Church IT - Supporting ministry with IT

My children often join me at the front or back of church if I’m playing or operating the mixer respectively. We are at the more relaxed of our two services so I don’t think it’s a problem (despite the attraction of the multicoloured buttons and sliders on the mixer - and my guitar amp come to think of it!).
Actually I’d go further than that and say it would be a problem if I sent them away. I was rather pleased to find this video of Linus Torvalds at the Linux World awards a few years ago.
You’ll have to wait a little but about a minute in his children run on stage to be with him. That’s the kind of open attitude I think we should see more of.

Stallman receiving Torvalds award at LinuxWorld conf 1999

My children often join me at the front or back of church if I’m playing or operating the mixer respectively. We are at the more relaxed of our two services so I don’t think it’s a problem (despite the attraction of the multicoloured buttons and sliders on the mixer - and my guitar amp come to think of it!).
Actually I’d go further than that and say it would be a problem if I sent them away. I was rather pleased to find this video of Linus Torvalds at the Linux World awards a few years ago.
You’ll have to wait a little but about a minute in his children run on stage to be with him. That’s the kind of open attitude I think we should see more of.

Stallman receiving Torvalds award at LinuxWorld conf 1999

I’m not normally given to extolling the virtues of a plain technology, what you can do with it is much more important. But I think an exception might be in order.

If you’ve not heard of XML it stands for eXtensible Markup Language, and if that sounds similar to HTML, the language of the web, you’d be right. XML is designed to be more flexible as you can define what XML is used for, so it is equally at home handling a home CD collection, or organising songs in OpenSong.

There’s my link to what you can do with it. The creators of OpenSong decided to use XML for the songs, which was a very good decision in my opinion. Someone  on the OpenSong forums asked if it is possible to convert songs to Word or PDF. Actually conversion isn’t strictly speaking necessary because Word can open the files without any extra help. Well, baring renaming the files to songname.xml because the OpenSong files don’t have a file extension. One small detail I would change.

It’s not just Word either, OpenOffice Writer opened the song too. In fact in some respects slightly better because the XML tags are represented as plain text so a simple find and replace macro will remove them.

So why the praise for XML? Well, because of the way it was created it is possible for two programs (OK three OpenSong, Word and Writer - I’m lumping the latter two together) to share information without any kind of modification. Even if they couldn’t, because XML is text based it’s human readable. In theory at least, though OpenSong files are very clear and easy to read.

So it’s a great format in my opinion, and one that I hope thrives.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll have probably stuck with the same Bible translation for years. In my case, my church’s choice has a lot to do with it. That and the fact that the pictures in the Good News are an excellent way of finding passages!

Those wanting some suggestions will find the Bible Version Selection Tool most helpful. The basic version offers serveral different aims from private study to public reading. The detailed options offer a lot more control, such as whether cultural references are translated.

You can view the records for each Bible too, which is a useful way of getting some background on unfamiliar translations, as I was with the Message.

This caught my eye in the Blogroll the other day. My first impressions are that Grou.ps is another DIY social networking services, not that that is in any way a bad thing. Setting up collaboration tools is not always easy and can quickly become a big distraction from the job in hand.

Registration is free and only requires an email address

I picked up a copy of Reaching the Unchurched: Some lessons from Willow Creek last night and had a quick read. It’s only 20 pages so only took as long as some updates to Windows.

What struck me was that even 16 years on it is still very relevant and challenging (yes I know how old the Bible is!).  It made me think about how seeker friendly our services are and I fear we could do better.

It’s always hard because many parts of church become habit.

A good example was at church on Sunday when we had a baptism, so lots of visitors compared to normal. The person doing the intercessions (first bit of jargon) finished off in the usual Anglican way ‘Merciful Father…’ and those of us in the know finished off with ‘accept these prayers, for the sake of your Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ Amen’. Now we didn’t announce where these words could be found (I do this all the time as well) so there was no way the visitors could have known what to say. For the record, I didn’t have to look the words up.

I feel bad about it now, but it didn’t cross my mind at the time, which only makes me feel worse!

The booklet hit the nail on the head with the assertion that seeker friendly services cannot be the same as ordinary church. What I’m looking for in terms of spiritual refreshment isn’t going to happen.

If you want a read, there are copies still floating around. I found five on the Amazon Marketplace.

I’m making a start on Mission Shaped Church now. Currently half price from Church House Publishing with some sample chapters available as PDF.

As it was an All Age Worship (family) service this morning, I was operating OpenSong as well as the mixer.  Generally quite straightforward as there isn’t too much to have to react to, apart from some swapping around of radio mics.

The only snag was at the end of the service when the words I had entered for ‘The Spirit Lives to set us free’ turned out to be different from those in the hands of the singers. Luckily we have a second monitor that points towards the music group so they were able to switch to that without any problems.

Being a techie I find myself casting around for a solution that involves some form of electronic wizardry. Perhaps it is time to push harder for internet access in the church.  Then we could have a central place to store information about the service.

Another solution is to run through the service in more detail (or indeed at all) before Sunday, as per the excellent advice to be found in the podcasts of Creative Synergy. As much as I agree however, it is harder for a small parish church with a limited headcount.

Perhaps this also inspires a feature request for OpenSong. A portable version would allow me to carry it around on a USB key so I would always know exactly what is on the notebook. Part of the problem was the service organiser had looked on the notebook for the words but I had copied them straight from Junior Praise that included an extra verse.

Of course, as OpenSong is opensource, there’s no reason for me not to have a go myself, perhaps it’s time to stop just lurking in the forum.

Then again, maybe I’m dwelling too much on the negative. It was only one song, and the rest of the service went without any problems.

I’ve been playing around with Ableton Live for a little while now and I’m very impressed. I’ll post some more specific comments soon but in the meantime there are some informative posts over at Thoughts on drumming, programming and church . .

Also check out some of the videos on the page, especially those of  Abraham Laboriel Jr.

There’s probably enough in that title for a whole book. Which is sort of why I
bring it up having just read this review about a book on the subject over at bnet.com

5. “Jesus CEO” by Laurie Beth Jones (Hyperion, 1995)

Publisher’s blurb: “By harnessing three categories of strength behind Jesus’ leadership techniques (the strength of self-mastery, the strength of action, and the strength of relationships), each of us can become the empowered leaders that the next millennium will require.”

Excerpt: “I believe that Jesus had to go into the wilderness to find out who he was — that a wilderness experience was as much a part of his shaping and destiny as it is yours and mine.”

Why it’s overrated: While many managers think they’re God and manage accordingly, the historical Jesus espoused a communal lifestyle in direct opposition to (Roman) capitalism.

Read this instead: “The Book of Proverbs” (in the Bible)

Why: A collection of wisdom that completely transcends religion.

Excerpt: “Better a dry crust and with it peace than a house where feast and dispute go together.”

On the subject of proverbs I would also recommend ‘Making Life Work’ by Bill Hybels . Based on Proverbs there is lots of helpful advice. Hard reading but rewarding to put into practice

Perry Noble dot com » Blog Archive » Eight Things I Think Every Worship Leader Should Know

Some good advice here. I might add some hard advice. I recognise the need for a base level of talent in worship groups but should that be a reason for excluding someone with a right heart for worship with an instrument even though they are not very good?
Either way, the calls for studying Scripture and good teamwork are something we can all learn from.