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I have used CAT-5 cable for many different applications in networks and communications over the years so when I first started hearing about audio and video over CAT-5 I was intrigued.  I just had to try it.  I’m successfully using video over CAT5 on a permanent basis using active adapters from FSR and a portable set up using passive baluns from Black Box.  I can honestly report that I have had no problems with either. 

I came across an old blog post that I was saving to write about from VLOBLIVE which always had some good information on video.  The author was Dave Chalmers from Edinburgh, Scotland but for some reason in March 2007 the posts from Dave stopped.  Check out this post from February 2007 which gives an excellent explanation of video over CAT-5 cable.

  Understanding Video Over Cat5 Cable

I have been holding on to a few thoughts about excellence and the pursuit thereof.  I have come to realization that sometimes our pursuit of excellence is just an excuse for us to have everything done our way or to do everything ourselves because no one can live up to the expectation we have.  Such is the vice of a perfectionist.  In my preaching of striving for excellence I found myself taking on more and more to show excellence and trying to conform people to my perfectionist mold instead of providing opportunities for service so that they could actually strive for excellence. 

Tony Morgan has some good thoughts on this subject this week.  Check out Should I Pursue Unexcellent? 

Matt Redman on excellence 

“‘Great works’ (of art) and ‘good works’ (of charity) had better also be good work. Let choirs sing well or not all. Otherwise we merely confirm the majority in their conviction that the world of Business, which does with such efficiency so much that never really needed doing, is the real, the adult, and the practical world; and that all this ‘culture’ and all this ‘religion’ (horrid words both) are essentially marginal, amateurish, and rather effeminate activities.”C.S. Lewis, “Good Work and Good Works” from (The World’s Last Night, and other essays).

I have been writing lately but it has been pages so I’m just going to write it all out and then break it up for bite size consumption.  Meanwhile there has been a lot of great stuff that has been crossing my path that I want to share with you from others.  The first is from the MO Guys about how to create song lyric slides for worship.  Enjoy!                       

There’s nothing more tedious in media ministry than the weekly ritual of preparing song lyrics. Yet even this task normally given to newbie volunteers, interns, or the church monkey can become an important part of creative worship with a few simple rules.

1. Three to Four and You’ll Score. One or Six Don’t Mix.Try to keep your song lyrics slides to three to four lines per screen. One or two lines, and you’ll turn the screen into a flipbook and create a guaranteed way for your congregation to miss half the words of the song while the operator has an ADD attack. Five, six or more and you’ll want to consider putting a number in the lower corner and designating someone to stand at the front and turn the screen over like a giant piece of paper, because that’s what you’re making it.

Click here to read the rest of points 1 through 8 and all the illustrations.

  After much asking and pleading and invitations I finally took the plunge and joined Facebook a few months ago.  So far I have really enjoyed it and have been able to stay closer to friends.  It is also an excellent networking tool.  Click on the Facebook button above to visit my profile and become my friend.

I’m still working out some things in my life.  It has been a chore to completely change how I think about some things and how my schedule is structured.  I thank you all for your continued prayers.

I have a lot that I would love to write about but I’m still trying to find that blogging time without neglecting higher priorities.

I did want to put out this announcement for those of you here in the Charlotte area.  This is a unique event being held at MediaComm studios.  Click on the banner below to find out more.

The second reason for my blogging silence was my development of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and Panic Disorder brought on by stress and exhaustion mostly.  I started out in October of last year experiencing anxiety for no apparent reason.    I then had a full on panic attack that I thought was a heart attack.  After being checked out my doctor told me what I had experienced and prescribed some medication to take as needed. I knew of anxiety after experiencing post-traumatic stress after the first Gulf war in 1991 and Somalia in 1993 but I was not prepared for the dysfunction of a panic disorder.  Well, the panic attacks started to become more frequent and more severe until I was pretty much in a panic for days at a time.  If you read some of the symptoms associated with these disorders you can imagine how uncomfortable I was.  Actually I was completely dysfunctional.  I couldn’t eat.  I couldn’t sleep.  I couldn’t even sit down for more than 30 seconds at a time.  I would pace around in my house until even that was not sufficient.  I would have to be outside walking and I would walk and walk and walk.  I was in such a state of delusion that I thought for sure that I would walk until my body failed and I would die.  Throughout this ordeal my doctor became a researcher as we tried medication after medication.  Some would work briefly and some would just about put me over the edge.  Finally after two and half months and, thank God, before Christmas a medication that worked was administered.  I was on that medication for about 2 months but it was an addictive drug that I had to wean off of while taking another medication to counter and I will remain on for the next year.  I have been mostly anxiety free for the past 2 months now and I’m pretty much back to normal; whatever that is.  

So, what brought all of this on?  Well, two full time jobs that equated to 90 – 100 hour work weeks, many changes within those jobs, only 4 – 6 hours sleep a night, a pregnant wife with health complications, and the anticipation of bring another child into this world, a delivery of the child that was not without touchy moments and finally the last straw…jury duty.  My work and ministry schedule had come to a point that I had little time for family and even less time for God.  I was even putting blogging over God and family.  My God time had become about 10 to 15 minutes in the morning and my family time had become dinner and maybe a little play or TV time with the kids for at the most 2 hours a night.  Then it was back to work on whatever.  It seems that throughout my life that I have been addicted to one thing or another and apparently it had become work in this case.  I wanted to do my very best for God but God didn’t need my service.  He needed for me to do what He asked. 1 Samuel 15:22 says that to God it is better to obey than to sacrifice.  I was offering up a lot to God but I was not being obedient.  Throughout this ordeal the one thing that I held onto was my faith in God.  I won’t say that I didn’t waver and my armor was definitely taking a beating but I clung to God and His Word.  As I was pacing and walking and walking and pacing I would gaze up at the stars and pray for deliverance, even if that meant death.  I was in such despair because I did not see an end to the suffering and feared even more that I would lose my ministry, lose my job, lose my family, lose my mind.  When at my bleakest moment I started to hear in my mind “Trust in Me, trust in My counsel”.  Over and over I heard that until I started to repeat it out loud.  God’s Word then came to me and I started to repeat this passage over and over;

Philippians 4:4 - 9 (ESV) ⁴Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.  ⁵Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand;  ⁶do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  ⁷And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. ⁸Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.  ⁹What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.  

  I started to rejoice in my suffering because it brought me back to a total reliance on God whereas if I did lose all of the things that I thought I was going to lose I knew it was because God wanted it that way in His perfect plan.  I also knew that I would not lose my mind because God was guarding my heart and mind and the peace of God started to come onto me.  I trusted God just as He asked me to do.  I still had the “trust in My counsel” on my mind when the Lord brought to the mind of my wife a friend of ours who specializes in psychiatric counseling.  She is a dear saint and godly woman who started to explain to me exactly what was happening in my brain and how the medication worked and what behavioral changes that I needed to make.  Personal time with God has become a priority and time with family has become before work, ministry and yes, even blogging.  I have a ways to go to correct my work habits and my mindset when it comes to relaxing and turning off work and ministry.  I had to become very intentional to the point of filling my calendar with family appointments and sticking to them no matter what.  I use to be online every night and now it may be only 3 or 4 days a week.  I’m still having a hard time turning off thinking about work and ministry when I should be concentrating on family but I’m working on it and I know God is faithful to heal me and help in this process.  I will continue to trust in Him and in His counsel.    

I guess it is time that I broke my blogging silence and fill you all in on what has been going on in my life.  I have also been holding on to some thoughts concerning media and technology that I will begin to share with you.

  

The number one reason for not blogging was born on November 26^th.  The newest addition to our

family is a perfect gift from God who we named Eliana Grace.  She is beautiful and has a smile that will light up the room and melt your heart.  In the past couple of weeks she has started to laugh and it is a laugh that affects everyone around.The name Eliana is Hebrew for “God has answered my prayers” which is so fitting for this time in my life and for my family.  God’s grace is sufficient and has carried us through the rough times.  More to come on that in my next post.

A new player in video production for churches has come to my attention.  I would like to introduce Crossroads Creative.  Crossroads Creative is a ministry for Crossroads Church in

Lafayette, Louisiana.  Richard Gaspard, Director of Production, has been involved in video production for over 15 years and has assembled a team of volunteers and paid professionals to create some great video material for churches to use as tools in their own ministries.  The pieces that I reviewed were professionally done and topically sound. 

Richard Gaspard says that Crossroads Creative was birthed out of the necessity for quality video illustrations for use by his pastor.  Everything that they have to offer has already been used in their own church.  Now they want you to be able to use it as well. 

Crossroads Creative video productions are divided into 4 cleverly titled sections; On Ramps, Scenic Routes, Fast Lanes and Billboards. 

On Ramps are sermon or series introduction pieces that are excellent for what they are designed for and that is introduction but would also be great for promotional materials as well.  They could be used for advertising your upcoming series in a digital signage system for example.  Also Crossroads Creative offers art files to accompany these productions for print media. 

Scenic Routes are the classic video illustration and where I believe Crossroads Creative really shines.  These illustrations are well produced and speak to many topics to which many people are searching for answers.  What I also liked is that the producers don’t get stuck on one format.  I saw mini-movie type videos as well as interview/re-enactment type videos that are made popular on shows produced by Discovery and History channels. 

Fast Lanes are really just skits that are filmed.  As I viewed a few of these I thought that these would be an excellent resource for our drama team.  We have an amazing drama director and many talented actors and actresses so we actually do more live drama than we do video illustrations.  These Fast Lane skits are good for stand alone illustrations but I think are perfect as an instructional tool for drama teams. 

Billboards are touted as video clip art and are something that I don’t believe I have seen anyone else do.  They are designed to be announcements but done with video.  These would be an excellent resource to spice up that announcement of a special event or new class. 

The creations of Crossroads Creative will also soon be available at Worship House Media and Sermon Spice.  Visit Crossroads Creative web site and check out the many examples of their work they have posted. 

  

I apoligize for the sloppy look of posts here lately.  I don’t know what is going on with Wordpress.  I will have all text, paragraphs and graphics formatted the way I want them to look but I have no idea what it is going to look like once I click publish.  Anyone else having issues with Wordpress and formatting?

For years I have always been frustrated with trying to create countdown videos that were half-way decent.  Usually they looked pretty cheesy because there was just not much modification available with the built-in counters in our worship presentation software.

Some of that has been alleviated with a cool little utility called Countdown Creator authored by Nevan Hooker of Southeast Christian Church.  The Countdown Creator gives you the ability to quickly take a static or motion background and add a countdown clock.  This app gives you the ability to change the placement, size, angle, color, font and shadow of the clock.  You can also add an audio track.

The negatives of the utility are that it only accepts inputs of .mov, .avi, .wmv, .jpg, .bmp and .gif.  I was disappointed that it would not accept at least mpeg1 video and .psd would have been nice too.  Another downside is that it will only accept video that is 720×480 definition which I did not quite understand and explains why mpeg1 is out.  The Countdown Creator is being distributed by Midnight Oil, Sermon Video.com, Worship House Media and a couple of others.  Be advised that Countdown Creator at around $35 is not a stand alone video application.  Most of the videos, motions and stills that you have purchased from the above mentioned vendors will not import into Countdown Creator.  You must have video editing software capable of rendering your video and motion backgrounds to the 720×480 resolution such as .wmv, .avi, and .mov.

The Countdown Creator is great for a quick countdown clock solution that looks much better than the timers I have used in the past.  Hopefully we will see improvements and updates in the near future.  If you have the ability to render your video then this little utility is worth the price to make pretty good countdowns for your services.