Home on the Web for the Church AV Specialist

Paid poorly or not at all; carrying a heavy workload in addition to a regular job; always challenged to present first-rate media with resources for which "limited" is a generous description. If anyone has ever cried out for the moral support of an extended community, it's the church media director.

Increasingly, IT and AV specialists in worship settings are finding both technical answers and morale boosts—to say nothing of a forum for their occasional gripes—on the World Wide Web.

Blogs are proliferating all over the Web, serving all kinds of specialized interests and communities. Why should the church media environment be any different? TerryStorch.com provides a list of church IT and multimedia experts' blogs. Terry Storch is part of the leadership team at Fellowship Church but takes pains to point out that the views and info he posts on his site are his own.

Fellowship's web director, Brian Bailey, has a blog of his own, in which he discusses topics such as how to build a better blog, how churches are removing barriers for their congregants, and how to succeed in a job interview.

Brian Glass of Crossroads Community Church in Adrian, Mich., also has a blog, where he's recently been discussing content legality, open source software for churches, and outsourcing of church support functions. His site also delivers comments from numerous other church AV people.

Healyourchurchwebsite.com seems like a self-explanatory site, and indeed it addresses topics like, "If your homepage's embedded Flash animation failed to load, would anyone notice?" It also provides news about new content resources and plenty of problem-solving.

"Using technology to equip shepherds for ministry," is the mission at TechShepherds.com. Among the current content at this site: "Tired of waiting for PDFs to load?"

At ProSoundWeb, the "Church Talk" section provides tips, discussion groups, reviews, and other resources related to quality audio in churches.

"Church IT geeks" are being sought by Jason Powell, technology director at Grainger Community Church, through his blog, Church IT and other musings. Powell wonders how many fellow IT geeks might be interested in getting together for a summer or fall roundtable discussion.

Powell's site also provides links to about a dozen other blogs devoted to IT and media issues in houses of worship.

Curious about "The 10 Biggest Church Staffing Mistakes"? Check out the article on that topic posted at Monday Morning Insights. The site has also posted recent messages on "Six Shifts that will Shape the Church" and "Taking Mega-Churches Seriously."

Of course, some online communities have been well established in the church media environment for a long time. Churchmedia.net, founded by consultant and author Tim Eason, now boasts roughly 30,000 website visits daily. The site maintains a long menu of topical message boards, along with conducting polls and providing news and product/book reviews.

Current content on the site includes a 10-page "magazine" report on the recently concluded National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas.

Church Video Venues similarly focuses on who's executing successful video or multimedia systems in churches these days. Well-known consultant Anthony Coppedge provides a wide range of content at his site, including model forms for such purposes as model releases and a location video shoot checklist.

From the physical community within the walls of an individual church, ministers and their advisors are increasing reaching out to a wider community for help and fellowship. These websites, and dozens of others, are meeting that need.