Giants” – has created a video-based Bible Study Guide that can that acn be used in multiple ways by your church. Senior Pastor Michael Catt and Associate Pastor Stephen Kendrick (co-writer of the film) have teamed up on this Bible Study Guide. They have selected eight scenes from “Facing The Giants” that will challenge people to think through how God would have us live. As I mentioned before, you can get all 8 video clips through SermonSpice.

Yesterday, my church used EasyWorship instead of PowerPoint for the first time. Since I haven’t had a chance to train the computer operators on EasyWorship yet, I ran it for both services. I, very intentionally, did 2 things:

1. I continued using still backgrounds. Stills are great for contrast and can really add to our worship experiences when used creatively.
2. I used very subtle motion backgrounds, so our congregation wouldn’t even really notice the switch. Motion backgrounds or loops are wonderful, but need to be used creatively and cautiously, as over-stimulation can be a real factor in many modern worship services. If you throw too much at your people, especially too soon, it will be a distraction and will fight against your mission to “disappear”.

Functionality-wise it worked great. I use EasyWorship at several events and so am pretty familiar/comfortable with the software. Flexibility-wise it is an awesome tool for the Church. Once you go from PowerPoint to a presentation software that was designed for worship (like EasyWorship or MediaShout), you never want to go back to PPT.

Practical Thoughts:

• If your church is like mine, it really doesn’t matter what presentation software you go with, 9 times out of 10, the pastor gives you his slides in PowerPoint. Thankfully, EasyWorship integrates PowerPoint well and can allow you to run through the message slides just as if you were using PowerPoint.
• Keying works great. We keyed several things during the service – from lyrics over IMAG for special music to the names of our pastor or staff members that come up on the screen when they walk on the platform to make an announcement or pray. We had premade a slide template that is all black and has small text on the lower third of the slide.

All in all, it was a great day and “the big switch” was seamless and successful.

Today I was a part of a cool thing at Prestonwood Baptist here in Dallas.

Todd Bell, Worship Pastor at Prestonwood, arranged a special luncheon from 11am to 1pm for me to speak to his worship and tech team leaders. I did a very brief highlight of the “Multi-sensory Worship” class that I did at Saddleback, but my main time was spent on one of my favorite classes to teach: “Resources for Media Ministry”. This is a class where I look at all of the amazing resources from tons of companies that are available to the Church. We had a great time of fellowship and discussion and I look forward to going back to do a few more seminars in the near future.

PERSONAL THOUGHTS:
What I just did at Saddleback and at Prestonwood is a very cool thing that I’m glad to see starting around the country. I, at both churches, was the first in a series of periodic worship and tech team get-togethers, where they will eat together and experience a presentation/seminar during the luncheon. Both churches are going to continue to do something like this from time to time, maybe bi-monthly.

All church staffs and team members, regardless of church size, should be constantly growing, stretched and strengthening/sharpening their skill sets. I’m glad to see churches like Saddleback and Prestonwood lead the way in a model that I think is healthy for all growing churches (or churches that want to grow). Forgive my shameless plug, BUT, if you’d like to start something like this at your church and are looking for someone to come and speak to your staff, give me a shout at gatkinson.msw@gmail.com.

What a whirlwind weekend! Saddleback Church flew my wife and I out for a very special visit this past weekend. We returned late last night.

Rick Muchow, Worship Pastor at Saddleback, was our host and guide for the weekend. Rick is the “real deal” – a man of God, a family man and a man that I greatly respect. My wife and I were able to attend Saddleback’s staff retreat which was going on Friday night and was held at the same hotel that we were staying at. What a sight it was to see a room full (over 500) of staff and their spouses praising God.

Rick Warren had just returned from a 49 day trip in which he had spoke countless times in over 30 countries in the last 48 days. He spoke to his staff Friday night and encouraged them to keep pressing on and moving forward for Christ. It was a sweet time of worship, fellowship, time in the Word and we were honored to just be there and witness it.

Saturday morning and early afternoon, my wife and I got to sight see and walk around Laguna Beach. The weather was absolutely amazing. Saturday evening we arrived to the church so I could catch some of their sound check/rehearsal. At Saddleback’s main service (they also have several other venues with multiple services) they have 2 Saturday night services, 2 Sunday morning and 2 Sunday night. I got to attend and worship in the main service twice. During some of the other service times I walked around from venue to venue – from middle school, to senior high, to college/singles, to their Terrace Cafe venue, to their Ohanna service which is their island-style venue, complete with hula and island-style music.

God is using this church in a mighty way. It reminds me of our commission to go to Judea, Samaria and the uttermost parts of the world. They are known and loved in their community and surrounding areas. They are influencing churches around the United States and they are sending teams and staff to minister to countries around the globe. What an example!

Sunday afternoon, Rick Muchow had arranged a special lunch for me to share one of my seminars with his worship/music, tech and creative arts staff and leaders. I presented my class on “Planning Multi-sensory Worship”. We had a fun and interactive time of learning and discussing ideas to become even better communicators of the Gospel. I was honored to be there and honored to be able to speak to such a gifted team of leaders.

Granger Community Church (one of the most innovative churches in the country) hosts The Innovative Church Conference September 21-22. There is still time to sign up and there’s also still time to enter the Granger Film Festival.

FYI – Granger also offers a great resource website to all churches: WiredChurches.com (which I’ve used and supported for years). Check it out!

Remember my list of innovative churches that I keep in my head? Well, Journey Church in New York City is one of those churches that I keep my eye on. Guys I’ve known for a while (Senior Pastor-Nelson Searcy and Worship Pastor-Jason Hatley) are leading a dynamic congregation in the heart of NYC. Here’s a new resource from Church Leader Insights and Nelson Searcy.

***Free Shipping on this Resource***

Recorded live during a jam-packed Worship Planning Workshop, this 6-CD set will guide you through proven principles for bringing God pleasing worship to your congregation. The Teaching CDs include discussion on:

Click here for more info or to order.

One of my favorite movies is “Antitrust“. In the movie, the hero, Ryan Phillipe, challenged the Bill Gates-type character, played by Tim Robbins, by offering software and code for free (open source), instead of giving it to the big company to sell. Now please know, I have nothing against companies, churches or independents that sell their resources on sites such as WorshipHouse Media and SermonSpice. I could argue strongly in their favor and know they have valid reasons for supporting their time, effort and money they invested into their projects via online sales. However, when I see examples of those that are challenging the system and doing something different, I think they are worth noting and discussing. I, Greg Atkinson, have a “Top 10 Most Innovative Churches” in America list that I keep in my head. Two churches that are on that list (in my head), as well as on other people’s list such as “The Church Report” and Tim Stevens and Tony Morgan’s list of Top 10 Innovative Churches in America are doing something different based on the open source model.

The first church is LifeChurch.tv, which I visited 2 weeks ago and blogged about last week. LifeChurch.tv is now offering FREE creative content for churches. Here’s a quote from their website: “At LifeChurch.tv, we are passionately motivated by the desire to see lives changed – across as many miles and in as many places as possible. In our pursuit of that goal, it is our intention to maximize the effectiveness of the resources with which God has trusted us. Therefore, this website is available to pastors and churches worldwide to provide access to and usage of an entire library of LifeChurch.tv creative materials – at absolutely no charge. Materials include outlines from a wide variety of message series, with corresponding promotional design graphics and videos, broadcast-quality opening videos and more. And every bit of it is free – all you do is browse through the site to find any resources that might be helpful to you and set-up a login to download those resources. In return, all we ask is that content is used in a non-commercial application in which the overall mission is to lead people to Christ. That’s absolutely it.” – Wow – that’s definitely worth your time to check out!!!

The second church is Seacoast, which I have watched since 12 years ago when I lived in the same city as the mother church. Here’s a quote from their website: The Seacoast All Access website is a collection of resources, links, and other materials produced by and for Seacoast Church. As a Pastor or church leader, we want to make sure you have access to all of our message materials, including streaming video, MP3 downloads and small group study notes for free. If you would like a hard copy or DVD that includes the Long Point campus worship service, we will have to charge you a little for that, but we will try and keep that cost as low as we can!

Open Source Philosophy: We have adopted an open source philosophy and decided to give away free stuff to other churches. If you are a church leader and know a church that might be interested in using our artwork, worship backgrounds, or our messages, please let them know about this site as well. This is another way that Seacoast would like to continue to make a difference around the world. We hope you can use these resources to help your ministry communicate the love of Jesus.” – Again, WOW! Check it out.

I was on the road (or “in the air” would be more appropriate) the past 2 weeks. It’s so good to be back home with my family after 2 trips back to back.

1. Two weeks ago I taught some classes at Church Music Oklahoma, which takes place in Oklahoma City. Like I did last year when I taught at the same conference, I stayed over to visit LifeChurch.tv on Saturday night and Charlie Hall’s church, Bridgeway, on Sunday morning.

• My friend, Don Chapman (www.WorshipIdeas.com) was with me and got to join me on our whirlwind tour of churches. On Saturday night, we attended LifeChuches’s South Oklahoma City campus for their first Saturday night service, then went to the main OKC campus for their 2nd Saturday night service. They both have 4 services on Sunday, too – keep in mind that LifeChurch.tv has 9 campuses, including an “Internet Campus”. Sunday morning we saw Charlie Hall (not leading worship, but he was there) at Bridgeway, the church he helped plant. Their service lasted ’til noon and wouldn’t you know it – we had enough time to make it back to the main LifeChurch.tv campus to catch a little of their 1pm service.

• We drove from OKC back to Dallas from 1:30pm to 4:45pm, so Don could experience Irving Bible Church’s 5pm service. We had hung out earlier in the week with Russ Ware, worship pastor at IBC, so Don really wanted to attend one of their 4 services. We made it just in time to be there for the entire 5pm service and then went home exhausted. Don went back to his home in Greenville, SC and blogged about his experience at LifeChurch.tv (including pictures).

2. This past week I spoke at the Christian Supply Choral Festival in SC, which brought together over 1200 worship leaders from around the country. The cool thing for me is that the conference takes place about 10 minutes from my family/where I grew up, so I got to see my mom and sister and her family. Two things worth mention from this conference (I didn’t get to visit any churches on this trip – I left Saturday afternoon, so I could attend my home church with my family on Sunday):

• The first thing to mention from this 2nd conference is the new movie “Facing the Giants“, which hits theaters next month. Back in February I sat on a panel at NRB with Alex Kendrick, Media Pastor at Sherwood Baptist in Albany, GA. Alex is the writer, director and lead actor in “Facing the Giants”. You may recognize the name from all the media hype. “Facing the Giants” is the movie that the Motion Picture Association rated PG instead of G, because it is so evangelistic. Personally, I’m glad that it got a PG rating (I think more people will attend the movie), but I don’t agree with the reasoning behind the decision.
• When I was with Alex back in February he was discussing a movie that his church had produced called “Flywheel“, which Blockbuster picked up and carries nation-wide!
• At this conference they showed a powerfully moving promo and teaser produced for Church leaders about their new movie, “Facing the Giants”. Now I love sports movies anyway, so I was getting pretty pumped up just watching it. What do you need to know? Go see this movie and tell others to see it. Besides being produced and shot very impressively, it represents Christ and His Church very well.
• The second thing to mention from the SC conference was a 2 hour conversation I had with Rick Muchow, worship pastor at Saddleback. We discused media in worship, my class on multi-sensory worship and a city-wide worship project that I’m currently working on and you’ll hear more about soon. I was surprised to learn that Saddleback has multiple venues and worship styles on their campus. I was intrigued and fascinated as he was telling me about them. Keep in mind, these are all on the same campus. They are also launching their first off-site video venue and are pretty excited about it’s potential.
• For me (and I told him this), it was extremely encouraging to hear one of the main leaders at the 2nd largest church in the country talking about how they can improve and what they think they can do better and more effectively. There’s a lesson there for us all.

Well, that was my most recent roadtrip. Next month I’m teaching at the National MinistyCOM conference in Phoenix. If you haven’t already, sign up and plan on attending this event. I’ve invited 2 friends of mine to share in my class with me on “Creative Synergy”. Shawn Wood, Communications Pastor at Seacoast Church and Anthony Coppedge from Anthony Coppedge Consulting will be around and sharing in our discussion of creative synergy, which, by the way, is the name of my new weekly podcast “Creative Synergy“, featuring Anthony Coppedge and myself (more to come on that in the near future).