Greg Atkinson

“Be Still” from SermonVideos.com is one of my favorite videos. I show it at every conference I speak at. This Sunday my home church used it in worship. My desire in starting this blog was to share “church video ideas” from time to time – to not just tell the ‘who’ and ‘what’, but to talk about the ‘how’.

My home church (Fellowship Dallas) used the video just like I did at the last church where I served. They started off the service with 2 upbeat/celebratory songs, then had the video “Be Still” come right in after the second song. The video starts with a loud “Shhhhhh!!!”, then is silent for the remainder of it. The people just stood there silently and watched the words unfold on the screens. The video ended and our worship pastor, Sammy Davenport, softly began to sing and play “The Heart of Worship” (When the music fades and all is stripped away…). Many people commented that it was a very moving time during the morning worship.

Our pastor was preaching on being still before God and waiting on Him, so the video and the way it was used in worship really helped put things in perspective. Singing words like “I’m coming back to the heart of worship and it’s all about You, Jesus” was perfect to follow the video. If you don’t have the video “Be Still” in your media library, I strongly encourage you to download it.

WorshipGraphics is offering a FREE download of their “Real Heroes” series through Friday. Download it now, because it will go back to being a $10.95 product THIS FRIDAY at 12 noon, Eastern Time..

WorshipHouse Media has added a new “September 11th” tab to their homepage. Their new 9/11 area has several resources that you could use if your church is planning a service of rememberance. Check out the brand new video “Cross and Towers” from Atlas Productions.

My friends at Flashlight Films have partnered with WorshipHouse Media to release a new collection each week. Each collection will be WorshipHouse’s featured House Collection. The guys at Flashlight have the “skills to pay the bills”. Their videos, countdowns, loops and backgrounds are top quality and worth your attention.

My Highlights:

The “Run the Race” loop (I love this and would definitely use it!)

The “Run the Race” mini-movie

Many of you are probably familiar with my friends Len Wilson and Jason Moore of Midnight Oil Productions. They have been busy this summer. Here’s a recap of the latest from MOP:

Countdowns volume 1 and Loops volume 1
Two new volumes of videos, including (7) seven 3-minute countdown videos and (10) ten motion background videos that coordinate with some of their most popular themes.

Downloadable media
Their entire spark and flame library (including exclusive unreleased media from the upcoming volume 4 set) is now available for immediate download. The coolest part is you can mix and match stills, images, loops and more to get just what you need of a single theme for worship–a feature available only through the Midnight Oil Store.

***Midnight Oil Plus***
Join their new annual membership program to get free products, coupons for media, software, seminars, and more.

Articles
This summer MOP published a number of new articles. Read them all on their site. Here’s a cool one entitled “19 Ways to Use Media in Worship“.

***Midnight Oil Forum***
Launched this past May, this forum is a growing community of creative folks that like to explore what it means to communicate the Gospel to this culture.

And if that’s not enough, stay tuned: These guys are hard at work on spark and flame volume 4, as well as some new Christmas resources that will be available soon!

SermonCentral 2.0 is on the way! You can view and review the Beta Site today. (Or continue using the existing site for the next several weeks.)

They’ve been working for four-and-a-half months to bring church leaders a better sermon preparation experience. At SermonCentral their mission is to empower church leaders in biblical, effective, and efficient sermon preparation so people might experience a relationship with Christ and embrace all he offers and expects. They believe the site will help you do this with enhanced functionality, including:

• A fresh look and feel
• A friendly, enhanced navigation system with more power to get where you want to go from each page
• Community participation, including:
  • Comment on sermons you like—or have questions about.
  • Offer testimonial words of encouragement to contributors who have helped you in your own sermon preparation
• Browse sermons by contributor and by denomination
• Advanced search-within-a-search capabilities for PRO members
• Browse contributors by denomination, position, and location
• New improved PRO and Contributor dashboards
• Merging of login accounts (basic, contributor, and PRO) so that you may access all functionality with a single login.
• More still to come, including 23,000 more fresh illustrations!
• Free Corner for Pastors. As a special feature for all subscribers to the SermonCentral.com eNewsletter, they have a line up of free gifts for you, starting today. You can visit the Free Corner Page, too.

Of cours, a site of this magnitude won’t automatically be bug free. So when you visit, they’d love to have your feedback.

My friends at MediaShout are giving away a FREE 5 minute countdown from JAMAN Productions.

I realize many of you know BluefishTV. I use that title to call attention to a new promo video that they did to promote their ministry. I live in Dallas, TX, which is where BluefishTV is based. I’ve known of their company for a while and have shown several of their videos in my workshops. Today, I thought I’d finally go over for a visit and meet the people behind the company. I was given the grand tour and got to go to lunch and spend some time with Justin, who has a great heart for ministry and a passion to see Bluefish be a resource to small churches.

Bluefish’s quote: “We are a team that is passionate about Christ and that loves to support the local church. We feel that Christian video will continue to play a larger role as volunteer teachers and church leaders look for creative ways to engage their audience.”

QUESTION: What do BluefishTV and iTunes have in common?
ANSWER: They both have downloadable videos for $1.99.

Say what??? You read right – all downloadable videos are just $1.99!

*** Of special note is their new series “Storytellers” – which I love. My favorite video is from the Noah series with guest speaker, Chris Seay, pastor of Ecclesia Church in Houston, TX. We actually used this video clip at my church about a month ago.

Cool company. Cool people. I’ll be blogging about them more in the future.

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.