ChrisMoncus.com

During my first year of college I started attending First Baptist Brunswick, GA. There I met several ministers who so graciously sowed into my life and really affected the direction of my life. Over those five years I took away so many good tips, experiences, and ideas for ministry that I know I wouldn’t be the person I am today without them. One tip in particular has application throughout all areas of ministry and secular events.

“Kill it before it dies”, Waller Boyer said to me one night while he and I were leading a Disciple Now down in Jacksonville, FL. “Leave them wanting more.”

That statement rocked me.

So I started the implications of doing just that with different areas of ministry. How many sermons, music sets, dramas, videos, _____insert ministry here_____ have started out strong but the end perception was boredom or disinterest? Ministers, have we “lost” our audience and wondered why? This could be the answer.

When writing sermons, blog articles, and tutorials I try to use the “kill it before it dies” method. I get rid of all the extra stuff and try not to repeat myself unnecessarily. When possible I provide pictures to illustrate my point so I don’t have to beat the point to death. I try to write a 30 minute sermon, condense it to 15 minutes, and then when I go over (like usual) the message ends up being 25 minutes - the perfect length. I believe that I should be able to illustrate my point within the alloted time. If not, there’s probably too much “extra” stuff that could be removed, condensed, or otherwise better said. I also believe that a sermon should rarely be finished at church. There should always be some takeaway for the audience to have to work through and thus finish the sermon in their hearts. Leave room for that. Leave room for God to work.

Application to worship music? We need to keep a bead on the crowd and not let the songs go on too long. Luckily I am in a situation where that doesn’t happen much. If anything I want more. I could stand another 10 minutes of music easily, but maybe that’s the point. Leave me wanting more. Force me to seek out that satisfaction.

In my line of work it has applications on the non-sermon side of things as well. When being approached by someone to build a website I pass on a tip to them regarding their site content. I tell them, “Write what you want to say to the reader. Come back the next day and get rid of half the words. Then come back the next day and get rid of half of what’s left. You are then left with all the information you wanted to communicate in a smaller and easier to digest package.” It is more likely to be read and remembered if there is less to read and remember.

So that’s my little takeaway. Apply this to whatever you do in ministry and I believe the perception thereof will be more pleasant and engaging.

Please comment and let me know your experiences with this. Good or bad. Did this click with you? Do you disagree? Let’s talk.

Ha. Fourth post this week. This one is to announce the brand-spankin-new website for Alex Watson.

This is the third design I’ve done for this site - one for each of his CD’s. The current CD that the site is backing is called Flight EP. In my opinion, it’s his best yet. He had several other local musicians perform on it including TJ Thompson, McKendree Tucker, and Marcus Brand.

You owe yourself a listen (and hopefully a purchase). You can listen on his website or in iTunes. Your choice.

Hey guys. Quick announcement and “hint-hint, elbow-elbow” that GetSkinsNow.com launched this weekend. It was a collaborative work between myself (layout graphics & coding) and HPP Enterprises (content). They have some really neat cases over there for iPods, Zunes, other mp3 players, cell phones, satellite radios and MacBooks.

So my hint-hint is for you to head over there and browse the site. If you’re looking for really good electronics cases, check this place out. They are good quality and WAY below MSRP.

WUTS went great. There seemed to be an intense spirit of worship in the place and I believe it was a great experience for people from all across the southeast US and from all kinds of Christian traditions to get together and worship God together. Again, we held Worship Under the Stars under a roof in the Jekyll Island Convention Center. But who’s counting when ultimately, regardless of the name, God was worshiped. I do selfishly wish for WUTS to be held under the stars next year though. Hint hint Fred.

It was good to once again be a part of the use of AV and media to be a part of the worship. Adam Ogden, our Production Director, did a fantastic job leading our team and producing the show. I was the Media Director which put me in charge of photography, designing the website, creating the opening video, creating pre-show graphics, converting other videos for use within Easy Worship, lyrics presentation, and training our volunteers involved with media. It was great.

I had a great couple of volunteers helping me - my wife Amanda and Justin Nazzare. Justin ran the lyrics and video during show and did a ton to help get it all set up. Amanda was faithful in transferring pictures from my 1 and 2 GB cards to my computer so I could keep shooting and not have to stop to transfer from the cards when they got full. Thank you both.

About the pictures. I ended up taking about 3,100 pictures between the two nights. Yeah. 3,100. “Why that many?”, you may ask. Mostly because getting the perfect picture of someone while they are moving, the lights are moving, and the light levels are changing is a daunting task. Getting to my computer and looking at the photos made me glad I shot so many of them. I got so many unpublishable pictures of people with awkward faces, bad lighting, and moving so much that my 1/40-1/100 sec range of shutter speeds couldn’t catch without a blur. I will say that out of the 3,100 photos I did get about 80 unique shots worth posting. I say unique because a lot of the photos I took were 10-30 shot bursts trying to capture the subject in good light, without an awkward facial expression, while not moving too fast, and while they were doing something interesting enough. Using that math, I only took about 100-300 unique shots with 80 coming out publishable. I’d say those were good odds. Fifteen hours in PhotoShop later, I had my pictures.

Below are the links to the final product. The sizes I uploaded aren’t printable so if you want any printed, contact me through this website or call or email me if you wish and we can get that arranged.

View my favorites here on my site.

More are available on the Worship Under the Stars website.

And a side note: I took my 10,000th photo with my Digital Rebel XT during WUTS. Wow. That’s over 10,000 photos with this camera since June 4th, 2006! That’s an average of 74 pictures a day!

If you know me you know I love worship concerts. Last year, Worship Under the Stars brought the world of big worship concerts to the Golden Isles of Georgia. It was a huge success and brought over 3000 people from different backgrounds, denominations, and demographics together to sing to and worship our King. All this in leiu of Hurricane Ophelia which caused us to change venues and almost cancelled the event!

This year, projections forsee the attendance doubling to 6000. After speaking with both Fred McKinnon and Adam Ogden, it also looks as if this year’s team is kicking the event up a notch in music and tech. This is a must-attend event.

In the spirit of kicking it up a notch, when I was approached again to do the website this year I decided to scratch everything I had done before and hit it with an all-new design direction and back-end. Basing it off of some graphics provided by WUTS’s marketing company, I went through about 3 different designs before settling on one. The final product is now online at http://www.worshipunderthestars.com/. Take a look.

Also, don’t forget to buy tickets. There is a possibility of sell-out so get them early. Buy them here.

Hope to see you there. I’ll be doing photography again so look for the guy with the camera wearing a WUTS staff t-shirt.

There is a place below to leave a comment, so tell me what you think of http://www.worshipunderthestars.com/.

(Sorry, Emeril, for stealing your phrase. Bam!)