Environmental Projection® in 90 minutes

The story: Nate & I (grateful inconvenience) have been on the road with Travis Cottrell for his “Jesus Saves LIVE” tour, traveling to local churches in the South, leading their communities in worship. When we visited Jersey Village Baptist Church in Houston, TX, I was impressed with their new facility and how perfect it was for Environmental Projection.

Many of their production/media staff loved the idea once i showed them some pictures of other churches doing this. But they were disheartened by the fact that many members of their congregation felt it unnecessary to add more “technology” to their sanctuary, that it would turn their church services into a “performance”. It’s a fine line we all have to walk very carefully and prayerfully. We only had a few hours, so i went on a mission. A little later, Yoshi, one of their tech/production guys on staff, made it happen; we had scored three projectors! Two of them were 5500 lumens, and one was 6500 lumens. Not perfect, but we made it work.

90 minutes later, we had ourselves a pretty impressive make-shift rig! And two hours later, we opened the doors for the night of worship. nate & i used those two extra hours to re-script all of the songs, as we had normally run everything off one laptop via ProPresenter. Luckily, we had an extra MacBook Pro, so we dedicated one machine for lyrics (going to the main screens) and the other for running ProVideoPlayer for the environmental content.

You might be asking yourself why we did it this way. It was for a few reasons. 1) we didn’t want lyrics on the walls. 2) we still wanted some of the motion backgrounds on the main screens, but not always. 3) some of the originally-scripted motion backgrounds looked “visually-exaggerated” when displayed on the walls compared to the main screens, so we needed alternative imagery that still worked but didn’t distract. (Ex. a nice, subtle star-field on a regular screen looks like we’re traveling at light-speed from Star Wars when blown up, stretched and projected across three walls.) On a side-note, we did not run IMAG (live video) on the screens during worship, except when Travis was talking in-between songs. The environmental imagery did not mess up the main screens, even though it was still hitting them. You simply did not notice it.

The bible verse on the wall of their production booth was taken from Genesis: “The Lord was with him, making everything run smoothly and successfully.” i thought that was extremely fitting and true.

Apparently, it went over really well with the pastor and the congregation, because many of the members (including the Pastor) approached the media staff saying “We have to do this! What’s it going to take?” Needless to say, the media staff is very excited as they begin their journey towards installation.

Let me end with this. Even though what you are seeing looks relatively simple, fun and affordable, you are also seeing a demonstration of a very temporary and “thrown together” solution. It worked for the concert, but it was in no way an ideal scenario. We also have built a strong trust with Travis (the worship leader) and are very comfortable and familiar with his flow of leading worship. We have lived with the media content a long time, and many times i chose NOT to do something even though it sounded “cool” in my head. Less is always more, and there must be an intentional purpose behind every single visual displayed.

If you (or your church) are thinking about implementing Environmental Projection, then I highly recommend bringing in someone like Camron Ware who can spec out and design the proper system for your unique worship space, and who can help train your staff and volunteers in the ways of proper projection techniques and visual worship etiquette. Media (esp. Environmental Projection) can become a major distraction during worship in a split second, but it can also become a very powerful tool for leading your congregation into deeper communion with God. It is our heart to encourage a theological, Jesus-centered approach to using visual media in Church.