Audiovisual

Where once screens were only in a few select locations - perhaps the living room - now screens ride along with us in our pockets, our purses, and our backpacks. Children have access to screens throughout the day at school and each of us, regardless of our field, use screens in some way whether we're a server at Chili's, a teacher, or business professional.

Technology has made the transformation of a worship sanctuary possible with the relatively new art of Environmental Projection, or EP. For some churches, this is a completely new concept. If you haven't heard of EP or, if you're in the infant stages of running EP at your church, this article aims at assisting you with setup options for every budget, from small to mega church. We've shared a similarly formatted worship software guide, and it seems that many readers appreciate having their options laid out in terms of church size and budget.

Six years ago I've switched from PC to Mac and then back again last year. The first jump came after a friend gave me a second generation MacBook Air. More recently, due to my disappointment with Apple's latest update to their MacBook Pro line, I switched back to PC to get a fast seventh generation Intel Core processor and a touchscreen laptop. Apple offers neither as of early 2017.

Pastors, ministers and church staff don't make a ton of money unless you're a famous TV preacher, so they have to be careful when spending money on their church computer. We want something that's affordable and powerful enough to keep running even if the pastor or staff member needs to multitask. That's why we decided to offer a round-up of the best low-cost church computers for the pastor, ministry staff, and other users at church.

Digital signage usage is growing in nearly every business. It can be used to effectively attract new customers to a business’ product, inform employees of company happenings, or to display the status of certain processes or workflows. Churches have a great opportunity to use digital signage to notify their members of what is happening both locally and globally in the Church.

How many types of media does your church store? Just in my office alone, I have eight types, not counting hard drives and an solid state drive (SSD) or two. VHS, S-VHS, 8MM, DVD, Mini-DV, DVC-Pro, Zip disk, and SD cards. I might even have a VHS-C tape around here somewhere, if I looked hard enough. You might have more. Maybe it’s BetaCam, 3/4”, or even various film stock.

Placing loudspeakers and having them sound good involves a lot more than just pointing some speakers in the general direction of the listening congregation. While your church might hope that it would be this simple, it isn't. There are many “rules” for loudspeaker placement that are blatantly violated every week — especially with portable church sound systems.

Microphones are the first tools to use to capture sound and send it through the sound system. They’re amazing, really. But, as with many things in life, it is possible to have too much of a good thing. We don’t like to hear about that, but in this particular case using too many microphones could cause some serious sound system problems.