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I'm an idiot.

Last night I was working by my fireplace in an overstuffed chair--my typical evening location--and when the fire needed poking, I carefully set my MacBook Pro laptop on the wide arm of the chair, something I have done hundreds of times. My iPhone was plugged into the USB port, so I gingerly placed it on the laptop next to the trackpad. With my back turned to the chair, poking at the fire, I heard my wife gasp from across the room as she watched the Mac begin to fall. I heard a sickening thud as it hit the floor, and I whipped around to see it lying on the floor, with a colorful, chaotic display of lines on the screen. There was a spot near the lower left corner of the screen that almost looked like broken glass.

(The image at right is not my computer, but it looked something like that. Photo credit: Jared.)

I surmised that what had happened was the laptop slipped and fell, and my iPhone, tethered to its USB port, followed with a jerk and smacked into the screen, effectively shattering the fragile liquid crystal. There was a strip of undamaged area on the right side of the screen that allowed me to see that my Mac was still alive and working, but the rest of the screen was gone and wasn't coming back.

I bought AppleCare when I bought my Mac, but unfortunately, AppleCare doesn't cover accidental damage. I knew that I was going to have to cover the replacement cost myself. My first instinct was to schedule a Genius Bar appointment at the nearest Apple store--about 35 miles away. There was one morning slot available for today, so I booked it. Then I went to my office at the church, where I had a spare LCD monitor, hooked up my Mac to the monitor and to a 500GB USB drive, and began doing a full backup with Time Machine, Apple's back-up program.

While I was backing up the machine (which took several hours), I did some research into what sort of repair costs I might be facing, and what I learned was disheartening, to say the least: several posters in the Mac forums were saying that I could expect to have to pay up to $900 to get my display replaced. That seemed ridiculous to me, so I briefly entertained the notion that perhaps I could do this repair myself. The LCD screen was available from at least one supplier for less than $300. I even found a series of videos that showed how to disassemble the MacBook Pro and replace all of the major components. But the longer I watched the videos, the less confident I became that I could actually do this repair myself without inflicting further damage or otherwise botching up the job. So I resigned myself to biting the bullet at the Apple Genius Bar.

So this morning I drove to Lenexa, Kansas to the Apple Store there, waited in line until the appointed time, explained the situation to the guy who helped me, and was told that (1) they would have to send the machine to a repair center for a few days, (2) my AppleCare coverage would not cover this repair, and (3) the total cost would be $1255.

I stood there, literally in shock for a few moments, and pondered what to do. I had just browsed the tables at the Mac store, and had seen a brand-new 21.5-inch iMac selling for $1199--less than the cost of this repair. It seemed insane to me. The upside was that if I had Apple do the repair, my AppleCare coverage would be "reinstated," so to speak. But there were 1,255 downsides.

The genius at the Genius Bar told me that there were other non-Apple repair shops in the area who could do the repair, probably for a lot less, but that he wasn't allowed to actually recommend one to me. I briefly considered just springing for a new MacBook Pro, which would definitely be cool, but which I definitely could not afford. So I returned, dejected, to my car and sat in the parking lot for a few minutes, thinking over my situation, and praying that God would help me choose wisely what to do.

So I fished for my iPhone, the very instrument that (combined with my stupidity) had caused the damage to my laptop screen, and fired up the Safari browser. I Googled "mac repair lawrence ks" (I live in Lawrence, KS), and found DoctorDave's site, and decided to give DoctorDave a call. He was absolutely great--he said he could probably do the repair in a day or so, if his supplier in Olathe could get the part to him quickly. He said he'd call me right back, which he did, and he suggested I just take the machine directly to the shop where he got his parts--Mission: Repair, in Olathe, Kansas. It would cost a third of Apple's price, and they could do it while I waited. He had called ahead, verified that they had the replacement part, and then he texted me their address and phone number. Dave was careful to explain that this repair would void my AppleCare coverage, but unless I was willing to fork over $1255 to Apple, my AppleCare coverage was useless for my accidentally-damaged machine, anyway. I did the math, and decided it made sense to skip the Apple solution.

I called Mission: Repair, and they said that they could do the repair for $350, plus about another $50 to do it while I waited. They told me how to get there from the Apple Store in Lenexa (I was still sitting in the parking lot), and I drove over there, and they fixed it right there and then. It took a while--more than an hour--which didn't surprise me a bit, after I saw the repair videos. The total bill, with tax, was $413.38, about a third of what Apple wanted to charge me, and done in a few hours instead of a few days. I'm typing this on my repaired machine, about 18 hours after my laptop crashed to my floor.

I'm amazed. I'm humbled, also, that God made a way for me to get this repair done for a lot less than I thought it would cost, and I'm so grateful for DoctorDave's kindness in recommending the Mission: Repair shop to me. He went out of his way to help me out, and that is very cool.

I share this, partly out of gratitude towards the people who helped me get my Mac back into working condition, and partly to encourage you in case you ever face a similar situation. Just because Apple says it's $1255, don't assume that's your only option.

If you've been listening to the Geeks and God podcast, over the past few years, you've probably heard by now that Rob and MF have decided to end the podcast. I wondered, when they went on an extended hiatus recently, whether this might be the end. I had been watching my iTunes podcast feeds for a while, hoping to see a new episode show up, and when it did, I knew right away (from the title, "The End") that my fears were real.

Geeks and God was a really cool show, and you can still listen to most of the episodes by visiting the Geeks and God Web site. If you're involved in church technology at all, do yourself a huge favor and go check out the topics there. The discussion forums are still active, as well, and there is a wealth of knowledge and content there.

Hosts Rob and MF are working on a "secret" project that they are pretty excited about, and I'm looking forward to hearing more about it in the coming weeks. Thanks, Rob and MF, for three and a half years of great podcasting, great content, and for your service to the Church. Well done, gentlemen.

I know how it goes--if you're serving a small, under-resourced (read, "broke") church, someone donated a video projector, maybe even a computer, too, but software (even basic stuff) might be out of the question for a while. But you are not without options. Here are a couple of solutions that work just fine and won't set you back hundreds of dollars--they're free.

ImpressSome churches get along just fine using Powerpoint for projection, and fortunately, there is a great open-source alternative called Impress. It's part of the OpenOffice.org suite of applications, all of which are powerful programs, and most of which can produce MS-Office-compatible documents. There are versions of OpenOffice for Windows, MacOS, and Linux--in fact, many Linux distributions come with OpenOffice already included. (And if you're really strapped for cash, why not use a free OS, too?)

OpenLPThe other option is actually open source lyric projection software: it's called OpenLP, and you can get it at http://openlp.org. I've played with OpenLP just a little while, and granted, not under the optimal conditions (I actually ran it under Vista, running on Parallels on my MacBook Pro). No, you won't get the same bells and whistles and nerd-knobs that you'll find on the commercial products like Media Shout, Easy Worship, ProPresenter and others, but if you need to get the job done for free, OpenLP seems to be up to the task.

One advantage of OpenLP, particularly for the cash-strapped church, is that its system requirements are fairly modest, compared with some of the commercial packages out there, meaning that you can probably run OpenLP on hardware that might be adequate to run the commercial apps. You'd be hard-pressed to run Easy Worship on a 500 MHz machine with 64MB of RAM, but that's the minimum for OpenLP on Windows at this time. (I think this may mean that you could potentially run OpenLP on a netbook-type PC, though I haven't actually tried it yet.)

Although this isn't for the faint of heart, you can compile OpenLP for Linux, and apparently there are a few hearty souls who've gotten it running on MacOS, as well (I've seen the screenshots!).

OpenLP is currently at version 1.x; there is talk of version 2, and I'll be watching for it--this could be pretty cool, particularly if a user community arises around OpenLP as such communities have arisen around certain other open-source projects. The beginnings of that community are there--there is already a collection of user-contributed themes available for download.

I had the privilege of attending the National Worship Leader Conference in Kansas City last month, and it was a great time. One of the things I enjoyed was chatting with other worship leaders and media people and learning how they do things, especially since I wear both the worship leader and media guy hats at my church. I also enjoyed talking to the company representatives for MediaShout and EasyWorship. MediaShout has rolled out version 4, and EasyWorship is about to roll out their 2009 version, so it was cool to see where these products are going, and especially EasyWorship, because that's what we currently use in our church.

As I think I've mentioned before, I'm really not a huge fan of EasyWorship--it's the application I inherited when I assumed leadership in media at my church, and frankly, EasyWorship's licensing is a better deal than any of the other projection applications I've seen so far. As it turns out, MediaShout, a major sponsor of the conference, was used in the main worship sessions at the conference facility, so I got a good look at how MediaShout works throughout the week of the conference--in fact, I sat behind the MediaShout operator during many of the main sessions, so I got to look over the shoulder of the operators during the worship sessions.

Both MediaShout and EasyWorship provide downloadable demos, so you can try before you buy, which is cool. There are differences in the licensing and costs--when you buy EasyWorship (list price, $399), you get a site license, which means you can install it on as many machines as you like, and use it simultaneously on all of them. I had a hard time finding licensing information for MediaShout on their Web site, but it appears that you can buy a single license for $429, and add additional licenses for more money.

Frankly, we ended up with EasyWorship not because it is necessarily a superior product, but because the licensing is more flexible, and thus it made for a cheaper overall solution.

But I'm a Mac guy, and although it will be a while before our church can afford shiny new Mac hardware for the sanctuary, I'm interested in finding a good Mac solution, for several reasons:

1. I'm more comfortable with the MacOS than with Windows
2. In my experience, the MacOS is a more stable platform than Windows
3. My Windows machines are constantly having issues with viruses and other types of spyware and malware
4. I believe that it's easier to train people on the MacOS

(Another issue I deal with is that I produce video content with my Mac, and EasyWorship requires an additional codec to play it. A native MacOS projection app would presumably have no trouble playing QuickTime movies. And I'm not likely to switch to the Windows platform for my video production needs.)

I'm not trying to get into a Mac vs. Windows religious debate--these are just my opinions. Anyway, in my conversations with another worship leader at the conference, I learned a little bit about ProPresenter for the Mac, and when I got home, I downloaded the free demo version, and I'm pretty impressed with it--except for the licensing. ProPresenter costs $399 for a single license--you can install it on as many machines as you like, but you can only use it on one machine at a time. This is handy--I can have a copy on my laptop, for creating worship materials, and a copy on the sanctuary Mac (or I could, if I had a Mac for the sanctuary). But at our church, there are three different venues where projection software is used simultaneously, so I'd have to buy the site license ($799)--not to mention at least three more Macs.

Financial realities being what they are, this probably isn't going to happen any time soon, and I'm not sure it is wise to require my volunteer projection operators to learn two different systems, so this is all really just speculation at this point. But it's stuff I have to think about, because I want to keep moving forward with our media projection stuff.

I really like ProPresenter so far, but to be fair, I need to point out that both MediaShout and EasyWorship are planning MacOS releases--MediaShout's Mac version is coming fairly soon, I am told, and EasyWorship's Mac version is slated for a 2010 release. I have to admit that if EasyWorship's Mac version is released with the same licensing as their Windows version, it will be difficult not to at least consider moving in that direction. There would presumably be enough similarities between the Windows and Mac versions that I wouldn't have the same training challenges I might otherwise have. But do I want to wait another year before making the switch?

Ah, decisions, decisions... If you have any advice for me, I'd love to hear it.

I've been working as Director of Media and Communications at my church for a little over five months now, and it seems like a good time to take stock of how I'm doing and what I'm learning this far into things. It's been a great job for me, in that I feel like I was made for this stuff. I'm a nerd, I love working with technology, and I know enough about this stuff to be able to trouble-shoot and solve most of the problems I encounter day-to-day. After working in a job I really didn't enjoy for many years, this is a welcome change.

The main problem is that there just isn't enough time. My position is part-time, and although I'm only supposed to be working 25 hours per week (or thereabouts), most weeks I have to work a fair amount more than that just to get the essential stuff done for weekend services, let alone get anything else done--and there's a long list of things that need to be done that are just having to wait right now. But enough of that...on to my observations and lessons learned:

1. I really don't like EasyWorship very much. But in all fairness, it could be that the hardware I'm running it on is just too old and tired (and underpowered) to run it well. And I'm going to give EW an opportunity to redeem itself by getting it running on some newer, more powerful hardware--then we'll see. But that's not the only issue--this past Sunday, I was trying to load a video into EW, and for some reason, EW had a problem with it. (That's not an unusual occurrence, but this was a WMV file--shouldn't have been a problem.) So EW hung in a loop, complaining that there was a problem with the database, but I couldn't quit EW--couldn't even force-quit it. In the end, my only recourse was to reboot, and on this particular hardware, that's a 10-minute process (no kidding). I ended up having to reboot three or four times before I could get EW's database rebuilt and get the offending file removed. I took the video over to my Mac and converted it to MPEG-1, and after that, EW was happy. The main reason we ended up using EW was the licensing issue--EW allows you to install on as many different machines as you like in your church, while most competing products charge you a license fee for each copy. I haven't used any of the other products in my brief tenure in this job, so I have no idea whether there's something better out there, but EW just seems antiquated at times, and sometimes it just isn't very intuitive. The only similar application I've seen for the Mac is ProWorship, and it didn't seem ready for prime-time; the demo kept crashing on me. And the licensing scheme isn't very economical.

2. You can't start too early on a video production project. Two days before the "air date" is not the time to discover you're missing three key shots.

3. Volunteers are absolutely essential to our media ministry--there's just too much to do. Recruitment and training has to be an ongoing part of my job.

4. Very few people seem to understand even the most basic principles of how audio-visual gear works. No matter how detailed your instructions may be, people will still manage to operate the gear incorrectly.

5. If you make it look easy, people will think that it IS easy.

6. You're really going to want to do everything people ask you to do. It is not possible, so you have to learn how to say "no."

I'm sure I'll have more observations and more lessons learned over time--in the meantime, maybe I can learn from you!

As a Mac user in a largely Windows environment, I've had to make a few adjustments. For example, our sanctuary projection is done from a Windows laptop running Easy Worship--a fine program that does pretty much what we ask it to do, but it has a little trouble working with Quicktime movie files, which is what my Mac likes to produce. I know I haven't totally figured out the world of Windows video codecs and such, and maybe there are ways to deal with this that I haven't discovered yet, but in the meantime, I've found a solution that has made my life much, much easier: Xilisoft Video Converter.

This little under-$60 utility has paid for itself quickly in time saved and hassles averted. All it does is convert video files from one format to another, and as far as I can tell, it can convert from almost any format to almost any other format, with a great deal of control over all of the details, such as resolution, bit rate, audio quality, frame rate--you name it.

I discovered Xilisoft while doing some research on Web video for a side project a couple of months ago, but I had forgotten about it until recently, when my pastor wanted to use a video from YouTube as a sermon illustration. It's not hard to download YouTube videos--there are plenty of Firefox add-ons that will allow you to save the Flash video file from YouTube or other video-sharing services, but the challenge at that point is to convert that .flv file into a format that Easy Worship can deal with--such as MPEG-1. Prior to my purchase of Xilisoft, I used to use a Web-based conversion service, and it worked well, but I was always a little nervous about what would happen if that service disappeared one day, or if it was so busy that I couldn't get a conversion done quickly, or if it couldn't convert a larger file--I suppose I'm a little paranoid about such things.

There was once an excellent Mac shareware application for this purpose, called VideoHub, but its developer decided to discontinue it. There is also ffmpegx for Mac, but in my experience, ffmpegx doesn't always work well. Enter Xilisoft--this application is available in three different versions, the $39.95 Standard edition, the $49.95 Platinum edition, and the $59.95 Ultimate edition, with a few more capabilities in the more expensive versions. I opted for the Ultimate edition.

Xilisoft Video Converter couldn't be much easier to use--you just choose your desired output format from a drop-down menu, then click a button to add the file(s) you wish to convert, and then click the convert button, and Xilisoft takes it from there. It's pretty fast, too, on my MacBook Pro.

I realize this post probably sounds a lot like an advertisement, but just for the record, I'm not getting paid for this endorsement--I'm merely a satisfied user. You can try Xilisoft out by just downloading it and running it without registration. You won't be able to convert long videos, and it will only convert half of a shorter video, but it's enough to give you a good idea of the capabilities of the program.

If you're a Mac person in church media work, do yourself a favor and check Xilisoft out. (And there's a Windows version, too!)

In my role as the resident media guy at my church, a new role for me, I'm finding that I have to wear a lot of different hats, figuratively speaking (although my ball-cap collection is pretty impressive, I must say). Maybe you can relate to this. I'm responsible for:

• Sanctuary projection--the stuff that appears on-screen during worship services
• The church newsletter
• Supporting the IT needs of the church staff and ministry leaders
• The church Web site
• Media and technology planning, purchasing, equipment maintenance, etc.
• Our church management system--we're switching to a new one soon
• The church pictorial directory
• Video production
• The CD/tape ministry
• and a lot of other stuff I haven't figured out yet

Hats--photo by Lin Pernille Photography

In addition to this, I am a contemporary worship leader, so I'm planning worship services, leading our worship team, and directing rehearsals. My lovely wife and I also lead a small-group Bible study with young adults. In other words, practically all of my time is spent in church-related work of one sort or another. I'm not complaining about this, by the way--I chose this life, and I love serving the church. But I'm supposed to be fitting all of this into about 25 hours a week (except for the Bible study, which is a volunteer thing).

The only thing that makes this remotely possible is that there are teams of volunteers who help me with most of these responsibilities. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my predecessor, who recruited, organized and trained our sanctuary projection team, our CD/tape ministry team, the pictorial directory team, and the media teams for the children and youth ministries in our church. And the secret to ongoing success, I think, is going to be in continuing to keep these teams engaged and motivated.

One part-time person simply can't do it all--even a full-time person would be hard-pressed to manage the work load that I've described above. Most churches don't have the resources to hire enough people to do this stuff well, nor are they able to offer a salary that is commensurate with the kind of experience and expertise that is necessary to do the job, so you have to find people who are energized and willing to give freely of their time and skill to serve the Lord and his church. I am so thankful for the people who do just that, week in and week out, year after year.

Volunteers make the church work--no doubt about it. My hats--all of them--are off to all of you who give so generously of your time and skills to serve.

Mixing Desk--Photo: amishsteve
Welcome to my new blog, Media and the Message. The title is obviously a take-off on communication theorist Marshall McLuhan's famous phrase, "the medium is the message." McLuhan argued that the medium that carries a message influences how that message is perceived. Those of us who produce and present the message of the Gospel of Christ in our churches using various forms of media are well aware of the ways in which media, properly and skillfully applied, can enhance and help drive that message home.

In this blog, it is my intent to reflect on how we use media in the church, and how we can use it more effectively. In my church, I am a contemporary worship leader and the Director of Media and Communications, and my primary job in both of those arenas is to help create worship experiences that help church attenders connect with God in profound and life-changing ways. As a worship leader, I lead a team of musicians and singers whose job it is to bring our congregation into the presence of God on Sunday mornings--we are literally up front and on the stage. As Director of Media and Communications, I lead teams of production and operations people who work almost exclusively behind the scenes. In both cases, though, the "win" for our teams is realized when the attention of the people in our congregation is focused not on the worship team, and not on the media that our media teams produce and present, but rather on God and his kingdom.

In other words, if we are doing our jobs well, people in the congregation will not notice us--their attention will be drawn instead to God and to the message that is being presented from the pulpit.

If you are working with media in your church, it is my hope that this blog will be helpful to you. I'm going to try to highlight useful church media resources, and bring ideas and commentary on how we can hone our skills and develop excellent craftsmanship in our media creations and productions. I hope that you will feel free to add your voice to the content that is presented here, by commenting on the articles that appear here.

Whether you serve your church at the sound board, or in the projection booth, or at the lighting console, or in the audio or video editing room, or as a Web developer, or even laying out church newsletters and other printed media, I am going to try to provide content here that will help you do what you do more effectively and more efficiently.

(Photo credit: amishsteve.)