Support MBC video

Here is my latest video - I made this to encourage everyone in our Maranatha Bible Camp family to continue to support MBC. Hopefully churches will show this for their "Treat the Camp" Sundays. I recognize that it will be nearly impossible to get a 7 minute video shown in any Sunday morning church service (unfortunately), so I did make a 3.5 minute version, that I have aptly named the "Too Short Version."

This video had all kinds of challenges and opportunities for growth and learning.

Equipment/software - I used the trial version of Sony Vegas 11 on the kids HP laptop (my computer does not have the "horsepower" to do such things, sadly). Other than making a short experimenting video, I had not used Vegas before, and was relatively satisfied. I still have a lot to learn about it. Using Sony DVD Architect was a challenge, because just simply clicking the "Make movie" button to render a DVD directly to Sony DVD Architect won't render audio correctly. Go figure that Sony's video editor and DVD authoring program won't play nice. It can be done, but not by the simple one button click. Another challenge was that my Panasonic DV camera had bitten the proverbial dust just days before we began working on this. (It actually had smoke coming out of it!). I was very thankful to Penny for letting me borrow her Panasonic DV camera, but we had to charge the battery every 20 minutes or so of shooting. So, considering that I used trial software and had to borrow the kid's computer and a camera, I was pleased in general with the result.

Content - I have never made a "documentary" feel video of any kind, but I thought that this might be the best combination of explaining how important MBC is and showing summer highlights. I wrote a basic script of what I wanted to say, and then talked through it with my team of helpful "Critics" (Jenette and the four older kids, all of whom love to argue and pick things apart!) Their input was very helpful. Then I began the arduous task of sorting out video content from all the various sources. There was DV from my own camera (RIP) this last summer (all shot only in June before I broke my leg). There was quite a bit of good video from HS1, JH1, and JR1 (again, June camps) because Phil Weece had spent a lot of time shooting. And then there were many clips taken mostly from camper's and volunteer's digital cameras on our camp hard drive. Some of the clips were horrible, poorly shot, and useless but a few were pretty good. This was the biggest challenge of making this video, and now is the time for me to repeat the thing I have said to myself the last four summers in a row:

"Next year, I am going to get great video shot all summer at every session of camp of lots of happy campers and adults doing fun and meaningful things with one camera that has a consistent look, quality, and format. If I don't do that, once again, I will go bananas trying to make highlight videos."

Shooting - all the highlight video was already shot, but we did the interview parts here at my home office. Jonathan set up two of our lamps from the house so that there was light on the background, (which was actually a blue bedsheet hanging on the wall) and light on my face. I thought he did a brilliant (HA!) job setting up the lighting and I honestly did not even think about setting up lights the way he did. He said that he had those lighting ideas after he watched "Divided" and noticed how lighting was set during interviews. I was very impressed with his vision for the lighting. We also experimented with a "Franken-microphone" thing that somehow ended up working with the borrowed camera. Jonathan ran the camera and Jordan was the self appointed "director" and franken-microphone pointer. She was actually very helpful by insisting that I do each section several times. I think the end result was much better because she gently pushed me to make it better.

Other - The background music was provided by Announcing the Apocalypse (That's Joel, with Jason and Jonathan). I thought it was pretty awesome and added the right feel to the video.

My thoughts on the Movie "Divided"

At the risk of offending many dear friends involved in ministry, I would like to encourage anyone involved with Church ministry at all to watch this film. It is online free for a limited time, so please go ahead and watch it. I would love to hear what others think about this.

The premise of the movie is that traditional youth ministry has the potential danger of dividing families away from each other. The solution, according to the film, is to have families together in worship and in Bible teaching instead of segregated by age or life stage.

While I think that solution by itself is limited, the larger goal is to have the church take up the responsibility to challenge parents to be the spiritual leaders and disciplers of their children.

We keep asking ourselves why kids are leaving Christ and the Church, but we haven't gained any ground against the world.

I think the Church needs to ask and address this question: are we truly holding onto the next generation by what we are doing, or do we need to do something different? While I would not agree with the movie that the Bible states definitively and undeniably that age segregation in the Church is wrong, (book, chapter, verse?) I do see that in many churches, the family is just as fragmented as in the world.

I don't know any Church or any youth minister that would say that the Bible is unclear about who is supposed to be the spiritual leader in a child's life. However, by our practices, maybe we communicate things that we don't mean to.

For example, most churches have a "youth group" time, and an adult Sunday School or small group time, but how often do churches have a dedicated "family" teaching time when youth and adults are experiencing the same thing at the same time in the same place? Unfortunately for many churches, that never happens. What does that teach the family? The kids? Is the family really gaining spiritual ground against worldliness? If not, why?

Is it possible that the media (or methodology) actually becomes the message?

Maybe if youth ministries spent more effort training parents to spiritually mentor their children, they would be more effective. I don't agree with the movie that we should do away with traditional youth ministry, but I do think that we should make it so much more family centered.

Please watch this and encourage Church leaders to watch this. We need to stop fooling around and start winning back the Church's youth for Christ.