ECHO Conference interviews Camron Ware
In the next 22 hrs, you can register for ECHO Conference for only $209!!! Camron, Nate and I will be there leading some discussions on visual worship on the first day, and there is a myriad of amazing mind-blowing speakers who will be there. If you are debating on going or not, just stop what you’re doing, register, and then figure it out later. B/c if you are involved in church leadership or technology in any way, YOU NEED TO GO TO ECHO!
Scroll down & check out the interview between ECHO and Camron Ware that was recently posted on the ECHO BLOG.
Q&A With Camron Ware
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**
I’m not typically a blogger but I wanted to share something with you. My buddy and I were having a conversation about freedom. What does it mean to be free? Thinking back over the exchange later my mind wondered to one of those snapshots that all of us have of our past. A distinct scene in our lives illuminated by the flashbulb of our memory and vivid in every detail.
Fourth grade.
I was sitting in my little cubical in the middle of a row of identical cubicles struggling with the complexities of diagramming a sentence with more than one prepositional phrase. As hard as I tried I couldn’t concentrate on anything but the insane slowness of the big black hands of the big white clock that hung mockingly on the opposite wall of the class room. It was a beautiful day outside and the sluggish heat of the early summer had affected that clock with a serious case of lethargy! I was a typical boy and I was born to be outside. I wasn’t much happier than when the prickly feeling of scabby knees and the guilty awareness of grass stains were the foremost realities in my life! Neither the scabs nor the grass stains are present in my snapshot! Just me, my work book and that clock.
Have you ever actually felt realization wash over you? You know that ‘felt’ since a truth? That since is the brightest part of my fourth grade picture! In that second I had the most profound since of eternity! In the space between prepositional phrase one and two I saw eternity! I knew with all the certainty that a fourth grader can muster that I was trapped! My life as a student would never end! I would be trapped in an endless battle with the minions of sentence structure, presided over by a clock with frozen hands! I wonder if I have ever craved freedom like I did that moment! It was longing that I had! Oh, to do whatever I wanted! No more hour bells, no more detention for being late from our laughably short recesses, no more grown ups telling me what to do! Just me and… whatever I wanted to do! How wonderful! How Magical!
That’s an old snapshot. I can scarsely believe that more than 20 years have passed since then. Of course school did eventually let out for the summer. I did eventually graduate, never to diagram another sentence as long as I live. I can now do whatever I want to… no grown ups.
Here’s the funny thing. Doing what ever I want hasn’t made me free. In fact because I can now do what ever I want I have often found myself not able to do much of anything. Freedom isn’t at all what I thought it was 20 years ago confined to my fourth grade English prison. It’s not at all the allowance to do whatever I want. In fact I’m learning that freedom is quite often the opposite of that. Most often ‘whatever i want’ is a reaction to my emotions, my circumstances, my selfishness, my pride. Freedom is a result. Not a prerequisite. It is as much restraint as it is movement. I just got married. In planning our wedding I began to experience all kinds of new and exciting things about the death of bachelorhood! Most of them had to do with um… female dynamics. Now I am a man and as such I tend to very quickly snap into ‘fix it mode’. I responded to my beautiful bride to be in very logical ways. So business like and straightforward… Ok the point is that I could respond to her any way I wanted to. I quickly learned however that if I didn’t learn the ‘correct’ way to respond I would seriously impede my ability to function freely around her! Dog House! Please don’t get me wrong! My now wife is wonderful to me! She is far from a diva. I just had/have a lot to learn in the marriage department. It’s the same in all aspects of our lives. The choices we make determine our freedom!
I’ve long since left the fourth grade. I haven’t diagramed a sentence in a couple of decades and time seems to be passing at an ever increasing rate.
Today, for just a moment though, I was back there, at my desk. Craving freedom.
Nate Griffin on May 29, 2009