Practice Is Over!
| February 3rd, 2008Today was our last “practice” Sunday at CoastlandTampa, it being the 4th week we’ve met at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in their Grande Ballroom. And yes, “Grande” has an “e” on the end. It’s that awesome. All of this means that next Sunday, February 10th, is our official grand opening, crazy-go-nuts launch day!
Each week since we’ve been meeting in the Crowne, we’ve tweaked and added and adjusted and fixed so many different things. From the signs directing people to our meeting area (which we initially purchased at FastSigns but have since hooked up with another vendor for a super deal), to the flow of the service, to adding a full band this week (this made a HUGE difference in atmosphere!), to stepping up the quality of the videos shown during the service.
Sunday morning service is basically my baby…the room is my responsibility so it falls on me to make sure everything is ready to go and that things are done right and well. I’m so thankful we’ve had these practice weeks to learn and experiment and figure out what works well, because I definitely needed it! I’ve been meaning to share about our room setup and equipment (for any church planters out there along with those curious), and I’ll get to that this week sometime. But I wanted to share a key part of each service: our videos.
Each week we show two videos during the service: a man-on-the-street interview that is related to the topic of the morning, as well as what we call a Jesus Story…someone telling their story of how Jesus changed their live, of course connected to the topic at hand.
The MOTS is shown right before the message, and the Jesus Story is shown in the middle of the message. Before coming to Coastland, my video work was fairly minimal, though I knew I could learn and do it well (after all, Input and Learner are in my top 5 strengths!). So each week for the last 3 weeks, I’ve shot and edited a good deal of video and I’ve learned and improved each week, something quite satisfying to see.
Here are some videos I’ve shot and edited. I’ll get into how they were made soon. For now, take a look and let me know what you think.
Tom- excited for your official launch! Know I’ll be praying! I watched a few of your videos. They’re great. Are they up for grabs?