Snow storm | NewSpring vols

Saw this on the NewSpring Youtube page today. YouTube – Snow storm shows the NewSpring volunteer spirit

It’s almost on

I’m ready to see this bad boy get turned loose.

iwantanewmarriage.com

Begins in February.

NewSpring Anderson

NewSpring Anderson 11:15

Originally uploaded by avclub

So, we were a little cozy at the Anderson campus today. Link to the photoset.

NewSpring Christmas Party

This weekend was great. Here’s a little snippet from our Christmas services.

It Is Well from David Jolley on Vimeo.

NewSpring from the sky

So, how’s that children’s and youth wing coming along? Well, courtesy of my friend Barron, you can now view the progress from sky level. (thanks for the pictures).

Catalyst

This has been my first experience attending Catalyst and I’m really digging it. There is no free Wifi however and while my phone gets data signal this year I’m opting to take hard-copy notes, digest them, and post them later next week. In the meantime, here are a few images that show the scope of this event.

the new NewSpring.cc

Looks like Shua is hard at work in the background of the NewSpring.cc site trying to get it up and running smoothing. It will be wonderful, it will be a work in progress, and I’m really looking forward to seeing it roll out.

As he finishes up his code chiseling, I thought it’d be fun to look at a brief history of NewSpring (or New Spring Community Church) previous sites. I grabbed these screen shots, some only partially intact, from Archive.org’s the Way Back Machine. Want some fun, put in “Apple.com”.

It does give you a brief visual of where we’ve come. I’m about 90% sure my facts are correct on this walk down technology memory lane, but if you were involved with any of these site, please help me fact-check and correct anything I missed. Joshua will have the most accurate picture.

Version 1.0. This was designed by my lovely wife, Meg, in Macromedia Fireworks, circa 2000. It’s when we registered newspring.cc, and also when we used a 400 MHz Compaq, and connected via dial-up.

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I also has an animated GIF splash page up there, too. I think I may have fumbled my way through that. Is it possible that this blinking image was NewSpring’s first animation?

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The second site was built primarily by volunteers and featured a cool sidebar that we were able to change with… gasp… a content management system. It was not unlike a precursor to an RSS newsfeed. The site also included an open discussion forum.

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This next iteration was constructed by Joshua. I think I may have assisted as well as a volunteer or so. Honestly, I can’t really remember. But here it is. It featured a rotating series graphic (our first capital campaign is featured here).

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Version… what are we up to… 4.0 was designed by Joshua on his own and featured an orange RSS icon, prominent series artwork, a three column layout. And a swoopy-graphic header.

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Version 5.0 was laid out by Chris Dunagin with some contract assistance. It had a Flash opening page (pictured, missing graphics). I wasn’t able to get a deeper screen shot.

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Version 6.0 is NewSpring’s current iteration. I believe Lloyd Gibson was involved with this, but I may need him to comment in to give more details. It is the first NewSpring.cc site to utilize a video player showing previous messages.

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And finally here’s the splash you’ll see if you visit NewSpring.cc in the current present. Is that redundant? I don’t know what it holds in store, but it should be fun, amazing, and ever-growing. And it doesn’t appear to follow the previous six version in being all blue

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Thoughts from a guy who runs ProPresenter…

This post is by a fella who runs ProPresenter (what we call “CG”) at Revolution Church. If you’re on NewSpring’s production team, I highly recommend reading this. I love his grasp of what’s really important and his attitude.

Weidy the dancing director

Sundays at NewSpring are great, especially when Weidy the dancing director is working his magic. In all seriousness, this guy loves Jesus, loves NewSpring, and fully buys into the vision of what’s happening here. He’ll be making his way to Greenville in the near future to make video magic happen there. It will be amazing.

Weidy the dancing director from Ken Wilson on Vimeo.

Weidy the dancing director on Vimeo

God of This City

Here’s the God of This City piece that capped the service this weekend.

Mother’s Day write-ups

Mother’s Day at NewSpring went over very well this year. I’d love to write it up myself, but honestly I’m having blog-lag. Not sure why, maybe I should go on autopilot for a few days. No fear, details of the service have been faithfully chronicled by Shane Duffey and David Jolley.

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Let God Arise

Here’s a little piece built for this past Sunday’s services. Originally, the goal was to create a different looking visual for the song. Then the issue came up of how to incorporate the welcome into the day. Finally, we landed on embedding the welcome into the opening visual, and that provided a nice little launching pad for the click (1… 2… 1, 2, 3, 4).

Download Let God Arise + Welcome (Quicktime, 8.6MB)

It did provide a fresh look, and held up to my self-imposed constraints. I wanted to do a piece where I didn’t fall back on gradients, vignettes, glitchy transitions and fast cuts. Also, I kept it hard-lined and used green to key on, so the color choices had to be far enough away from green to provide a full key. The desire was to build a piece that overlays onto our live video feed, and does so with the constraints of our switcher (no alpha channels available, just chroma key).

I did make judicious use of the Ease and Wizz script, too. You can see it on those gorgeous position movements. (that’s no simple F9 key, folks).

The YouTube compression is horrible, but here it is just in case you wanted to see it.

I’ll add this, too. This piece was altered several times throughout the day. At the morning practice, we realized I’d put in an incorrect lyric. After the first run (which I believe is shown here) we decided to offset the piece by about 2 beats to make it easier to sing along. How do you make on-the-fly changes? I think this speaks to being organized in your project work. If you know me, you’ll know that I’m hard-nosed and meticulous about organizing your comps, layers, and files. In this case, it allowed me to easily jump in and make a clean change without stressing over how the project was built. Let this be a lesson to you, non-layer-namers. (and those of you who’s clips are all called Untitled01… Untitled02…).

C3 videos

Nearly forgot that I have a Vimeo account. I uploaded a few clips from our trip to Fellowship Church and C3 a month ago. Check it out.

C3 Conference from Ken Wilson on Vimeo.

Untitled from Ken Wilson on Vimeo.

C3 day 2 (Bishop TD Jakes)

Bishop TD Jakes
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- “oops, there it is”
- when I turned 40, my Bible shrunk
- Luke 24:13
- if I don’t read it well, it’s not that I can read, it’s that I can’t see
- “when I talk to leaders, it’s like I’m talking to the whole world”
Speaking on “The Order of the Breaking of Bread”
- If you want to take some classes on politics, talk to some church-folk (we wrote the book on “who sits on the right and who sits on the left:”)
- you haven’t BEGAN to preach until you’ve become “contraversal”
- conflict, the price of being a leader
- he just quoted Star Trek…. to be a leader is to go where none have gone before
- people generally admire their leaders best when they’re dead (embraced as visionary, theologian, once dead)
- when God shows up in another form other than what people will recognize, they do not recognize (when he’s not in the religious trappings they expect), think about Jesus walking on the water… disciples didn’t recognize them
- when you do something against the status quo, expect to be alienated or ignored or controversial… especially in your church
- our greatest wisdom is foolishness to God
- when God moves in a new way, people don’t see it…
- How could they no recognize Jesus by his voice… no one speaks like Jesus but Jesus (Lazures recognized it, and he was dead)
- Jesus didn’t have to memorize the word, because he didn’t have to memorize WHAT HE WAS (He was the word incarnate)
- the beginning of leadership is to realize that you don’t know as much as you think you do
- there are some moment where we should plead with God to stay (“Abide with us…”), because we are some empty, not because we are so full
- God is not a dove, but he’s like / as a dove. He can become whatever he needs to be… (he’s water, mannah, a tree, a dove, a serpent)… he has the ability to be whatever he wants to be. When you ask him who he is, he says “I AM”
- HE’S BIGGER THAN YOU THINK HE IS
- “don’t look at me like you fastin’” (when Jesus offers you bread)
- there’s something about God appearing in ordinary ways that unlocks deep intrinsic interest (appear in simple things)
- Creativity Liberty = when you have the mic, you choose the menu
- it wasn’t important what Jesus ate, but how he ate it (he took it, he blessed it, he broke it, he gave it to them)
- God did this with Abraham, Issac, Jacob, Joseph, Jesus – (took them, blessed them, blessed them, and then gave to them)
- This is what God does with every man or woman he will ever use
- takes us years to realize the BREAKING STAGE is the BLESSING STAGE
- Had he not broken me, I would have never been able to preach that God is able (now I know it’s not me)
- Our problem is that we give the leadership (to the mic, the titles) to people who have never been broken
[notes complete, we stood up at this point]

C3 day 2 (Tommy Barnett)

Tommy Barnett.
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MAIN SESSION
- He’s describing the books he’s written
- He just said “mp2… no mp3… what is it?” and “technology is the devil” (he’s kidding)
- Have you ever wanted to shoot the sound guy?
- If you’ve ever wanted to quit, you’re in good company, you’re in good company
- When you’re in it, you want out of it. When you’re out of it, you want back in it… that’s how ministry is
- Many great men and preachers wanted to quit (Spurgeon, Churchill)
- There is honor in wanting to quit
- (1) Wanting to Quit is a Sign of Success [because you have something you actually want to quit]
- (2) the more you have to quit, the more you want to quit [the colder it becomes, the riskier it come, the lonelier it comes]
- (3) You can enjoy the luxury of wanting to quit if you know you’re not going to quit.
- if you have quality, then you’ll get quantity
- a burden comes and goes, but it’s the call of God that drives you when you feel you can go no further
- “every Monday morning I feel like I’m going to quit the church, but then I get a cup of Starbuck’s… sometimes it takes two cups”
- “I’m a killer, not a quitter” / “I have cut the word quit out of my dictionary”

HOW DO I KEEP FROM QUITTING?
- (a) burn the bridges behind you
- there’s no adventure like building churches for God
- (b) don’t tell anybody you want to quit when you want to quit
- (c) do not expose yourself to what you don’t want to be (you will be what you hang around… “I like this but…” is not a good philosophy)
- (d) if you don’t want to quit, lock yourself in so you cannot quit
- if the Taliban was playing the Lakers, then I’d pull for the Taliban
- difference between “mind made up” and “heart was fixed”

- He’s been preaching the Gospel for 54 years (sweet)
- “you can get by saying stuff at 70 you can’t get by with at 40″ (as he jokes about the Playboy mansion)
- At the Dream Center, we’ve got gang members, pimps, prostitutes… and that’s just the pastoral staff
- Great men are just ordinary men that just would not quit.
- in the last 5 years, I’ve seen more saved than I saw in the previous 48 years before that. (and more money come in, and seen more miracles)
- as you get older, the best is yet to come

Unleash questions

So, Unleash 2008 is nearly upon us. It looks to be a fun one. I’m pretty jacked to be leading a video / motion graphics breakout this year. I’ll follow in the steps of my buddy Alden and ask “What would you like to see covered?” You may submit your question ideas as a comment, or use the the contact form if you’re shy. The general scope will be in the content creation realm, but I’m sure we can bleed over into other closely related areas as well.

Fire away.

Saturday / Sunday and cool volunteers

Today, we just did a Saturay night and Sunday morning combo. All in all it went well. I’m thankful for the dedicated team members who gave up their Saturday afternoon to come to service run- through, and then gave their time to help orchestrate a great service.

I really do serve with the best group of folks. We even had a director who was sick… but came in anyway. And when we declared him unfit to direct and called a replacemet, he arrived within what seemed to be minutes. To top it off, Ben made it a strong point to thank me at the end of the day for “allowing” him to serve. What?!? I’m the one who should be thanking him (which I did) for dropping his plans at a second’s notice to cover. That’s the kind of dedicated folks that make my job a joy.

Cool that we were speaking on volunteering and service today.

You guys know you make my job easy, right?

Unleash 2008 promo

Unleash 2008, it’s coming. Which of you will I see there?

So you want to make art (job opening)

Think you have what it takes to create lovely moving works of art? Would you like to have a shot to do it at NewSpring? Well, this may be your chance.

I’m looking for someone to join my team in the area of production and motion content, specifically working for the children’s area.

I’d like to know who’s out there, who’s interested, and what your skills are. We are looking for a motion graphics artist / animator, not just a videographer. This is not an entry level or learning role; a functional proficiency will be required walking into this job.

The person who takes this role will need to meet the following:

- Loves Jesus and the mission and vision of NewSpring Church.
- Has the passion and skills to bring the vision of the children’s area to life
- Has working knowledge of animation programs (After Effects a must, 3D skills a huge bonus)
- Leadership potential, able to direct volunteers
- Be able to work full time
- Be able to demonstrate demo reel of your work

If you are interested, contact me at ken dot wilson at newspring dot cc, call the church offices at 864.226.6585, or find me through the contact form. Please email a current resume.