Collide Magazine

Church Spotlight: SECC Student Ministries

Daniel Darnell - Originally posted Monday, September 21, 2009 -

When people think of youth ministries, they may see images of a rundown room in the church filled with hand-me-down gadgets and uneven pool tables. However, such is not the case for the student ministries at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky. From the creation and sharing of stunning multimedia to the technologically advanced student ministries building, The Block, to the thousands of students impacted weekly, Southeast Christian Church is redefining student ministries.

Dave Harris – Creative Media Director

COLLIDE : How did you get into creative media?
Dave Harris: I was a youth pastor for three years and basically realized I was spending too much time making everything look good and not enough time with students. God made it very clear I needed to do something different, so I got a job working for a corporate media firm doing design and video work for large companies. At the time, YouTube didn’t exist, so I had some Total Training VHS tapes I watched late at night, teaching myself After Effects, Photoshop, and other tools to do the job. I would also hang out at Barnes & Noble, spending lots of time looking at the art books and magazines to get inspiration. Although I wasn’t overly passionate about doing corporate artwork, it taught me the foundations of design, video, production, workflow, etc. I was then hired five years ago at Southeast Christian to create content for our young adult service.

COLLIDE : Why do you feel the use of media is important in youth ministry today?
Harris: I think media is one of the most powerful tools we have, but only if we use it intentionally. The idea of wowing a student with a fancy moving light or an HD projector doesn’t accomplish anything to grow them in their faith. We use the tools of media to tell a story or create an environment for students to learn the truth of the Bible in an engaging way. Students generally have short attention spans as is, so we need to make sure we never create a distraction, but use media to create focus.

COLLIDE : Do you produce all of your own media in-house? Why or why not?
Harris: About 90% of our content is produced in-house. It allows us to tailor our content to our people. One of the things we value is doing whatever works best for us in order to be more relevant to our community. I think it’s important for the church to be unique and it’s humbling to be at a church that has the resources in order for us to be unique. We want our students to feel like the service was tailored specifically to them. We do take advantage of motion backgrounds, stock art, and other things we can buy in order to save us time during the week. Creating our own content also allows us to create things we can then share with other churches through www.stufficanuse.com.

COLLIDE : Tell us about your free media resource website, stufficanuse.com. Why do you guys host so many free resources?
Harris: Stufficanuse.com started as vineresources.com. At the time I was creating content every week for our former young adult service (the Vine) and realized all this stuff I was slaving over was used once and then wasted away on a hard drive. I went into my boss’s office one day and basically said, “I have tons of stuff sitting on this drive doing nothing, do you care if I setup a website to give it away to other churches so it can get used?” He said yes without really knowing what he was saying yes to, but I went home that afternoon, bought vineresources.com, took a picture of a paper bag, and started giving away free “swag bags” of media. Later I began creating content for student ministry and the Vine service changed its name to the Post, so we felt like we needed to change the name, and it became stufficanuse.com. We hope to continue to make the site more and more useful and keep giving away more free stuff that you can use. We offer all the media for our teaching series along with videos, .PSD files, etc.

COLLIDE : Recently, Southeast Christian Church opened the new state-of-the-art student center, The Block. How has this new resource impacted the media ministry?
Harris: I think our goal from the beginning was to allow media to be a major part of what we do, but to enhance the service, not distract. We wanted equipment that allowed us to spend time with volunteers and create content, not deal with jiggling the cable every week to get the video to work. It allows us to be more efficient and make things easier for our student volunteers to run things. Newer technology allows us to spend more time being creative and less time worrying about whether or not things are going to work. However, with all that said, there is always a learning curve, so it’s important to have a good relationship and support from your A/V company. Mankin Media (www.mankinmedia.com) has gone above and beyond to find us great solutions on our budget.

COLLIDE : What words of wisdom or suggestions do you have for someone interested in getting started in creative media?
Harris: We have a huge responsibility and privilege to communicate God’s message to our community, so invest your time in making sure you are delivering a clear and relevant message. It doesn’t matter how well you know After Effects or Photoshop or what cool effect or plug-in you use, if you don’t communicate the message then you are missing the point. A strong, yet simple idea can go a long way.

COLLIDE: What kind of production goes into each Sunday service?
Harris: We have a junior high service Sunday morning, Lift, and a senior high service sunday night, Collide. Each service is run mostly by our student volunteers and we use around 10 students per service. We have to keep things simple enough for a sixth grader to run but still maintain a high quality level of production. Our equipment allows us to create presets during the week so students can have more fun running things without tons of pressure to hit 12 buttons at once. We have to setup and tear down the audio for worship each week depending on who or how many are in the band. We also have to maintain the lamps for projectors, lights, batteries for mics, and all the weekly maintenance in a production environment. As far as content goes, we are usually a teaching series (3-4 weeks) ahead for video content. Each series includes the main artwork, a 10 second bumper video, digital signage, print promotions, and any additional weekly videos to enhance our teaching time. We also do Block parties (outreach events) every other Friday night that could be a concert, professional skaters, cookouts, worship nights, etc.

COLLIDE: Recently SECC hosted the free media and tech conference, Gurus. Why did they chose SECC?
Harris: Gurus was an idea from Ben Mankin (of Mankin Media) to be a gathering of church production 'gurus' during the NAB each year during Vegas. Until last year there were only about 50 of us that met each year to share ideas, frustrations, thoughts, and dreams for media in the local church. We always looked forward to going each year to be a part of the community. Last year we decided not to go to the NAB, but still wanted to do Gurus, so we talked with Ben Mankin about bringing Gurus to us. Partnering with Stufficanuse.com, churchtechtalk.com, mankinmedia.com and other people in the media community (Barton Damer, Brad Zimmerman) we ended up with about 275 people from across the country (and a group from Canada, one guy from England) coming to the Block for Gurus. Our primary goal is to create a network and community of church production people who are doing this stuff every week in their local church. We wanted them to share practical information with each other and hopefully be encouraged that they don't have to do their job alone. We would love to create an open source church media community that gathers each year for Gurus.

In all honestly, the Block allowed us to do all the production in house which enabled us to keep the conference free, plus have an amazing venue.

Steve Stone - Media Designer

COLLIDE : What types of media do you create at SEC and what tools do you use to do so?
Steve Stone: The media we use is generally highly motion-graphic. For these, we use Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Apple Final Cut Pro, and Maxon Cinema 4D. However, we try not to be limited by our tools. Sometimes we will bust out the traditional paper and markers, or explore shooting video, or download and learn a new program. The goal is to communicate the idea as effectively as we can in the simplest form.

COLLIDE : How much work goes into preparing for each Sunday youth service?
Stone: Every week is different. We do a new series every month, which means new series graphics, videos, stage sets, and promotion. So series graphics are a priority, and we spend a lot of time developing those ideas as fully as possible. With the remainder of time, we try to make anything else that can support the teachers from stage.

COLLIDE : What challenges do you face in creating media for youth?
Stone: I think one of the hardest challenges that we have is breaking through the clutter that our teens are bombarded with every week. Messages, ideas, and identities are being thrown at them every day, every minute. We have to make things simple. We have to make the message easy for a student to take with themselves outside the walls of The Block. So we explore ways of communicating our points, not just through a funny video or a cool-looking graphic, but we try to use actual people, stories, and ideas. If they involve technology, great.

Matt Reagan – Director of Student Ministries

COLLIDE: How do the student ministries utilize media, both on Sundays and throughout the week?
Matt Reagan: For years it felt like we were always trying to get media out of its box, yet our attempts at “immersive” remained framed in by our screens, stage, web, and print materials. So when we sat down to dream about a student space, we wanted a space that facilitated all of the emotions and feelings that media can illicit without feeling techy, cold, and overdone. Stage height was a conversation, moving to one screen was a conversation, creating a space for student art, using warm woods and eclectic concepts…a handful of the conversations that helped us create a space where the media venues helped the media itself to come alive and feel like an extension of the space. Our media tells our story, it is always an extension of the road that our community is on and provides an opportunity to visually mark where we are, where we have been, and where we are going. It then overflows into print, web, digital signage, song, etc…

COLLIDE: Why do you feel the use of media is important in youth ministry today?
Reagan: Teenagers are hungry for identity and purpose, its why branding is such a powerful force in their lives. They want to figure out who they are, where they fit, whether or not their choices matter (Chap Clark – study on adolescence). That is why teenagers notice branding and media more than any other age group. Media produces a medium for them to communicate with words, feelings, and expressions not their own. A song better expresses who they are than they can articulate yet, a brand can give them an identity with the people they are beginning to fit in with, and a picture of a starving child in Africa can speak into their hearts with clarity as they decide whether or not they can change the world. In youth ministry, while our means are not limited nor driven by media, it is still a powerful means by which we can say “you are a child of the King”, “you belong to His family”, and “your life has purpose in Christ”. In the past media has lost its way because in youth ministry its purpose wasn’t clearly defined, we just knew we needed it. Now with some brave and purposeful creative folks at the helm, its making its way into Christ centered places and supporting visions like ours to “Awaken a generation to the Glory of God”

COLLIDE: How have the students responded to the new youth facility, the Block? How are you using it for your ministry?
Reagan: Our favorite surprise with our new space was that our students really got it. The block isn’t just a new building; it is a space that communicates that casts our vision. We want students to find who they are, and then be sent out into the world to advance the kingdom with their everyday lives. The Block has a life size Rhino busting through the fireplace, the signposts pointing to the four corners of the planet as well as the Q-doba down the street, the wall graphics, room themes, visual signage and art all scream that this building is not the point. The Block is simply a launching pad for what God is going to do in our students’ lives outside of our building. Buildings do not drive community and purpose, but we are looking forward to see all of the ways our building will facilitate raising up our students in Christ to reach their community and their generation. We still have a lot of bugs to work out, dreams yet to dream, and disciples to be made, but we have a deep hope for what Christ can do in our community.

To learn more about the student ministries at SECC, visit www.seetheblock.com. To read more about The Block, see our article Modern Worship Space.