We’re beginning to see a lot of interest in camera systems for recording services and IMAG during services. With webcasting, podcasting, and local access cable channels bringing broadcasting within the reach of many churches, we get questions about cameras for that, too. Perhaps your church is just getting used to the idea of a projection system, and now it seems that everyone is talking about cameras. Do you need them at all? If so, won’t any old camera work?

First Baptist Church of Richland, NC is familiar with these questions and they found out a way to answer them. When Pastor Don Christian came to the church in the spring of 2000, the church had a consistent attendance of about 150. This proved to be a good match for the idea of using multimedia in worship. The church had already begun talking about it, and Pastor Christian had been itching to try it. “They brought me here asking me to lead the church to develop a more creative, dynamic ministry that would be more effective and engaging to those outside of the church, and they gave me some room to do it,” Pastor Christian says. He had contacted Fowler at his previous church, but they just weren’t ready to embrace the concept. Now that he had a church willing to support media, he renewed his connection to us. “Within 6 months, we were talking with the people at Fowler who were engineering our first projection system,” says Pastor Christian.

Putting the system in was a partnership between Fowler and First Baptist. “We have people with technical backgrounds in the workplace who are excellent,” Pastor Christian says. “They rightfully felt that we could do this ourselves, but we needed to know what to do so we didn’t shoot ourselves in the foot. The technical people at Fowler worked with us, and they gave us direction on how to set it up.” Without this relationship, they may have made a costly mistake. “We sent them the plans of the building, and they called us back immediately and said, ‘You’ve got a problem. If you try to do two screens in that configuration, they’re going to be so small that you really aren’t going to be able see them well from the back. We were basing our decisions on what we had seen at other places, but it wouldn’t work for us. They knew the vision angle questions and the perspective of distance and size that we didn’t know.”

FBC Richland sort of backed in to the idea of using cameras in worship. They included a Sony BRC-300 robotic camera with the first system for recording their services on VHS. It didn’t take Pastor Christian’s son Brad – a recent high school grad – very long to come up with another use for it. “He said, ‘Dad we can do IMAG with this,’” Pastor Christian recalls. “We used the one robotic camera, and Brad set up his digital camcorder that he had gotten for Christmas to get a closer shot. We started using those two cameras to show people what could be done with it. When they did children’s features, we could get close into their faces, and it helped when I was using object lessons and things like that.” The church is rather long and narrow, which made it difficult for people in the back to see what was going on for these things.

Another idea for using the cameras presented itself not long after they began doing IMAG. They called Fowler again and got a DV recorder. “We bought that with the idea of putting our services on our web site. At that time, the Iraq war had just started, and we had people over there,” Pastor Christian explains. “Brad said we could put streaming video on our website and the cameras enabled us to do that. The first service we put on streaming video was a mother’s day service with a child dedication. One of the children being dedicated had a grandfather in Iraq who was shipped out before the baby was born. He had seen pictures, but when I was dedicating the child, the child started cooing and crying as babies all want to do. I got an email back from that grandfather saying, “You don’t know how much this means. The first time I heard my grandchild’s voice is through our church’s website.”

“Once the church saw the potential, it was really kind of funny,” Pastor Christian laughs. “When we started doing this, suddenly the church bought in. They understood why we need better quality equipment. That’s why we stepped up to the level of camera that we stepped up to in terms of our budget range and everything.” They added a Director System from Fowler that includes two Panasonic DVX-100 cameras. They use these for their recordings, but they still use the robotic camera for wide shots. “It’s kind of a God’s-eye view or ‘God cam’ on the service,” Pastor Christian quips.

What has all this done for their growth? They now have as many people in their second service as they had when Pastor Christian got there – 150 – and they have between 300 and 350 in their first service. They have experienced some growing pains – a blended worship style is starting to produce tension between those who prefer one style or the other – but they’re already putting a plan in place to overcome that. “We’re getting ready to build a new ministry center and part of that is going to be a large multi-purpose area,” Pastor Christian says. “We’ll be able to add another service that will be completely contemporary. Then we’ll be able to take this blended service and scale it back to become more traditional so we can meet the taste and interest of all our members. I’m seeing more and more as churches experience the growth and success of creative, dynamic worship, and contemporary music, they’re almost forgetting that there are people who enjoy worship from the context of listening for the still small voice. Churches make mistakes when they try to cram square pegs in round holes.”

Through all these changes and the ones to come, Pastor Christian and First Baptist Church have come to rely on the company he first met at a conference. “We probably could’ve taken the cheap way out and just gone to a supply store and bought a projection unit, but it wouldn’t have been strong enough,” Pastor Christian says. “It was kind of a chance meeting with Fowler, but then they proved themselves time and time again.”

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