Robert's Blog

since the new year i’ve been playing racquetball with bill pruitt so that i could eventually accomplish my goal of quitting paying racquetball twice a week (i had to start playing twice a week so that i could eventually quit playing – this is a goal i know i can eventually reach). over the past couple of months i have been regularly beating him. nothing bad but i have had a running streak of consistently beating him. since, i don’t have much in my life to brag about it felt good to know that i could always fall back on beating bill in racquetball. this has been my conversational “ace in the hole”. anytime i entered a conversation in which people were bragging i knew that i had my racquetball victories to fall back on. they might brag saying “i’ve just discovered a cure for sinus congestion” (a discovery they should be very proud of) but i knew that i could respond with “well, i consistently beat bill pruitt in racquetball”.no matter what someone else was proclaim as great i’ve always been able to declare my wins against my pastor in the adult equivalent of “wall ball”.

this was true until earlier today.

i lost to bill pruitt in racquetball. i could make up a mirade of excuses but the truth is he beat me. sure my game was off, i had a burger king whopper sitting on my stomach, i was dealing with emotional strife, my ankles were bruised, my eyes were blurring badly, my kidneys were bleeding, my dog had just been run over, i had just ended a fight with my kids, and my hairline was receding. yet none of that matters. bill beat me somewhat fair and square. it’s a terrible, no-good, rotten day

for the next two weeks (May 29 through June 12) i’ll be doing the summer youth ministry thing so i probably won’t be updating this blog very often (if at all). i will update i after that with some of the stuff we’ve done and tell you how it went (or how it completely filed – either way works for me).

i’m working on a evangelism video for the end of the summer. i’m going to combine video and pictures of every teen that asks CHRIST to be his/her lord via our ministry during this summer and combine it with david crowder’s “heaven came down” from the lime CD. i want to make it in the “ken burns” style that he uses for his documentaries. i’m convinced that the greatest incentive for my kids to share the gospel will be a reminder of the glory brought to CHRIST through what has already happened. in addition to this, i believe the video will be something thatthe parents of each of these kids will want to have. i’ll write out more details as it comes together.

i got to do a wedding yesterday for a former student. i love doing wedding for kids i love. it’s a priveldge to be asked to be a part of such an important day.

here are the two videos that we are going to use for the view this week (may 26, 2004).

this is our announcement video. we went to siegen lane here locally and videoed cars. i then found some kids to act as drivers celebrating afterwards. next came the creation of the graphics and animation using swish. finally, i video myself and alan, the assistant youth minister, acting as commentators. this was then all pieced together with studio 9. very easy to do though quite cheesy. the idea was “stolen” from www.youthgroupvideos.com and then maybe improved upon.

the next video is our worship openning. it is based on psalm 105. i videoed teens after last week’s midweek service, asking them “what have you seen GOD do recently?” i took a few of their responses and then pieced them together with various transitions. i then videoed the mouths of different people reading lines form psalm 105. these were pieced together with just fade transitions giving them an almost moph-like quality. finally i added titles for the question, scripture reference, and ending and added david crowder’s “end of october” form the lime cd.

last week i said that i would put up a link to the first video i made with pinnacle studio 9. well here it is – click here. this was a rally of churches held at the louisiana state capital to shoe support for the bill banning cloning of human life for the purpose of sacrificing for organ parts.

the file is 21 megs so it’s a large file.

you can view the same thing with a much smaller file (6 megs) via real player by clicking here.

articles : “are you a minister or entertainer?” : youthworker journal: “The result of this bogus question is that we’ve managed to communicate to our young people and to the artists among us some thoroughly unbiblical concepts. The first, which was pointed out to me by the English journalist and poet Steve Turner, is that God has a hierarchy in the world of work. At the top are evangelists, missionaries, and all those in full-time Christian service. The next rung would be doctors, nurses, and all other caregivers; then come teachers, veterinarians, law enforcement, the guy who invented smoothies, and close to the bottom of the list we find artists and anyone else working in entertainment.”

steve taylor – the musician – wrote this article in youthworker back in 2001 – i was subscribing to it back then but some how i missed this article. it’s a great article. he’s whole point is that we’re supposed to do all that we do to the glory of GOD so why do we pull this whole “is your rock band about ministry or entertainment” crap? praise GOD for p.o.d. and six pence and the others who “crossed over” and are now being “salt and light” in a very dark world. GOD has used them and will continue to all because they are entertaining people and being CHRISTians at the same time.

with that said, i think the real question comes down to us youth ministers are we “ministers or entertainers?”. i’m not asking if our stuff is boring or fun – ours is fun in my opinion but you would really have to ask the others around me. and i’m not trying to say that all our stuff should be serious. what i’m trying to say is that all of our stuff should be about ministry – meeting CHRISTians’ needs and helping them to glorify GOD with their lives.

the reason for this is that we are supposed to do “all for the glory of GOD” and this means doing what you’re supposed to do. ministers are supposed to minister. i’ve been around some who don’t and i go through times where i don’t. ministry can be a royal pain in the butt – though usually it is the greatest job ever. at certain times it because easier to be concerned about the “tasks” of what we do rather than the ministry to and with our people. i really think music ministers have the hardest time with this.

we’ve got to be about ministering to people.

i received the pinnacle studio 9 software late yesterday afternoon and loaded it on my computer this morning. i took advantage of the fact that CHRISTians across louisiana were gathering at the louisiana capital building to show our support for a legal ban against cloning human life to then be sacrificed for others (a form of slavery that is completely evil). i went to the capital to video the event and then make something for our sunday service.i came back to the church at about 3:30 and i had between then and 5:00 to learn the program and make a video.

it’s was extremely easy. of course, all i was making was a “music video” cataloging the event. it was nothing special but it was incredibly easy. here are the steps.

• the program automatically downloaded the DV from the camera and divided the film into scenes based on when i started and stopped the camera.
• i had the choice of “story-boarding” the movie or doing the whole thing on a time line. swapping between these views was extremely helpful for determining how much longer the video needed to be for the background music.
• with the footage divided into scenes it was easy for me to “plop” those scenes in the order that i wanted. here’s a screen shot.
• i was able to edit the scenes through the “clip properties” (extremely quick and easy)(screen shot of the clip properties dialog – it shows you the first and last frame and you just drag the two handles to where you want it to start and stop).
• i was then able to add transitions (screen shot of the transitions) simply by dragging them to the area i wanted and then i simply added a “soundtrack”.

the whole thing was incredibly easy.

of course, i haven’t played around with changing any of the setting so it’s all very basic right now. the settings will be played around with later.

i’ll place a link up to the web-version of the video tomorrow.