As you may know, Mark is the President and Executive Creative of Steelehouse Productions where he creates art for business and ministry through the mediums of film, stage and animation. But there’s so much more to Mark:

• He co-hosts the wildly entertaining and consistently informative Steelehouse Podcast with Jeff Huston. You should take a listen.
• He lends his creative talents to Veggie Tales.
• He has written three hilarious and insightful books about life and faith: Flashbang, Half-Life / Die Already, and Christianish.
• His performance in the Igniter video “Boys and Grills” cracks me up every time.

If you get a chance, check out all of Mark’s fine work and support his creative genius.

ECHO: What has it been like to represent an organization like iStockPhoto to church leaders?
TB: Its been such a great experience. I used iStock working in the church long before they asked me to come work for them so I knew what a good product it was and how useful I found it in accomplishing my creative goals for the church each week. So when they asked me to come on bored as an evangelist for them to the faith community I jumped at the chance. I like that I am an evangelist for iStock and not a salesperson. As an evangelist its my job to tell others about iStock and how much I love it and use it and to help them understand how it could help them do their job better.

ECHO: At Echo you’re going to talk about doing different kinds of creative work on a shoestring budget. Do you think a lot of people let a small or nonexistent budget scare them away from trying to create quality media?
TB: Yeah I think sometimes they think that it requires a big budget to do anything really great but today its just not true. Are there some things that are impossible? Sure, but you can do more these days with little or no budget than you think you can. Typically, it simply requires some resourcefulness on your part and often times just a lot of time. There are so many resources out there today that are cheap or free and we are going to spend our time talking about what those resources are and how to use them to create awesomeness.

ECHO: Is there anything (video production, for example) that it’s best to avoid if you’re on a shoestring budget? In other words, should you forgo a certain medium in favor of other media if money is tight?
TB: I don’t think video production needs to be avoided on a small budget but there are issues that come with trying to do video on a tight budget and that’s one of the topics we will discuss. Basically there are techniques that can be used to make videos look great without spending a lot of money and we will cover those in the session.
Having little or no budget does require that you prioritize those things you wish to accomplish because you can’t always do everything you want so you have to try and get done those things you want most. Because of that you may decide that video production either eats too much of the allotted budget and crowds out too many other things or that it’s not as important as other projects. Either way on  shoestring budgets, often video is more rare than in churches that have more to work with.

One of the things we’re most excited about for this year’s Echo experience is our panel discussion featuring Bobby Gruenewald, Carlos Whittaker, Conway Edwards, Cynthia Ware, and Scott Hodge. The panel will be a free-flowing conversation that covers current and future trends in the intersection of media, technology, and the Church. Each of these leaders has a unique and valuable perspective to share, and we’re looking forward to hearing what they have to say. The panel will be moderated by Scott McClellan from COLLIDE Magazine (but he promises to stay out of the way and let the panel do most of the talking).

If you have questions for the panel, come on out to Echo and we’ll try to incorporate some audience questions via Twitter.

ECHO: How did get into video production and learn the ropes?
SW: The first step in my journey was studying for a Radio Television Film degree at the University of Texas. I started taking production classes, getting to check out cameras, shooting documentaries for class projects, learning to edit old school by actually cutting film and editing tape deck to deck. I also volunteered and got involved with a local experimental film group that was shooting Super 8 films at the time. So I was beginning to learn, to experiment, to figure things out by getting my hands dirty. About that time, I started going to a little start up church called Gateway. I was at a church BBQ one day and the Associate Pastor, Ted Beasley, struck up a conversation with me. When he learned I was a film school student, he got really excited about us doing videos for the church. So, over the next few years, I made films for film school, experimental films for the Cinemaker Coop and short videos and multimedias for Gateway Community Church here in Austin. And that’s how I got started.

ECHO: What kinds of things can Echo attendees expect to learn in your breakout session, Church Video Tips and Tricks?
SW: I plan on keeping things really practical at my session. We’re going to talk about basic things you can do with the camera, with the lights, with audio, with editing to get solid results. These will be tips and tricks I’ve picked up from slogging it out in production for the last ten years. What can you do to get better footage for your videos? What can you do to shoot better interviews? What can you do to make your edits have more power and impact? These are the things I’m going to talk about. And I’m going to talk in terms that can be easily understood and easily put into practice.

ECHO: What were some of the challenges you faced while creating church media resources at eleven72? What was the most rewarding part about creating those resources for local churches?
SW: Some of our biggest challenges at eleven72 were creating really good, useful, on point videos on a budget. We had to be really creative in distributing our resources so that we could produce short films and videos that had the production value and quality of story, acting, etc, that people in our culture expect and that we could feel good about.
The most rewarding part about creating video resources for local churches is knowing that your videos get to play a part in that awesome Sunday experience in hundreds of churches; That you were able to help them pull off their service, to help a pastor make his point, or to give a congregation pause to laugh or think about a particular subject. That your videos are a part of the process that God is using to draw people to Himself, that’s the greatest reward (and honestly quite humbling). It’s also really fun when you run into people who saw one of your videos or when you have relatives call and say that their church used one of your videos or when you see that someone in the Philippines or in Uzbekistan or South Korea downloaded one of your videos and to kind of have your mind blown by the fact that your videos are being shown in churches all over the world.

ECHO: From your involvement with the Visual Story Network, it’s obvious that you’re a proponent of visual media. Do you think some in the Church maintain a perception that printed and verbal media are better suited than visual media to communicating spiritual messages?
CT: We advocate the model of preach, print and portray. For 1500 years, preaching was the primary communication platform of the Church.  The body of Christ adjusted well with the advent of the printing press and that accelerated the ability to communicate to a broader audience.  We now live in a visual world where it is critical to be able to portray Christ and kingdom.  Preach, print and portray can and should be complimentary.  The problem is too many people are still limited to preach and print and are missing tremendous opportunities to expand their impact.

ECHO: As Americans, we tend to focus a lot on the English-speaking, North American Church. How did you develop a global perspective for visual storytelling and the communication of the gospel?
CT: I was on a trip to North Africa in 2000 and I witnessed first hand how visual media was helping change the way the students viewed Christ.  That was when God began to orient me into the realm of media.  My heart has always been for those furthest from the Gospel.

ECHO: What kinds of things can people expect to learn in your Echo breakout session, Going Global: A Movement of Visual Story?
CT: We believe in 5-10 years it will be possible that every person encounters Christ and His kingdom every year through relevant visual media.  We’ll describe what it will take for that to become reality.

ECHO: Tell us a little bit about the State of the Church Online project.
DG: The State of the Church Online project was created to answer the question “What are the best practices for churches online?” In order to answer this question we are five months into our research and are beginning to document the findings. There are two areas of focus, the first is a church’s website and the second is the church’s social media engagement with sites such as Facebook or Tangle and private community providers such as MemberHubs, Church Community Builder, Unifyer or Cobblestone.
In the Church Website Study, we have over one hundred churches representing 20,000 members who have participated, over a thousand survey responses and 20 years worth of combined Google Analytics data to help us understand what is working, what people are doing, where they came from and what church members seek when they visit a church website.  At the end of the day we hope to share as much of this data to churches so that we all can benefit and the Kingdom advances.  I released some of this information in a series of webinars I did that are posted on Vimeo.  Articles will be published at Church Website Guide.
On the Social Media & Community Study we also have over a thousand survey responses and have numerous Christian social media sites and private communities participating.   We will look at analytic behavior on these sites as well as surveys and interviews of people and ministries using them.  We are excited to participate in this with several other leading companies who all desire to see the gospel shared.  We should have some initial results on this study in July in time for the Echo Conference.  This project is led by Kevin Ring of Unconventional Method. Kevin brings years of experience leading research projects – designing and executing strategic customer/competitive research and analysis across multiple industries, including work with companies such as Google, Yahoo!, Citibank, Hewitt Associates, Gallup, Bank of America and other Fortune 500 companies, ministries and non‐profits.

ECHO: So far, have you been surprised by any of the results from the research?
DG: Yes, but maybe surprised isn’t the right word.  On the church website study, based on the behaviors we are seeing, I believe most churches are designing their websites for the wrong primary audiences.  For example, many websites do a poor job of connecting new visitors and encouraging behaviors that are of value to the church.  We will seek to employ a triperspectival design process to quickly and effectively present the church’s vision (normative), impact the visitor toward sharing this vision (existential) and seek to encourage behaviors (situational) that the church desires.  These behaviors could include:

·        Low Value Behaviors: Subscribe to RSS, podcast, engage the church Twitter account.
·        Medium Value Behaviors: Sign-up for an Email, complete a Web Form or join the church’s Facebook group.
·        High Value Behaviors: Show up to a service, home group or other relational meeting.

The strategy will target new visitors but also seek to move the existing church community deeper into relationships and involvement.  We put together a Church Web Strategy Cooperative for early adopting churches who would like to participate and re-envision their web engagement based on this market research.
It is too early to say much on the Social Media & Community Study, there will be a much clearer picture in time for the Echo session.

ECHO: In what ways does Kaleo Church, where you’re a pastor, leverage media and technology?
DG: In many ways I have been waiting to learn from the studies so we have put a lot of things on hold until we could implement a new strategy.  The biggest thing we are doing is moving our community into Cobblestone, this private church community allows us to administrate our Missional Communities (groups of 10-20 people doing life together), classes, discipleship, connect people to serving opportunities and much more.  Secondly, we’ve always had a strong presence online so Kaleo Church has been an effective tool connecting people in San Diego to our community.   One sample of this was targeting people seeking a pastor to marry them (http://www.ekklesia360.com/church-assimilation-and-growth/) where we’ve seen people become Christians.

ECHO: Can you give us a preview of one of your Echo breakout sessions, Beyond the Web 2.0 Noise: How to use the Internet to Disciple & Create Real Community?
DG: Personally, I believe using technology to disciple and create community is where a lot of churches are wanting to move.  Technology can assist the local church so that people can spend more time on the relationships and rather than the facilitation of small groups or discipleship communities.  In this session we will look at what churches are doing, what is working and what may be a waste of time.  The session will include the data from several of the leading products used by churches, case studies and much more.  Again, while we have the data from congregational surveys I want to wait until we collect user data and do follow-up interviewing before I say too much.  I guess my encouragement would be if you want to know, attend the Echo Conference!

ECHO: I find the combination of a web development career and a theology degree pretty interesting. How do those two things complement each other in your life and work?
JD: It feels like a pretty big responsibility. God has give me the chance to deeply study the greatest of all messages while also allowing me to work with one of the most powerful of human mediums. Along with a beautiful wife and wonderful son, I am a blessed man!
Early on, the worlds of technology and theology didn’t interact for me very often. Then I took a class on “Theology and Society” and read some books on the history of technology, and my eyes were opened to see that technology has been a major force in the world and in the church.
I continue my job in the technology world because I think technology has a place in the redemptive story of the Scriptures, restoring some of what was lost in the fall. At the same time, I think it can influence us in subtle ways, and we sometimes get a little too excited about its potential. Technology is shiny and fun, but when it comes to transforming lives it is terribly underpowered and overpriced compared to the Holy Spirit.

ECHO: Your technology & faith blog, www.donteatthefruit.com, is relatively new. What kind of feedback and response are you getting so far?
JD: So far the blog seems to be doing pretty well in terms of getting traffic and comments. There are several excellent resources out there on using technology for ministry, but not too many that look at technology from a theological perspective and ask questions about how it might shape who we are as humans created in God’s image.
Regarding numbers and web traffic, Dwight Shrute’s blog used to crack me up because below every post it said, “95 comments already.” That little word - already - seems to perfectly expose how we can sometimes get caught up in numbers and speed when talking about our blogs, followers, and friend counts. It’s tempting to think that popularity in numbers means that we’re actually doing something godly.

ECHO: Your Echo breakout session is titled, “Using Technology Without Technology Using You.” What is one way to know if technology is using you?
JD: I think a good thing for all of us to do is sit down with someone whom we normally thing of as not “getting it” about technology and really listen to what they have to say about how we in the technological generation look with all our gadgets and internets.

ECHO: Is there a new technological tool or trend that you’re particularly interested in or intrigued by? If so, why?
JD: There seems to be a trend of high profile individuals quitting facebook, twitter, blogging, and so on. These folks aren’t just cutting back or taking a break – they are deleting accounts altogether. I think this is important for all of us to take note of because if those who are at the top have trouble controlling these technologies who are we to think we’ll be immune if we reach the same level of success and popularity?
The other trend I’m happy to see is that people are taking note of authors like Shane Hipps and magazines like Collide which are attempting to think well and Christianly about technology and media, neither blindly rejecting it nor always eating the fruit.

ECHO: Tell us about your background in digital media.
MK: For 14 years I worked in Broadcast News all around the United States and in United Kingdom. My work has been seen seen on all the major news networks in the United States and featured on SKY News and the BBC in Europe. I got my start as a TV Photojournalist in my home town of Harrisburg Pennsylvania at two local TV stations while in college. I then then ventured to Europe where I worked internationally as a photojournalist with the BBC in East Riding, England. After returning to the United States, I worked as a reporter in Springfield, Missouri.
In late 2002, I became the Director of Photography at a FOX Owned and Operated duopoly in Minneapolis, Minnesota where I was a mentor and leader to a group of 30 full-time photojournalists and 7 full-time editors.  In 2005, I was sent to Rome to cover the fragile Pope John Paul II and ended up covering his death, the mourning, and papal conclave for FOX News Channel and several other FOX affiliates around the country.
In 2007 I had the honor to lead my staff to national honors when the station was named runner-up as the National Press Photographers Association’s Station of the year as one of the best stations in the country for television photography.
My work alone has won many honors, including: Associated Press Southwest Press Photographer of the Year; 20 Emmy Awards; 2 RTNDA Edward R. Murrow Awards and more than other 70 Regional and National Awards.

ECHO: What led to your transition from working at TV stations to working at Lawton First Assembly?
MK: I have always been a person of great faith but never had the interest of working for or in a church. In saying that, I have always had a love for the kingdom and always felt communication and media should be focused and uniform in message. I’ve had what I like to call divine interruptions while working in TV, but a number of years ago there was a cataclysmic event that really got my attention.  While attending a church we never attended nor new anyone there someone interrupted a sermon calling me by name and delivering a word directed towards me, that I would use my gifts and talents in communication to help the kingdom one day.  Dude, that got my attention.  Another event happened like that almost 7 years later when I took some FOX VPs to the Willow Summit.
Those moments showed me I was desperately unhappy, I needed to change. Through that time God really began to work in me more through situation and the Holy Spirit and opportunities and conversations began to pop up.  Our move to Lawton First was not a flyby-night decision.  Matter of fact, it took almost a year-and-a-half for us to make the move.   Many would see the transition as bizarre or difficult, but it has be nothing but excitement and a blessing.

ECHO: What kinds of things are you working on at your church?
MK: I wear multiple hats at Lawton First, but I mainly oversee the Communications Department, including Print and Publication, PR, Creative Services, and Media.  My role is responsible for leading and developing the Lawton First strategy, increasing widespread participation and awareness of the overall vision. This includes capital campaigns to be conducted through various methods (e.g. donor events, grant applications, direct mail, online networking).
My true passion is simplifying and honing all communication corporate wide through the power of story.  We tend to make things a lot more complicated and more difficult than it really is. We are working on corporate wide re-brand and advertising to focus on being intentional about storytelling. We are reformatting the weekly Bulletin (yes we still have a bulletin) to include a storytelling element like a brief testimony and head shot. We are changing all promo videos to tell stories instead of just giving the four W’s. My experience and research finds that a good story is better than a good, factual promo video or someone telling you what they think you want to hear.
To put it simply we are going to stop recreating the wheel and go back to the tool of the Master which is “STORYTELLING.” In many ways, churches have focused to much on the cultural wave  that they lost their own unique voice. They lost their brand, their market place, and created fractured communication and presentation. Churches need to shift to less distraction and greater content. Or to put it another way, in the words of my dear friend Kem Meyer “Less Clutter, Less Noise”. Genuine communication that is simplistic wins.

ECHO: For people who are coming to Echo, what can they expect from your breakout session?
MK: Video production has changed; lightweight gear, no time…“make it good – fast”. Your ability to craft a look with digital cameras is more important now than ever. While there is a description for the session I want it to be kind of open and let the attendees direct where they want to camp the discussion.  But I’m planning on using live demonstrations with cameras and lights to teach simple, powerful techniques to use creative lighting in the studio and on-location to get dramatic results!  I hope to also show how if you don’t have the equipment, you can use everyday light to get the same effects.  If the readers on the blog want me to cover something different or specifically, please leave a comment, tweet me @mknisely, or send me a message on my website.

Camron Ware is the founder of Visual Worshiper, a design consulting company that guides and mentors churches through the journey of what visual worship means in the Church today, and how and why to use technology in worship to tell visual stories.

ECHO: You’ve done a few “projection parties” in the past several months. What exactly are those and what kind of feedback have you gotten?
CW: A projection (or mapping) party is simply when you use multiple projectors to project on the outside of a building, VJ media content to music, and invite the community to come watch, enjoy, and fellowship.  There are many other people and groups that do this on a much bigger scale, with brighter/better gear, but I think projecting on the outside of First Baptist Church Coppell was unique.  The response was incredible.  The church faced a main street into the city, so over the three nights we had about 100 people stop by, park, or walk over to the parking lot.
The other main projection party we did was in Nashville on the Marathon Village office complex.  It was a smaller event simply due to time constraints, but when we are able to really get the word out about it, we will do it again and hopefully be able to invite  more people.

ECHO: What does somebody need in order to throw a projection party of their own?
CW: From a gear standpoint; you will need multiple projectors, plenty of data and power cable, a computer with VJ software, and content.  That’s only half the picture though.  The other is social networking.  What makes these parties exciting is having a wide range of people come and enjoy the evening.  Blog, Twitter, email and call to get the word out.  Get a friend to DJ the music using an outdoor PA system.  It’s relatively simple, but does take planning and communication.

ECHO: At Echo, you and Stephen Proctor are going to spend two breakout sessions on visual worship. Are there any misconceptions about visual worship that you’d like to clear up here and now?
CW: Without writing a book here, I would say that visual worship is usually overrated and overdone.  It’s not required for worship; it’s not the only form of worship during a ‘worship service’; it doesn’t  bring people into your service; it doesn’t keep the youth group coming to your service…etc.   I think that a lot of us have put too much importance on ALWAYS having something visual going on during the worship service, and think it is something required to be effective.

ECHO: You’re also going to do some VJing at Echo — how do you typically go about preparing to VJ an event?  
CW: I personally start by going over the set-list of the event with the worship leader, and talking through the flow and overall mood that is trying to be created.  This usually helps me start gather media together in playlists that I will possibly use to VJ with.  I rarely script out each and every song;  most of the events I do are on-the-fly.  Stephen Proctor (@vjProctor) does many more live events than I do, and would probably have more insight as to his process.  He runs the WorshipVJ blog at www.worshipvj.com.

At Echo, Camron, along with Stephen Proctor and Nate Griffin, will be leading two back-to-back breakout sessions about visual worship and the Church. The second part of the Visual Worship breakout is setup so you can learn from not only these guys, but the other breakout attendees as well. Stephen, Nate and Camron want to create a community of church leaders and visual worshipers within the breakout that far outlast the conference.  Camron’s also offering a great deal on what he does best - At anytime during the Conference, come find Camron and sign up for an on-site design session at your church. You’ll receive a 10% discount on the design session as well as an exclusive content kit from Awake Images containing Volume 1, and a coupon for 50% off another volume!

**This is the first in a series of interviews with our breakout speakers.  We’ll be posting new interviews weekly so you can get to know our speakers and learn a little more about what they’ll be bringing to Echo**