Tech News

The January 2008 edition of Clergy Journal includes a great article by Rich Melheim. Melheim starts the article, "Chew on this: The average mainline preacher today was taught to preach by a professor who was taught to  preach before television was widely available." Hopefully, that will encourage you to read the rest of the article!

Melheim completes this treatise with his "95 Melheimian Theses of Church Technology." Read them all! Those of you who have worked with the Center on technology issues will hear our voices echoed in Melheim's. Our thanks to Rich Melheim, founder of Faith Inkubators (http://www.faithink.com/), for allowing us to reprint this.

95 Melheimian Theses of Church Technology © 

Basic TECHlosophy

1. We are living in a tech world.
2. Good tech is better than no tech
3. No tech is better than bad tech
4. If it appears you don't know what you are doing with your tech, everyone under 30 will naturally assume you don't know what you are talking about.
5. Tech is not the message.
6. Tech is the servant of the message.
7. Good tech enhances effective communication.
8. Bad tech detracts from effective communication.
9. Tech without design is bad tech.
10. Tech for the sake of tech is bad tech.
11. Tech without consideration of the audience is bad tech.
12. Tech that draws attention to itself is bad tech.
13. Invisible tech is the best tech of all.
14. The only exception to #12 and # 13 comes when tech is part of the art.
15. The person up front teaching, speaking, or preaching should never be the person running the tech during the presentation.
16. Tech run by anyone who isn’t by nature a "techie" will never be as good as tech run by a techie.
17. "Anyone over 30 is an immigrant in the land of technology." (Leonard Sweet)
18. The average pastor in a mainline church is 55 years old - an immigrant in the land of technology.
19. An immigrant will never speak the language like a native.
20. An immigrant's children absorb the language of the culture naturally.
21. An immigrant must ask her or his children how to communicate.
22. Any tech committee at a church run by a pastor, six adults, and one token youth should immediately be dissolved and replaced by a tech committee run by six young people and one token adult who is not the pastor.
23. The main delivery systems for information in a culture are the most effective languages of that culture.
24. If a missionary does not know and effectively use the most effective languages of a culture, it doesn't matter how good her or his message is - that person will not communicate effectively.
25. Full-color, full-motion multimedia are the main delivery systems for information in our culture.
26. A Master of Divinity degree does not automatically qualify a person to create and design effective full-color, full- motion multimedia.
27. Tech without a complete dress rehearsal is bad tech.
28. Tech without constant, live monitoring, tweaking, and evaluation during the presentation is bad tech.
29. Tech without decent equipment is bad tech.
30. Tech without a decent ongoing replacement budget line qualifies as bad stewardship.

HomileTECHS

1. We are living in a visual world.
2. Good tech enhances visuals.
3. We are living in a full-color, full-motion, multimedia world.
4. Good tech enhances the message in a full-color, full motion, multimedia world.
5. Bad tech will be noticed and will detract from the visuals.
6. If a sermon is important enough to be preached, it is important enough to be remembered.
7. If a sermon doesn't have a visual memory hook for the visual genera­tion, don't expect it to be remem­bered.
8. A sermon made up of 99 percent spoken words with 1 percent visual enhancements (photos, props, icons, pictures drawn by kids) will be 99 percent forgotten by the time the Sunday football game is over. The 1 percent remembered will be the point tied to the visual
9. At maximum bandwidth, the human ear can process 10,000 bits of information per second.
10. At maximum bandwidth, the human eye can process 7 billion bps.
11. Therefore, a picture is not worth 1000 words - it is worth 700,000 words.
12. A pastor who is not using visuals in worship and preaching is a lousy steward.
13. If a sermon is important enough to be preached, it is important enough to be heard.
14. If the listeners can't see the speaker's lips, 33 percent of them won't be able to hear what the speaker is saying.
15. If you have to choose between top-of-the-line microphones and a decent speaker system in your worship space, don't.
16. If a sermon is important enough to be preached, it is important enough to be seen.
17. 70 percent-80 percent of communication is nonverbal
18. Therefore, if the audience cannot see the speaker, the speaker is losing three-fourths of the communication potential and power from the start.
19. If a sermon is to be seen, then staging, lighting, movement, and theatrics must be considered.
20. A Master of Divinity degree does not automatically qualify a person to be an expert in staging, lighting, and movement.
21. A worship space with decent staging, lighting, movement, and theatrics is most likely designed by someone who knows about staging, lighting, movement, and theatrics.
22. Lighting must be designed for the speaking space and evenly bright - but not glaring - across the entire staging area where the speaker will stand or walk.
23. When dimming lights for effects and using spotlights mark the floor where the speaker must stand.
24. A sermon good enough to preach is a sermon good enough to record on videotape.
25. A sermon good enough to videotape is a sermon good enough to post online for iPod downloads in both audio and video files for the college students and young adults per slide who didn't come on Sunday morning.
26. A sermon good enough to put online for iPod downloads is good enough to advertise to those college students and young adults.
27. If you want young adults to download an iSermon, consider asking two young adults each week to record a two-minute commentary on it - one to introduce it and the other to comment on it afterward.
28. A sermon good enough to preach and put on an iPod download is good enough to be lit well for video.
29. A sermon that is lit well for video probably has a person who knows both theater and television to teach the video committee how to do so.
30. A Master of Divinity degree does not automatically qualify a person to advise the video committee on how to light a set for video.
31. A sermon good enough to preach is a sermon good enough to be heard by everyone in the sanctuary, as well as in the sound booth.
32. A sermon that is heard by everyone in the sanctuary probably has a person who knows sound design to teach the committee how to do it well.
33. A Master of Divinity degree does not automatically qualify a person to advise a sound committee on how to design a set for sound.
34. A microphone that hisses, pops, or clicks should be destroyed.
35. A video camera that jiggles, jostles, and jerks should be shot. (It already is!)
36. A video-camera operator who jiggles, jostles, and jerks should be asked to serve in some other way.

PracTECHology

1. People remember sermons better when visuals accompany the preaching.
2. PowerPoint presentations are an easy and effective vehicle for adding memorable visuals to preaching.
3. When creating PowerPoint presentations, choose a simple style; then stick with it.
4. 946 slide transitions, 73 type styles, and 666 background colors cannot be called a style.
5. When choosing a simple style, choose a simple color scheme and stick with it.
6. Consider white or light type on a black or dark background. (It is 30 percent easier to read than black or dark type on a white background.)
7. Choose two type fonts for your slides - one serif and one sans serif- then stick with them.
8. Choose no more than three type sizes for those two type fonts.
9. Choose a simple, smooth fade, dissolve, or cut for slide transitions.
10. Allow no more than four or five bullet points per slide.
11. Allow no more than one sentence (or group of words) per bullet point.
12. Choose a type size no smaller than half the age of the oldest person in the audience. (If you've got 80-year-olds, that means 40-point type).
13. The best visuals in a PowerPoint presentation are photo and videos of the youth and children in your church, created by them to enhance your sermon, announcements, and worship experience.
14. The second-best visuals in a PowerPoint presentation are works of art created by kids in your church.
15. The third-best visuals in a PowerPoint presentation are photos and videos of the adults in your church engaged in the work of ministry.
16. The fourth-best visuals in a PowerPoint presentation are professionally produced photographs of beautiful nature scenes, news photos, and pieces of art.
17. The worst visuals in a PowerPoint presentation are “canned" clip-art pieces.
18. Anyone caught putting more than two canned clip- art pieces in any one worship presentation should be removed from the worship committee.
19. The only exception to #83 is clip art that has a decent joke attached - if not overused.
20. Key words in large type on a screen enhance a sermon.
21. Whole sentences on screen should be used only for printed Scriptures, prayers, song lyrics, important quotations, or resignation speeches by the senior pastor.
22. If you are going to the work of preparing such presentations, why wouldn't these precious images appear on the church website every week?
23. If a website was designed by anyone over 40, no one under 40 will spend time there.
24. A Master of Divinity degree does not automatically qualify a person to design a website.
25. Young people will go to your church website on a regular basis if their photos, video clips, and art are displayed there.
26. Tech that is more than three years old will cost you more in the long run than new tech.
27. Good tech is a gift of God to reach the inhabitants of our high-tech world.
28. Good tech costs money.
29. In the long run, bad tech and no tech will cost you even more.