A pre-service video to introduce newcomers to church

March 14, 2011 in Church Services

At Church by the Bridge, we’ve put together a very basic intro ‘video’, that will be played before each church service starts, from this weekend.

I say ‘video’, because it’s actually a series of images, arranged together in iMovie, and exported as a Quicktime video. So, while it’s a video, you don’t need much video production experience to produce something similar at your church.

The benefit of creating a video like this (based on images), is that as details change or new information needs to be communicated, the video can be easily updated.

The video is simple, and has a simple purpose – to provide information to newcomers as they take their seat and wait for church to start. It’s easy to assume that newcomers know where things are (e.g. toilets), or what’s available during and after the service (e.g. Kid’s Church, prayer) – this video seeks to make these details clearer.

Take a look:

You might also be interested to check out this collection of (much flashier!) welcome videos.

  • http://www.timjones.id.au Jet86

    Will the slides stay on longer than in this video? They seem too short – some of them I didn’t even have time to read.

  • http://itsonlybarney.com Andrew

    Steve, love the idea. At Merrylands we had something similar a while ago, however I personally didn’t like it because there was little theme connection (i.e. background/font) between all the slides.

    I noticed on yours, that some of the slides with lots of text, in particular the Simply Christianity and Belonging Course slides don’t appear long enough to read them completely. I do understand that they will appear a number of times in the cycle, but I find it distracting to have to find where I was to completely read the slide contents.

    The rest of them were timed well for the length of the slide contents.

  • Steven Kryger

    Thanks for the feedback – I’ve extended the slides with more text to display for 10 seconds before changing. Do you think the other slides should display for longer too, or is 7 seconds enough?

  • Cam

    I’d lose the gimmicky coverflow effect.

  • http://Dchapman.wordpress.com Darren Chapman

    I love the idea but it’s simply a PowerPoint presentation put onto video. A PPT pres is much easier to update plus you can easily adjust the timings. We do a similar thing just with PPT.

  • Steven Kryger

    I tried creating the video in PowerPoint, but PowerPoint for Mac (2011) doesn’t support this functionality (even though it advertises that it does). I’d rather embed it as a movie then play around with timings – but you’re right, the simplicity of this concept is what makes it easy to produce, and easy to edit.

  • Steven Kryger

    I’ve created a version without the ‘swap’ transition (see YouTube clip above).

  • http://www.mbm.org.au Rowan Hilsden

    We do a similar thing @ MBM Rooty Hill. However we use ProPresenter. It lets you put slides and video in a pre service roll, with custom timings and without the pain of powerpoint. Check it out… we have been using it for a year now… and its GREAT!!! Works on Mac and PC too!

  • Cam

    I can’t see why you couldn’t do this in PowerPoint, add a quick fade between the slides,sSet the timings in transitions and loop it.

  • Steven Kryger

    One of the requirements is that it be as easy as possible for the people who operate PowerPoint in the services (who aren’t tech-savvy), to enable these slides to run through. Playing it as a video was the easiest way I could think of.

  • Cam

    I really like these tips from Al Stewart on running church to get new comers.

  • Kenneth

    Hi Steve,

    Might be good to add some simple animation, even if it’s just on the Welcome to CBTB slide just to give it a bit more life.