We have teamed up with the good folks over at Church Motion Graphics for our first contest that we’ve ever hosted at The Creative Pastor. They have been gracious enough to provide us with TWO of their new motion bundles…and these things are AWESOME! (Light Play Bundle and Light The World Bundle) How can you get your hands on them? Well, it’s pretty simple. We’ve been talking more and more lately around TCP about preparing for the Christmas season. I’ve learned over the years that media can play such a huge part in Christmas services because it gives you the ability to transform environments and give people that “warm” feeling. Using motions like these two bundles from Church Motion Graphics can create an atmosphere that is totally engaging to your congregation. So, to win one of these bundles, you’ll just need to answer the following question in our comment section…
How will you be using media at your church this Christmas season?Contest Rules & Submission Info:
1. To enter, simply leave a comment on this post including your name, email, and answer to our question.
2. One entry can be submitted per person.
3. Entries will be accepted through Sunday, November 13th at 11:59pm.
4. Two winners will be selected at random by our staff.
5. Each winner will receive one of the two bundles from Church Motion Graphics.
6. We will announce a winner on our site on Monday, November 14th.
Get more info about Church Motion Graphics on their website or follow them on Twitter.
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Instead of the traditional “Kid’s Christmas Program” we are actually making a movie of the kids performing the Christmas Story. That way we can film it at multiple locations, at different times, and with a wide group of kids. It can be perfected in editing and it will also take the stress off of the kids to “perform” on the day of the presentation. Than at our Christmas Service we will present the movie to the congregation. This way we can utilize music, video, graphics, and good ole kids being kids!
My church absolutely loves showing the love of Jesus to the community through our Christmas and Easter plays. During this year’s Christmas play, we will be using almost overwhelmingly amounts of media (at least to me). First, we will be filming specific scenes ahead of time such as new reports and a nighttime search party scene. During the play itself, we will be using a powerpoint presentation using these pre-recorded clips, various songs, pictures, and anything else that our tech guy decides to use! Also, lighting and sound are key elements to these productions!
We just recently switched our series calendar to something different, but until then we were going to through UNWRAPPING THE CHRISTMAS CLASSICS. We were going to unpack a Christmas classic each week; Frosty the Snowman, The Grinch, Rudolph etc.
Simple media (clips through the message) that everyone is familiar with, but finding some biblical truth to help reinvent the meaning of Christmas through the traditions of the season. Kind of bummed we aren’t still doing it… :)
A few small ways we use media at Christmastime is screens for lyric projection, videos about aspects of the christmas story, and special elements. 2 special elements I have used in the past are “overshooting” a projector – environmental projection, and also for Christmas eve, fitting a flat panel TV in an old mantle and looping a fireplace to give that home, warm feel at Christmas.
Our entire Christmas service this year will be based around and upon media. We are doing a modern day revision of the Christmas story. We will be using video elements in and throughout the services that compliment what is happening live on stage.
In addition to that, we stream all of our services live on our website and produce DVDs for distribution afterwards. We have also developed a large scale social media advertisement campiagn to attract non-believers.
I would love for our church to go beyond just backgrounds. We are not even using motion backgrounds yet…
We will be doing our first Christmas series as a church. This will involve promo videos, motion bumpers, custom motion graphics for song lyrics, and do on. We are still looking for that one element that helps make this series stand out… Maybe we will get a choir with matching sweaters.
At Bethany this year – we will use some EP starry night motions for a night-time effect during our dinner theater ( http://onebethlehemnight.com ) and we’ll use triplewide and EP for our Christmas eve services. Thanks for the opportunity for free stuff!
Matching sweaters is an amazing idea, I think I was just inspired to have an ugly sweater day at our church! It might be a bigger hit for the youth, we will see!
We’re making a vid to use on Christmas Eve & Christmas Day services, and we cancel the weekend after Christmas every year in favor of an online video to help facilitate worship at home or on the road.
Thx for the giveaway!
This year for Christmas we are going to be trying mix mediums in a really integrated way. We have some very talented poets, writers, spoken word artists and we will feature some of their pieces about Gods love and Christmas season while using video, motion backgrounds, and lighting to heighten the overall experience. We don’t have the best set up for our stage/projector screen but we are seeing a powerful result when we mix the live and the media!
Living where we live in Australia, we don’t get snow. So we don’t focus our Christmas themes around that. Instead, we love to light up the inside of building with light, especially stars. Last year we projected a starry night above the stage, this year we want to project starry night on the whole ceiling. With our focus being what it would have been like the night Jesus was born. Being born in Bethlehem, there was no snow. So we want to theme it like it would have been. We also like to use the colour purple as this is a majestic/royal colour and what better colour to use for our King.
We’ll be doing some video sermon intros, a multimedia intro/setup for our Christmas musical, and may be having a more acoustic and reduced candle-light service for Christmas Eve. These packs would be the perfect accompaniment for the latter!
We will be using advent videos in a series leading to Christmas day, The Sunday before Christmas we will be having our choir sing and for this will be using full video play of songs with motion backgrounds. On Christmas day we will use video and stills to convey the message of Christ.
This is my wife and I’s first Chrsitmas on staff at our church. We’re the youngest of the pastoral staff and the church as a whole has only recently been incorporating motion graphics, bumpers, min-videos, and the like into their services. I mean we just now started video-taping our Sunday morning messages. As such I’ve been tasked with weekly video announcemnets that involve motion graphic backgrounds and loops, and we will be continuing to use such mediums in our Christmas Program. It’s something for the people of Wyoming, but it’s been met with positive feedback and lots of excitement.
that would be lovely, just lovely!
We’re planning on telling life stories through video. We’ve got a really talented video guy at our church. We’ve recorded a song as the score for the videos that will fade in and out through the stories. Looking forward to it.
Caleb
calebdelamont@gmail.com
@CalebDelamont
Last year we did a large multi-media production, which really pushed our entire team, but which ended up being really effective and kind of magical. :) This year, given a few personnel changes and where our church life is going, we are scaling back our Christmas production level. But we will still use video media as backgrounds in all our worship experiences, and will likely incorporate video storytelling on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
Typically, our church services are pretty tech-laden, so we’ll have the usual suspects: digital imagery, video, etc. But, during the Advent season we get a little more traditional, adding physical artistic displays/arrangements to the mix.
As the service programming intern at our church in Clarkston WA I am 100% driven and passionate about creating irresistible environments. As the Holiday season is quickly approaching (as we see from Starbucks’ official red cups, and Egg Nog FroYo available!) then I want our Sunday service to be relevant with the Christmas spirit too!
I build the show every week in Pro, and I love usuing multiple backgrounds per song to truly capture the audience!
We will be having some holiday-christmas music “openers” and “specials” and these motions will help the people who walk into Harvest Church feel glad that they did!
_brooklynn gaswint.
Media is an essential part of every service at South Cleveland Church of God and for Altitude Children’s Ministries. Whether we are traveling or at home, media is a special part of our overall presentation of the gospel message and Christmas is an amazing time to share the goodness of God through the ultimate Gift, His one and only Son Jesus!!! Bless you guys and thanks for all you do!
Sincerely,
Eric Stephens
Jesus is still alright with me…jesus is still alright.. oh… yeaaaaaa