Media Outreach

Salutations men & women of the cloth (and of the Internet)! Our beloved Andy Grove who delivers his dear reader(s) weekly with best practices has become buried this week, so in his stead, I will be leaving my video format to bring to you “Best Practices”! Allow me to dust off my thesaurus and wordsmith at a level that Andy’s parents (Hi, Mrs. Grove) would approve of.

This week, I had the pleasure of enjoying the sermon at my church. That may sound a bit bizarre, because shouldn’t you enjoy the sermon every week? Well, yes. But if your pastor was like mine, you might not (just kidding Tony, you do great, I enjoy it every week). But this Sunday, something happened at the beginning of the sermon that has never happened to me in a church.

We began a new series called “Let’s Wrassle”, which addresses how sometimes, we really need to put all our effort forth to wrestle with God to reveal his will in our lives like Jacob wrestled for blessing in his life in Genesis (I did pay attention, even though I was running the sound board). So, when our sermon graphic hit the Easy Worship presentation, everyone laughed. Score one for me, I knew that design would pay off. Now, if I can only get Tony to wear the mask one Sunday during church. Yes, I have the mask. I brought back 3 from Mexico last year and gifted them to my brother and your beloved author Andy Grove.

So, I bet you’re wondering what happened that was so different. Tony asked us all to take our cell phones out. He then said the most important thing needed to be a good wrestler is a great wrestling name. Being a “creative” myself, I loved this. He then gave out his phone number and asked everyone to text him their best wrestling names. What a way to kick off a sermon! I was hooked. The congregation was engaged. It was so unexpected.

So here are some tips when using technology in your sermons.

1. Use it sparingly. The opportunity will come up to use something you haven’t done before. If you do it every week, it will lose it’s luster and become commonplace.
2. Look for opportunities. If you don’t keep a watchful eye for opportunities to be inventive, you’re likely to miss them.
3. Don’t be afraid to take a chance. Sure, it might flop. But it might strike a chord with someone who has been in churches their entire life and needs a quick wake-up call.

Are you using tech devices in your church services? I’d love to hear your ideas and see what things are working for you! Leave a comment, let’s talk about it! Andy should return next week, but until then, I bid you all adieu (oh and I know you were wondering, the weather in Austin is lovely today).

Photo By: Cyrillicus