Welcome Visitors with a Video

How to Show Off the Best Features of Your Church

by Jeanette Gardner Littleton

Eight of 10 families in the United States own at least one VCR, said American Demographics magazine in 1995. Many churches are taking advantage of home VCRs by providing visitor videos.

"We're in a world that's visually driven," says Dean Parham, assistant pastor of Gray Road Baptist Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. "Creating a video about our church seems to be better than a print piece."

The Purpose of a Visitor Video
A 10-minute video can offer a great overview of a church's ministries. "Our church is big enough that you can't know all that's going on," Parham says. "Our video gives a good snapshot feel to the big picture of things." Visitors who attend the church may each have a video, but they must go to the front of the sanctuary after church to pick one up. Videos do not have to be returned.

Metro Life Community Church, in Orlando, Florida, shows videos to visitors during a break in the morning service. While church members are taking children out of the service to various classrooms, visitors are encouraged to go to a room where they can enjoy refreshments and the video. After the break, the adults go back to the sanctuary for the rest of the service.

Seven Rivers Presbyterian Church in Lecanto, Florida, chronicled church events on video for more than a year. Now it's working that footage into a 20-minute outreach tool. Each member of the church will receive a video, says Tara Bryant, who is working on the project. People can pass the video along to people who want to know more about the church. "At some point, we might produce several different videos that are geared toward a particular population," Bryant says.

Getting It Together
Before creating a video for your church, you should answer some important questions: What is the purpose of your video? Who is it for? What is its message? And how can you best state that message? For example, if you want to reach out to people with children, you'll want to emphasize children's ministries in your video. If you want to stress the interpersonal strength of your congregation, you could show people interacting in small groups.

Next, consider the technical aspects of creating a video, such as:

Scripting. Will you use narration or let pictures do all the work?

Visuals. If you want to use video clips, do you have a well-trained person who knows how to get good footage? Do you have video camera equipment that will produce great material? If you want photos in your video, do you have a photographer who can produce those for you?

Editing. You can use a video-based system to edit videotape into a final product. Some home camcorders have this capability. However, you won't create professional-quality work without professional-quality equipment. A computer-based linear editing system provides various editing functions. It would allow you to scan photos into the computer, then weave animation or words around them. You could also feed video footage into the system, then add narration, music, and/or graphics. Because visuals take up a lot of hard-drive space, though, you may be limited to producing a short video of less than 10 minutes.

Sound. If you want sound to accompany video footage, you'll need editing equipment that can be connected to a soundboard or microphones. You'll want to cut out unnecessary sounds. If you want to play some contemporary Christian music in the background, you'll need permission to do so. For narration, you'll need an editing system that can drop in or overlay the sound.

Bottom-Line Prices
To create a great video, you can't just grab someone's camcorder, shoot footage, then reproduce the results. A poor video can be worse than no video at all. On the other hand, churches that produce top-quality videos can pay a lot for equipment. For example, Little Flock Baptist Church, in Louisville, Kentucky, has spent four years building a studio with $30,000 worth of equipment. "We edit on a nonlinear system, which means we use a computer, capture the video to the hard drive, add the effects and titles, render the product, then put it back on tape with a music overlay," says Mike Rhodes.

You don't have to spend that much to create videos, however. Gray Road Baptist Church recruits members who do video recording as a hobby. The AV enthusiasts have the knowledge as well as the editing equipment to make a top-quality product.

Seven Rivers Presbyterian Church saved money by hiring videographers to tape church events, then asked a staff person to transcribe the footage, noting what to use in a visitor video. That material will now go to a professional to edit into a 20-minute video.

Mike Gilland of Metro Life Church in Orlando believes any church can afford to do some kind of video. "Even if you have a small church, a video is a first-class way to show people there's a little more," Gilland says. Even hiring an agency or production house to produce a video isn't too costly. "You should be able to get something done for less than $1,500," Gillard says.

New Song Community Church in Oceanside, California, hired professionals to produce a video from start to finish and found it very affordable. The church's visitor video was created by Outreach Marketing (800-991-6011), a company that specializes in helping churches develop affordable marketing tools.

"In our multimedia department, we've streamlined much of the process in creating video brochures," says Peter Peaslee of Outreach Marketing. "For instance, instead of hiring a production crew to take the video and all that's involved in creating a major production, we can create the illusion that this has been done through our multimedia department for a much lower cost."

Peaslee likens the company's system to using a template in a computer program. The company simply inserts a church's information into a preset format featuring up to 10 different ministry areas. New Song Community Church provided the company with visuals—amateur video footage, photos, and logos—as well as information about what to include in the video script and sequences. With a linear-editing system, the company then created a master 8-minute video for $1,250. The video can be duplicated for $1.50 to $7 per tape, depending on the quantity.

Another factor that affects the cost of a video is length. Metro Life Church purposely offers a short video. "We come from the old school that says you want to leave newcomers wanting more information, not wishing you had cut it short," Gilland says. The church supplements the video with additional information about the church in a custom-printed binder.

But the main feature is still the video. If you want to reach out to a world that's having a love affair with television, consider using a video. Show your community what your church is all about.

Jeanette Gardner Littleton is a freelance writer living in Des Moines, Iowa.

Copyright © 1999 by the author or Christianity Today International/Your Church Magazine. Click here for reprint information on Your Church.
May/June 1999, Vol.45, No. 3, Page 14

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