Church Video Ideas: Catalyst Conference Utilizes Web 2.0 Technology

Orginally published on Wednesday, October 10, 2007 at 7:12 AM
by Greg Atkinson

Last week I attended the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta, GA. Catalyst is a conference for 20 to 30something leaders and is my conference to attend. Each year I’m stretched and challenged by the main session speakers and the powerful worship. They also do a great job of creating a fun environment and always keep it interesting with special guests, comedy, a magician, silly hand-outs, give-aways and they break some world record each year. This year we broke 3 world records and had the people from the Guiness Book of World Records there to witness it.

The cool feature that they did this year utilized Web 2.0 technology. They allowed attendees to interact through YouVersion and mobile phone technology. People could text in key words or phrases that jumped out to them throughout someone’s message. They could text in their favorite song or worship element that meant something to them. This kind of participation and interaction is huge these days. I first noticed it at Willow Creek’s A2 Conference last year.

This year, for the first time, I came a day early for the labs. All the labs were good, but my favorite was by my friend, Len Sweet. We are working on a book project together and one thing that we’ll mention (and he mentioned in his talk) is his EPIC theory. E is for experiential. P is for participatory. I is for image-driven. And C is for connective or community. I think many pastors, churches, and conferences miss out on the E and P parts of Len’s EPIC theory. Len demonstrated these qualities well as he taught his class. He didn’t have the “Question & Answer” part be a tag on at the end – it was a major part of his talk and he wove it through out his talk.

I’d love to hear of how you and your church or ministry has been experimenting, especially in the area of Web 2.0. I’d also love to hear things that you’ve done to make your congregation more participatory. Speaking of Web 2.0, I’m working on a book entitled, “Church 2.0”. I have a “Church 2.0” group on Facebook and would love for you to join the group and begin to interact with me via this Web 2.0 tool. Dive in – it’s a great time to be alive!

©2007 – Greg Atkinson (www.churchvideoideas.com)
Used by permission from author. All rights reserved by author.

Greg Atkinson lives in Dallas with his wife and their three small children. Greg served previously as the Director of WorshipHouse Media, after having served as a worship pastor for 11 years. Greg is now the Technical Arts Director at Bent Tree Bible Fellowship and continues to consult, teach and write about worship, media and creative communication. You can connect with him through his daily blog, Church Video Ideas, his podcast, Creative Synergy, or his email: . 

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