From Backstage

I have the awesome privilege to be a part of the planning, preparation and the execution of what happens on our stage at NewSpring each week. It is my responsibility to make sure everything comes together as planned and in doing so I get to work with some of the most talented people in the world. Very few people get to see what I see and so I thought I would try to give you guys a look from my vantage point. I’ll try to do this each week and probably focus on just one aspect of the service (my posts are too long as it is!). Today I’ll focus on the preparation of the video pieces.

Mother’s Day 2008 will probably go down as one of the most memorable services we have put together. Last year on Mom’s Day we gave away a home to a single mom and we thought that would be a great thing to do each year on this day. So we did… and then some. This year we also gave away a van equipped with a wheel chair ramp to a great mom who cares for her son whose only way to get around is by wheel chair.

(If you weren’t at our service this year it will be up on our website (newspring.cc) by mid-day Tuesday, May 13, so check it out. Also, I you can take a look at Perry’s thoughts from the day here.)

One of my team’s tasks was to present these two stories via video. In today’s service there was over 25 minutes of video between the two stories. We also included another 4 minute video to go along with our band’s version of the Chris Tomlin song, “God of This City”. We used this song and video to recap many of the ways NewSpring has served our city over the last few months and it also cast the vision that we’re not stopping in Anderson. We intend to take this sort of thing to Greenville and Florence.

What most people don’t know (at least I didn’t until I got into this ministry) is what goes on behind the scenes to make the videos come together in their final form. It takes 10 to 15 hours of work (from original video shoot to the end of the editing process) to produce one minute of finished video. Think about that. Just for the video elements used in today’s service that is somewhere over 300 hours of work. We used our own staff along with three professional freelance camera guys to compile over 2000 individual segments of video. From there our team did all the work to put together what finally ended up in the service.

Needless to say our video team really shined today. That team is led by our Visual Director, Ken Wilson and the people on his team, David Jolley, Will Rodes, Ben Coleman, and Judith Farkas went all out to make Mom’s Day at NewSpring awesome.

Why do we do all this work for one Sunday? The answer is that we want people to see Jesus and to meet Jesus. The stories of two great moms and the giving of two great gifts is just a drop in the bucket compared to what Jesus has done for each of us. Our hope is that by following Jesus in his many examples of generosity we will be able to show those who attend our service how much more he has to offer them than a new van or a new house.