Using Postcard/Mailers

At Lakeside, we often use postcards to inform our people about the upcoming series. I definitely feel, however, that NO postcard is better than a poor postcard! Companies like outreach.com make it simple for those with little or no graphical sense to provide fantastic pieces of promotion for your church or an upcoming series.  Unfortunately you are then tied into the titles and ideas they have.  When we print our own, I have used (depending on the special at the time, or the quantity we ordered) Overnightprints.com, Gotprint.com, or imiPrint.com

I have been making our church’s postcards for a while now and have included a few samples. (click to enlarge)  If any church is interested in help with design, I would love to help you out!

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“Beginnings” Series Opener

Here is a video done using a stock video from istockphoto.com (very helpful resource) that we use to bumper betweeen our worship set and the main teaching. Feel free to use if it fits!

“Beginnings” Series Opener from Ken Leslie on Vimeo.

Service Openers

We used to use simple countdowns in our Student Ministry to kick things off, but now we lean more toward the “Service Opener” idea instead. Essentially I seek out funny, powerful, worshipful, or totally crazy videos to show at the front of our service. Most of these videos I have totally grabbed off of YouTube, so I’ll post some links below of some ideas.

We still use a basic countdown, but now I just have the same countdown that actually runs 3 minutes prior to service starting. Then our band opens with a song, usually a cover song or new upbeat song. This gets everyone’s attention since prior to the countdown, people are milling around all over–even outside the main room. Then I show this “Service Opener” to act as a good transition into worship or something else. I find it is pretty easy to find good clips online, and I can easily edit them if I need to. Our students enjoy experiencing some of the “viral” YouTube videos once in a while, while also really take to the Worship Opener style videos–it usually depends on what kind of transition we need. Anyway, I try to keep the video to under 1 minute, so if they are longer, I usually edit them. Here are a few we have recently used, none of which I have created! Also, many of the worship ones have a church name built into the ending, which I again, edit out–cutting to a black screen saying “Service Starts Now.”

Rechargeable Batteries

One of the simple questions I have dealt with as a worship leader was wether to use regular batteries or rechargeable ones. Since everything wireless requires batteries, including mics, in-ear monitors, and instrument packs, we were replacing batteries all the time.  I only felt safe using a a battery twice, maybe 3 times before I was concerned with it going out during a Sunday morning. So we weighed the pros and cons to using rechargeables…

Pros:

• Always have “fresh” batteries every week. (My current life of our rechargables is about 1 year, then I have to replace them)
• Cheaper in the long run.  They cost about 4 times a regular battery, but can be used safely about 25 more times!

Cons:

• Adds an extra task every week of plugging in the batteries. (If you forget, you are scrambling on Sunday morning…I know)
• Battery indicators are less accurate (older batteries die faster) so you have to be better at documenting how old batteries are.

I found this great deal online where you purchase 10 batteries and get a free charger.  It is pretty cost effective.  Check out www.all-battery.com for their deals!

Leading Worship During December

One of the seasons I love is Christmas, but I feel like every year I am faced with the decision of what songs to do during the month of December.  Start Christmas music too early, and everyone gets sick of it by Christmas.  Put it off and people think you are a Bah Humbug.  Between Thanksgiving and Christmas you have 4 weeks, so here is my basic philosophy:

1.   Week 1 – Usually I don’t play any Christmas music.  All of our music is “Christmas Related” by singing of the Glory or Majesty of God, or songs like “Here is Our King” or “You’ll Come” ushering in the presence of Christ.

2. Week 2 – Seeing as we have our Christmas program coming up, we have some “special” Christmas songs prepared and some that we are working on.  Typically we perform one of these songs this week (also acts as a good commercial for our Christmas Program)

3. Week 3 – This is the morning of our Christmas Program so we have another special song prepared.  We also play a few Christmas songs incorporated into our worship set.

4. Week 4 – All Christmas music.  My favorites to play and lead in a worship setting are: Angels We have Heard on High, O Come All Ye Faithful, O Holy Night, and Joy To The World.

Christ Is Come – Click Track

We have begun using Split Click tracks that I have created simply using Apple’s Garage Band to augment our sound on stage.  This is a Christmas Song from a few years ago titled Christ is Come that features a lot of strings and orchestration.

Christ Is Come
Big Daddy Weave
Key – D
84 BPM (6/8 time)

Arms Open Wide – Click Track

We have begun using Split Click tracks that I have created simply using Apple’s Garage Band to augment our sound on stage.  This track has the electric guitar part in it to fill out our sound.  If anyone wants this file without the electric guitar part, post a comment and I will post that file as well.

Arms Open Wide
Hillsong United
Key – C
86 BPM

 

Worship Recap, May 17 2009

We launched a new series that deals with the things we keep hidden in our life, our sin, and confessing it to God and others. This first week dealt with lying. Not just about telling lies, but more about living a lie. Do you look and act one way around people but have secrets? We also had Baptism of 11 people after service.

Songs:
Salvation – Planetshakers (B)
Let God Arise – Chris Tomlin (B)
From the Inside Out – Hillsong United (C)
Mighty To Save – Hillsong (A)

Attendance: 280 adults in the auditorium, 76 in the children’s area.  Total 356

Special Song: Dirty Little Secret by All American Rejects. Worked well to flow into the message. Also the choir joined us for the worship music.

Worship Recap May 3, 2009

We finished off our short series on end times called “What In The World Is Going On?” (You can find the audio here: http://lakesidepodcast.wordpress.com) I loved the way Pastor Ken really set up a Biblical view on the end of time rather than talk about theories and other people’s view.  This is some good Bible Teaching!  In fact, these past few weeks have been more like taking a class rather than listening to preaching, but it is good to shake things up once in a while.

Songs:

Salvation – Planetshakers (B)
One Way – Hillsong United (B)
Your Grace is Enough – Chris Tomlin and Matt Maher (G)
O Praise Him – David Crowder Band (A)

Attendance: 259 adults in the auditorium, 68 in the children’s area.  Total 327

Song Story: This week I talked about “Your Grace Is Enough”  Most of the teaching from this song comes from understanding Romans 8.  We are no longer held captive to the things of evil because Christ has set us free and His grace is enough for all of us all the time!

Worship Recap, April 26

I missed a week, but last week we began a series called “What In The World Is Going On?” (You can find the audio here: http://lakesidepodcast.wordpress.com) Based off the Biblical view of what the End Times are all about (note: This is not a study of Revelation, but rather trying to get an entire Biblical perceptive on all the talk about the end of the world)

Songs:

One Way (B)
Everything Glorious (C)
O Praise Him (A)
Sing SIng Sing (E)

We are doing one less song for a while for two reasons.  First it gives me a chance to do something I am calling a “Song Story” where I actually break down the song and look at the theological, Scriptural, and personal makeup of the song.  Second it gives the band a little extra chance to spend more time focusing on getting a really good soundcheck before service–we have been having some trouble in this area and need to work it out.

Attendance: 225 adults in the auditorium, 77 in the children’s area.  Total 302

Song Story: This week I talked about “O Praise Him” and the awesome oportunity we have to join with the angels in singing to our King! The interesting thing about this song is that in the second verse, it flips on itself and says that when Salvation comes to an individual, the joyful sound is so great the angels join us is worship to our King!  I love that concept!