• I’m finishing up my Master of Divinity with Biblical Counseling from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and would love to work in a church or a parachurch ministry giving counsel to people from the Bible.
• I’ve been on staff and before that volunteering at Journey Church (and also working at my seminary) doing production stuff – video and audio editing, lighting programming, web, and all that sort of stuff. I love tech.
• For over a decade, I’ve built websites (sometimes for fun, sometimes as a job or part of a job) and I would consider myself an advanced dabbler. Along with a friend, I’ve maintained a web host for a few years now.
• Another area I love is making computers and tech stuff in general work. While in college, I actually was one of the first employees of the NGCSU Help Desk.

Diverse, huh? If anyone reading this knows of any jobs in the Atlanta (especially Northeast GA) area, please shoot me a note.

Now we have 6 Source IV Jrs up for front light – two on each of the three zones (left, center, and right). We also have 8 stationary white & amber LEDs (Elation Design LED 36WA), 6 moving head RGB LEDs (Elation Design LED 36MH) – 2 of which light the side scrims on the stage and 4 which are front lights, and 5 stationary RGB LEDs (Elation ELED Tri 64B) – 4 of which light the center scrim on the stage and 1 which is front light. We are also backlighting the pastor with 3 more Source IV Jrs. Finally, we have two scrim columns off stage that are light by 4 stationary RGB LEDs (American DJ Par 64) – 2 up and 2 down.

All of this runs from a DMX splitter/amplifier (Fleenor 125 – 5 outputs all in 5 wire DMX adapted to 3 – long story) that is wired to our LanBox that can be programmed or controlled via Mac or PC and also controlled via MIDI (we use a Kenton Control Freak Studio 16 slider controller).

All this sounds very complicated and it is to set up but allows our CG Operator to change light settings with literally the push of a button. This is great since he or she is also running ProPresenter simultaneously. We may go with a different method in the future but this definitely works simply and easily for our awesome volunteers to run on the weekends.

There are tons of philosophies on this out there. Everything from Freudian psychology to Christian pop culture (His Needs / Her Needs or more recently the unbiblical concept of a “love tank” in Gary Chapman’s Five Love Languages) purports there are these unmet needs that people have. Well, I’d like to challenge that. A need is something someone can’t live without. The most obvious physical needs are food, water, and /maybe/ shelter. Not sure on that one. Other than those, everything else is a want.

There is one other very important need that I believe outranks food and water. That is a personal relationship with the God of the universe through His Son Jesus. Without that, we’re all just dead men and women anyway.

• “Nine Reasons I Don’t Like Multi-site Churches, from a Guy Who Should” By Thomas White – A young, tech-savvy seminary professor explains why he’s not getting on board the multi-site revolution.
• “Exegetical Critique of Multi-Site: Disassembling the Church?” By Grant Gaines – A pastor-scholar weighs the exegetical arguments in favor of the multi-site church and finds them wanting.
• “Theological Critique of Multi-Site: Leadership Is the Church” By Jonathan Leeman – The local church on earth is constituted by a gathering of Christians, which means the multi-site and multi-service “church” is not a church, but an association of churches.
• “Historical Critique of Multi-Site: Not Over My Dead Body” By Bobby Jamieson – Regardless of the fact that multi-site churches haven’t existed for most of the past four hundred years, historic Congregationalists and Baptists have a lot to say against them.
• “The Alternative to Multi-Site: Why Don’t We Plant?” By Jonathan Leeman – The multi-site church phenomenon looks like a capitulation to consumeristic culture. We should plant instead.

Now, I’m not going to address everything brought up in them, but the first article is really short and digestable, so I’m going to tackle the nine points addressed in it. Here goes:

1. A Contradiction In Terms

Here Thomas White argues that the Greek word ecclesia (the word we translate “church”) means “gathering.” He then says “The oft heard mantra “one church many locations” is a contradiction in terms.” Since that’s what Journey is, I want to speak to that. The church is the assembled people – the gathered people. When Journey gathers at NE, it’s a gathering of Journey. Same at NW. It’s not all of the gathering, as not all members of Journey gather every week. Other churches generally have four times more people on “membership” roles than those that actually attend. Journey is about the exact inverse of that, I believe. Maybe those other churches should be looking for where the rest of their church went before they start asking if what we’re doing is biblical. I’m just saying.

2. Spiritual Colonization

The argument here is “mini-dioceses” that rule the campuses from a central location. Well, at Journey we don’t have a “central location” besides that of Raleigh (currently). Our goal is to reach Raleigh for Christ and there’s not a specific area of Raleigh that we’re based out of. While we spend more time during the week at NE, that’s just because we can’t get into NW during the week – it meets in a theater. Campus locations will grow as we launch new ones and such, but our location is Raleigh. Not a “central location.”

3. Encouraging Consumerism

He argues that the more locations, the more variety you get and people can shop around. I think consumerism is way more likely in a church with one location. Case in point: mega-churches. When we launch a campus, we need a ton of people to get involved to volunteer there or fill the places at the current campus that were emptied by the launch team. At Journey, we have hundreds more volunteers than single-site churches.

4. Cannibalizing the Body of Christ

He points out a multi-site that “partnered” with a smaller church, then replaced it’s staff and sold it’s stuff. A agree with his point that this is a bad thing. However, I’ve never seen this happen and I suspect it’s not a common occurrence.

5. Shepherds Who Don’t Know the Sheep

This point addresses Hebrews 13:17 where ministers of the gospel will be held accountable for their sheep and how can a video minister do that with sheep he doesn’t even know? Well, first of all, a pastor that rightly divides the Word of God can be certain that the Word will not return void. Also, that’s what campus pastors are for. At Journey, either campus will find a number of pastors (Jimmy Carroll, Paul Crouthamel, Rob Wetzel, Smooth Via, and Paul Callaghan) weekly with whom they can speak and pray. Also, they can set up meetings with them throughout the week. It’s called “doing life together.”

6. Understanding Planting and Preacher Training

He may have a slight point here. We do need to focus on planting churches as well as campuses. That’s why Journey gives to multiple church planting agencies. Who knows, maybe we’ll even plant one ourselves. Partnerships are especially helpful at church planting – shared resources are great. Acts 29 is a great organization that does this well.

7. No Scriptural Support!!!

Ah, I most definitely disagree here. While the church that was formed out of Peter’s sermon might have fit within Solomon’s Portico at first, remember that “the Lord was adding to their number daily” and they “were going house to house.” Does White really think that they organized meetings indefinitely at Solomon’s Portico? Also, could thousands of people really hear? Did they have to all meet together weekly to be called a church? Bi-weekly? Monthly?

8. Unanswered Questions

Since he gives questions, I guess I’ll give answers.

1. What happens when this generation’s gifted communicators leave?
   • One of the other pastors at that church will take over. This is more biblical that “hiring out” a pastor like many churches do. If the people go there just to hear that communicator, they shouldn’t be there anyway.
2. When they retire or pass to heaven, will these franchised churches of today lead to the disenfranchised religious of tomorrow?
   • Some could, but the ones who grounded their people in the Word of God will stand firm because Christ is their cornerstone.
3. Will these locations stand vacant symbolizing a failed religious experiment?
   • The one’s who worshiped the communicator and not Christ probably will. And that will be a good thing.
4. What if one location wants to call its own live preacher? Will that be allowed or does the founding assembly own the property and make the decisions?
   • If a church starts fighting over ownership, then they need to repent and turn from that. The body is just that, a body. They should function as one. They should also submit to the one (or ones – plurality of elders, anyone?) called to be their leader(s). If that many people have an issue with the elder(s)’ decision, then maybe that part of the body should meet with them as fellow brothers in Christ.
5. Could a remote location choose to begin piping in a new rising star with no connection to the current branches?
   • That would be a decision for the church as a whole to make. A campus is not separate from the church – it is a part. This does make it easier to have someone fill the pulpit who can actually preach when the pastor is out of town. Or even better, our pastor was in Uganda recently and Smooth uploaded part of a message from him to the internet. I then downloaded and Jimmy preached for about 10 minutes from Uganda to both of our campuses. Then we played the rest of his pre-recorded message. He was able to preach while being halfway around the world! Most single-site churches would never even think of that, much less have the technology for it.
6. Why not just plant churches?
   • We plan on doing this as well. The multi-site model helps us be wiser with our resources.

Wow. That was fun. Next?

9. Priorities

This is an important thing to keep in mind. Let us not strive after numbers and instead strive after reaching Raleigh, and North Carolina, and the world for Christ. It’s always good to keep the Gospel as the main thing – we’re called to use our talents and God-given abilities spread the Gospel (Good News) of Christ. And remember, God doesn’t always call the equipped – He also equips the called (a.k.a. all believers)!

Clarification #3: When I say that I’m done with the SBC, I mean that I’m done fighting for it and identifying with it. I don’t hate the convention. I don’t harbor any resentment towards the churches, church members, committee members, and Directors of Ph.D. studies, etc. who have intentionally marginalized me, belittled me, or treated me unfairly. Contrary to what Rev. Palmer may think, I can say with some certainty that you will never find me holding a position within the SBC. I don’t mean that I am against the SBC or think that they are evil as my good buddy John seems to think I mean. It may, however, be beyond saving. History will tell.

I think I wasn’t clear. I don’t think Smooth is against the SBC or thinks it’s evil. I meant he’s through with it (as he said) and many who say that they are through with it are counting it off as useless and others are evil. Smooth never has said that, but I’ve read it in quite a few blogs of people who have “jumped off the ledge” of leaving the SBC.

Journey still gives money to the Cooperative Program. As the senior leadership team here at Journey we decided to give to the Cooperative Program as a means of contributing to missions and supporting conservative theological training. We do not, however, identify ourselves as Southern Baptists, and you will not find any of us serving on this or that committee or going to this or that convention fighting for a voice. We just don’t care.

I am very glad Journey gives to the Cooperative Program. This finances my seminary education in two ways: first, a portion of CP funds goes to SBC seminaries, including Southeastern. Second, since I am a member of Journey – a church giving to the CP, I get a 50% tuition reduction. That’s stinkin’ awesome. While it saddens me that “We just don’t care” about having a voice in the convention, I know that’s not the case of all members of Journey, as I am a member of Journey who cares about turning the SBC around. I may be the only one, but that’s OK.

Why bother? Because of the missional impact the convention can have, you say? Again, I’m responsible for me. Maybe others are called to “save” the convention. But the reason that “young people are jumping ship by the thousands” and that Dr. Reid has to talk “good younger men off the ledge from leaving the SBC” is because saving the convention is not our calling.

I totally agree that we are responsible for ourselves. But one thing that I’ve learned at Journey is we are part of something bigger than ourselves. And while I also agree that the convention is not our calling, the convention, when course-corrected occasionally to line up better with God’s calling, could be used by God to help many people in many nations to know Him.

While Smooth and I may disagree regarding whether or not to have hope in the SBC, we are co-laborers in the Gospel at Journey and still somehow manage to get along. Heck, we’re even in the same small group!

And finally, lest you think this blog has become a blog about all things SBC and nothing else, I guarantee that my next post will mention absolutely nothing about that. It will probably be something theological or technical, since I love talking about that stuff. Politics? Not so much.

Panasonic B AV-HS400

Panasonic AV-HS400 A

Panasonic AV-HS400 A - Rear Panel

This is my favorite choice. If we go HD-SDI, it’s a must. Making it work on all analog component would be more pricey, though, since we’d need more expansion cards. We’d already have to get one for computer input (or get an card for our computer to output in the right format). It does some awesome stuff, though. Our cameras to HD-SDI output at 1080i, so that would work.

Edirol V-440HD

Edirol V-440HD

Edirol V-440HD - Rear Panel

This is our other option. It has a SD side on the left, which is then mixed down and up-converted to HD on the right. It takes component, composite, and VGA and can output component. Another workable option. Our cameras can also output component.

A shot from the booth during Worship Night

Wow. We have had some awesome times recently at Journey. From the worship night, to 1ThingINeedToChange.com, to our new series, Leaving Neverland, we’ve been stinkin’ busy. There’s new web stuff, including yet-to-be-released things (shhh), a new service (12:30 pm) at Northeast starting March 1st, and more stuff just around the corner. There’s so much that its hard to have time to blog. You can keep up with what’s going on better through my Twitter account. As a matter of fact, quite a few of the staff are tweeting. Check it out!

Generosity from Smooth Via on Vimeo.

A more common question with multi-site is “Why call it the same church when its really two churches, one which is watching a video of a pastor preach instead of having a live pastor preach there?” (This is actually only one model of multi-site, but it’s the one my church is using, so I’m not addressing the others right now.) This is the question I really want to answer, as I struggled with it when I first discovered that was my church’s vision.

The church, as I said earlier, is the body of Christ. A local church is how this is practically lived out – believers within a common geographic context meeting together as a family. In my tradition (baptistic) there is the need to hear the teaching of God’s Word and the expression of the ordinances – baptism and the Lord’s Supper or Communion. Journey does all of those things as one body, making it one church with multiple services, one of which is in a different location that the other three.

To answer the complaint that each campus should have it’s own pastor – our’s do. The campus that watches the preaching on video still has a campus pastor there for all pastoral needs. He actually is better able to minister to his flock there, since he doesn’t need to spend time during the week prepping for a sermon. We also are able to share resources between campuses, since we are still one church. Anyone who’s ever planted a church knows how important it is to have resources. Well, we do.

I just barely touched the issues, so what are some other issues out there? Or things you’d like me to dive deeper into? Or disagreements you have with this? Feedback is a wonderful thing.

Today was the first day I visited my churches’ second campus. It’s our second work week in there – last week the sound was set up and this week I helped set up the video. We’re still working through some kinks in the video quality, since we’re shooting HDV (not HD) 1080i60 and I’ve never worked with that before. The image is enormous, though (about 35 feet wide). I reminisced to the days of meeting in the school – before we acquired our current warehouse. There’s a feeling of camaraderie and teamwork that setup and tear-down fosters that seems lacking when in a fixed location. I definitely felt that today. I look forward to many more weeks, months, and years of that. The current plan at Journey is to reach all of Raleigh, and that involves many campuses.

I’ll start with filming. We use a Canon XL-H1 to record our video of the Saturday evening service at Northeast Campus (Tech specs: we use HDV 1080i60 – 60 frames per second interlaced). (Side note: HDV is different from HD because, as far as I can tell, it records 1440×1080 pixels instead of 1920×1080. To make it a wide-screen size, however, it stretches the pixels – instead of square they are anamorphic.) The XL-H1 is equipped with a Focus Enhancements Firestore FS-C DTE Recorder (Tech specs: 60 GB Firewire 400 with an awesome battery!), which records our video straight to hard drive. We record in Sync mode, which allows us to record a backup to DV tape as well. (Tech specs: we set manual focus and white balance every week, our gain is 0, our shutter speed is 1/100, and our iris is whatever brings the light meter to the center). 

Next, post-production. We plug our Firestore drive into our Mac Pro (Tech specs: 2×2.8 Ghz Quad-core Intel Xeon with 8 GB running Leopard) and copy over the captured files. We then add them to Final Cut Studio 2, add in lower thirds, add a flicker filter for our backlit scrim, normalize our audio, add in videos we used that service (intro video, etc.), and export the raw video. We then copy that and the ProPresenter schedule for the weekend over to the iMac from the Northwest Campus and leave that for the Campus Pastor (Paul Crouthamel) to pick up the next morning. As a backup, we also export a DVD (through VisualHub) of the service and leave it with the iMac.

Finally, we post to the web a Quicktime export of the raw file (Tech specs: we export in H.264 1280×720, 3000 kbps multi-pass with 128 kbps audio) and upload to Vimeo. We link to that from our sermons page.

Hope this post makes you feel more knowledgeable. This whole setup has been a major learning curve for me and everyone else involved, but I think we’re starting to get the hang of it. If this sounds like something you’d like to do (and you go to Journey), drop me an email and let me know. Feel free to ask questions or offer suggestions here or through email. I’m always game for talking about this stuff!

Since I was on Thanksgiving Break from school, I worked Monday and Tuesday at Journey – also so I could get ahead on stuff and visit family the second half of the week. So Tuesday after work, Heather and I went home, took a 3-4 hour nap, and drove 6 hours to Georgia, getting in around 4:30 am. We spent time with my dad, Heather’s parents, then finally my mom.

On Saturday, we left to head back to NC around 7:30 am, swinging by the Northeast Campus for a minute to finalize ProPresenter when we got here, then headed home. I quickly practiced bass for Sunday (since I was playing at Northwest), but not before watching the GA Tech Yellow Jackets beat UGA for the first time since 2000!!!

After bass practice, I ate some quick food and headed down to Northeast for some great preaching by Pastor Smooth. I didn’t edit video that night like normal, because Pastor Paul preached at Northwest the next day, where I played bass (call time of 7 am). After Sunday’s service, I went home and have been working on Hebrew off and on until I finished just a few minutes ago. Time for a break – finals start this week!

He asked many more questions, too. I find it these are very important questions we should ask when listening and especially when preaching a message from God’s Word.

One very interesting point I like is his “3 A.M. Test.” Can the preacher be awakened at 3am (however unhappily) and concisely state what his sermon will be for the coming week? This is one thing that I think is done exceptionally well at Journey. Jimmy’s (and the other pastor’s, when they preach) take-away points are exceptionally clear and concise.

Edit: We’re using Vimeo for our video solution. Works great, and even support HD!

Edit: I’ve been informed by Alex that “We actually have 6 RGB Moving-Head LED’s and 5 Stationary RGB LED’s in addition to the other lights you mentioned. They are hiding behind of the scrim and on the floor.” Just so you know.

Has anyone used this for a domain? I’d really like to implement it, as it relies on Google’s uptime and not that of anyone else. Anyways.

• Prepare weekend service screen media (videos, graphics, etc.)
• Direct, film, and edit videos for weekend worship, online video, DVDs, or otherwise
• Oversee the upkeep and production of the church website as well assist with pastoral blogs
• Build post-production team for transition to video-driven multi-campus setup
• Produce television and website commercials to invite people to church

That list shows how I overlap into the world of church IT. Like many new churches, my job calls for the “jack-of-all-trades” mentality. I’ve been listening to the CITRT podcasts and have learned that even in very large churches, this often is the call. I’m looking forward to catching up on those podcasts and maybe contributing some – even though I might be a little Mac biased. ;p