Over the past year, I have taken on side projects to help fund Open Church. A few months ago, I was given the providential opportunity to join the team at Skylark Audio Video to lead their rebranding and ongoing communications.
Formerly known as AVi Worship, Skylark Audio Video was founded in 2005 by recognizing churches’ need for more attentive care and financially responsible audio, video, and lighting systems without compromising high-end performance.
Although young, Skylark is one of the few church audio video companies that LifeChurch.tv (Edmond, OK) chooses to work with. While popular among multi-site churches, Skylark also helps church plants take their first steps and 100-year-old landmarks overhaul their church audio while still preserving their historic character.
4 REASONS WHY I JOINED SKYLARK
What I appreciate most about Skylark is their emphasis on high performance, frugality, relationships, and the client’s best interests.
High Performance Technology
If you are going to get a church audio, video, and lighting system, you need an AV company that stays current, knows their stuff, and can turn all the talk into reality. While you should never base your decision solely on an AV company’s technical prowess, you should never choose one that lacks it.
Frugality
This is where Skylark really stands out. Some churches think they need the most expensive equipment or to build everything now for the future. What they don’t realize is they can almost always slash their expenses without sacrificing tech quality by choosing more reasonably priced gear and designing the church AV system for scalability and add-ons when needed. The opposite is also true. Penny-pinching to the extreme costs more in the long-run because cutting-corners leaves you with gear that can’t perform until you upgrade. Skylark gives each church advice on where to spend and where to save in order to meet their goals.
Relationships
Skylark regards their clients as friends and family. We work to understand how your church operates and then customize their approach to mesh with your team. The goal is to create less work for you and your organization. When the focus is on relationships and not a business bottom line, it is much easier to ensure each church is happy, taken care of, and using Skylark for years to come.
Your Best Interests Making your best interests Skylark’s top focus doesn’t make sense to some businessmen. It means spending more time. It can mean sacrificing some paycheck to get you the best solution (not the priciest one). But Skylark does audio, video, and lighting because they love it, and they learned quickly that focusing on your best interests is Skylark’s best interests because it keeps clients coming back, and it helps the cause of Christ.
Before I joined the team at Skylark, Marcus Walker (the founder) and I had several conversations to determine if we were a mutually good fit. I asked, “What values unify your team and drive their performance?” And I love his answer.
We don’t say what are values are. They just are. What unifies us is the constant pursuit to be better than we were on the last job. The quest to learn more and do things better unifies us. We love our job. We are doing what we love and getting paid for it, and it actually means something.
FREE CHURCH CONSULTING
One of the ways Skylark serves churches is by offering free audio, video, and lighting consulting. No strings attached. You need a church AV system that meets your goals, fits within your budget, and works for your facility. We would love to start a conversation to identify what is the best solution for you.
Every July, LifeChurch.tv (Edmond, OK) hosts a sermon series called “At the Movies” that uses movie clips to illustrate spiritual truths. And every year LifeChurch.tv sets new attendance records.
To add some extra fun to the sermon series, each campus decorates their facility with a movie theme. This year Stillwater’s campus did Field of Dreams and created a baseball diamond in their lobby complete with dirt. However, my favorite theme from this year is the Tulsa campus’ Toy Story theme. Here are some highlights:
OUTSIDE
Before you even enter the church, you are greeted by a Toy Story “At the Movies” wall mural and Pizza Planet golf carts to shuttle you to the door.
ENTRANCE
As you enter the building, you pass through a tunnel of Legos and pop out from under a giant bed into a lobby child’s room full of larger than life toys.
INSIDE
The lobby features Buzz Lightyear himself greeting guests in front of an over-sized Etch-A-Sketch (his packaging is off to the side). Toys sit atop a giant furniture. Aliens sit inside a toy rocket. And the church refreshment stand is now a Pizza Planet franchise.
Also, watch out for the giant electrical cord!
To experience an “At the Movies” sermon, visit one of LifeChurch.tv’s many campuses or attend online at one of 48 weekly service times. Due to movie licensing rights, these sermons will not be available to watch online after the sermon series, so be sure to catch “At the Moves” while it is still going on.
Special thanks to @johnadavis (LifeChurch.tv Logistcs Director) and @derrickhenslee (LifeChurch.tv Tulsa Campus Pastor) for taking the photos.
Earlier this month, I met with the team from Clark (formerly Clark ProMedia) to learn about future church needs, how Clark has evolved to meet these needs, and what they have learned in the process.
In the beginning, Clark was a production company creating audiovisual environments for churches, but they realized the best worship environments are created from a seamless master plan that lets the architects, audiovisual team, and worship leaders collaborate. So Clark has rebranded themselves and expanded their services to include everything needed to strategically create environments for pre-launch church plants all the way up to multi-site gigachurches.
Services include strategic facilities planning, development, and management as well as designing performance space, audio visual lighting, acoustics, and multi-site/virtual teaching solutions. They also offer worship leader consulting and online strategy. And for the extremely tech savvy, they are one of the few companies in the world offering holographic telepresence.
Cofounder Houston Clark was kind enough to share three leadership philosophies that have driven their strategy in creating environments for churches of all sizes:
BE HOLISTIC
Without a seamless big picture strategy, churches can find themselves in a battle with their building. This can lead to the architecture hindering the audio visual needs and neither one being able to best meet the ever-changing ministry needs of the church. Get on the same page. Developing a holistic plan that meets each area’s needs will not only make you more effective but also save you lots of money.
STAY CURRENT
There is no way to predict the future, but it is wise to be aware of trends that could affect what people need, want, and expect from your church in 5 years. For instance, people in many areas are becoming more locally-focused and interested in community, so Clark spends a great deal of time studying how to create church intimacy regardless the size of a church. Staying current allows you to create environments that are more sustainable since you have a better idea of what the future needs.
RESPECT THE CONTEXT
Just because a technology exists, does not mean it is right for your church. What you do must fit within the context of your worship environment and church culture. Having a 3D hologram preacher isn’t right for every church, but it is for some. Never do tech for tech’s sake. Always do tech for context’s sake.
Clark helps churches identify and implement the right environment for their unique context. If you want to know how they could help your church, just contact them. They’d love to talk to you.
Special thanks to Clark for supporting Church Relevance by sponsoring this post.
Church on the Move (Tulsa, OK) is currently renovating their facilities. In a recent building campaign update, Hank Spieker of Selser Schaefer Architects explains an interesting design decision to make a cozier feeling auditorium by randomly varying chair colors with gold (66%), scarlet (11%), purple (11%), and black fabrics (11%).
The idea is that whenever you are in the auditorium that it will always feel full. It will never appear like there are a bunch of empty seats anywhere.
Varying chair colors is a great design theory for large churches with multiple service times. For most of these churches, popular service times are packed while less attended service times can leave the auditorium looking sparse.
For more thoughts from Hank Spieker, go to the 4:55 mark on the following video:
For Discussion: - What are some of your favorite architectural design tricks?
Environmental design for churches has changed drastically over the last two decades (at least on the fringes). It has become much more than church interior design. It has evolved into creating entire worlds and environments.
For example, when Cornerstone Harvest Church (Lima, OH) recently revamped their Heir Force youth ministry, they hired Little Mountain Productions to develop the environmental design. The result was a youth ministry design that featured a lifesize M-1 Abrams tank and 40 foot wing span plane coming out of the walls.
To complement these installations, Little Mountain Productions also added acoustic panel military graphics to the room.
In case you are wondering how they did it, here are some production shots.
If you need a church property, AcreScout.com is an excellent place to find church real estate. Look for the church building you need or find vacant land for building a church. Here are the latest church properties for sale:
Also, be sure to check out AcreScout.com/vacant-land to find the latest vacant land listings. Hopefully, there will be a property that is perfect for your church.
If you need a church property, AcreScout.com is an excellent place to find church real estate. Look for the church building you need or find vacant land for building a church. Here are the latest church properties for sale:
Also, be sure to check out AcreScout.com/vacant-land to find the latest vacant land listings. Hopefully, there will be a property that is perfect for your church.
If you need a church property, AcreScout.com is an excellent place to find church real estate. Look for the church building you need or find vacant land for building a church. Here are the latest church properties for sale:
Also, be sure to check out AcreScout.com/vacant-land to find the latest vacant land listings. Hopefully, there will be a property that is perfect for your church.
