Last week I wrote on some new methods of tithing. The bleeding edge of those ideas was to incorporate cryptocurrency as a way for people to tithe. Specifically, Bitcoin (BTC). Through some side bar conversations with folks who had read the post, I thought it would be fun to dive in a little deeper for the uninitiated. Keep with me until the end to find out how to have a chance at winning a little BTC.
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Tithing via Technology
I don’t have checks. My checking account doesn’t even have checks associated. It should be called a debit card account. On any given Sunday I would find myself walking out my front door thinking, “Don’t forget to stop by the ATM” only to switch gears into mentally rehearsing the Sunday school lesson I would soon be presenting to my pack of middle school / Jr highers. Once I was five minutes down the road I would slip into a sort of auto-pilot, driving straight past the ATM and into the church parking lot. My tithing record was almost non-existent. But then something happened.
Video Editing on a Budget
I want to make snappy videos, but I can’t afford a Mac. No worries my friend, I have an affordable solution for you. I’ve been using an editor for Windows called TrackAxPC for a little over a year now and it continues to impress me. I want to be open and honest with you; making videos is not a focus in my life. Yes I’ve made a few and you’re welcome to go check them out on my YouTube channel, but they are nothing special. My motivation in writing this post is for the church that might not have the money to throw into editing equipment and/or the talent pool of people who are already proficient with a particular video production suite.
Streaming Video to the Church Nursery (And More)
A New Twist to an Old Trick
I grew up in a small, rural Methodist church. I have a memory from those days of seeing an old tweed covered speaker up near the ceiling. My natural curiosity directed me to ask someone what the speaker was used for. I was informed that it had been used to pipe the preacher’s sermon into the nursery on Sunday morning so that the ladies working there didn’t have to miss out. I was also informed that it no longer worked due to recent upgrades in the sound system. I’m willing to bet the speaker is still there, though I don’t know if it works or not.
Many, if not all, churches offer a nursery of some type in order to keep screaming kids out of the serviceā¦ I mean to enable parents to attend the worship service. Some churches also have a desire to have their service content served to other parts of the church; perhaps the front lobby.
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Hangouts with Missionaries
In some way, many churches are involved in missions. Some help fund individual missionaries or give to organizations that feed multiple missionaries. Other churches raise up and send missionaries. Then you have mission trips, both youth and adult. The bottom line is that, in some fashion, our churches are sending people out into the world to spread the gospel. In doing so we normally request that they keep us in the loop with updates on their adventures. These updates can come to you in different ways: a letter, email, phone call, or even a video. But what if you could just talk to them live? What if your congregation could be in on it as well?
Live Streaming on a Budget
Streaming your church service online is the new frontier. Nearly all mega-churches are doing it and they look fantastic. They are running with $3,000 cameras, pro level switching equipment, and numerous other production toys that the average church simply can’t afford. These churches live at one end of a spectrum.
At the other end you have churches that want to make their services available online, perhaps a download is good enough. There’s a few ways this can go, maybe they’re using the really nice camera they bought five or ten years ago and some type of analog to digital converter to get the video from tape to a computer. After the conversion is made then the video is uploaded to the church website without any type of post-production. After all, who can really afford that fancy Mac and a copy of Adobe’s toolset?