How to Edit Music Using Garageband

here is a quick video on how to edit in garage band. pretty simple, but it could help some people. look for more details on how to really use this on mactastic.tv in the near future.

click here for video

jing

I have been doing research to start a podcast, which i will. it will be a video podcast. and it will have it's own website. MacTastic.tv. In the mean time i am getting questions on how to do stuff. So i am going to use jing to post screen casts on how to do simple stuff. hope it helps

Fast Growing Church, What do you mean?

I received a correspondence asking how we know that Element is 1 of 2 of the fastest growing church's in the St. Louis Area. This is how we have come to this conclusion. When we look at how many attenders have come in X amount of years, we don't know of any churches that have history of as high of attendance in as few years as we have been around.

Let me clarify. We don't look down on ANY church. God is doing amazing things in St. Louis. Many people say that St. Louis is the hardest city in St. Louis to plant a church. We have many great relationships with other thriving churches that are much bigger than us. We appreciate everything they have imparted to us with wisdom and generosity.

The other church that has similar growth trends in St. Louis is Journey Church, which is a GREAT Church that we have an awesome relationship with. they are doing great things and reaching a lot of people.

Hope this answers any questions. Leave your comments, I would love to hear what you think and answer any other questions. Thanks to all those fighting in the trenches to reach people. Thanks to all the kingdom minded churches that aren't concerned with taking people from other churches, but taking people out of "Satan's Church", out of darkness, and hopelessness. Stay strong, Lincoln said that true success is never giving up, and not deciding to quit. Let's stick together and reach this world for Christ.

Latest Element Church Video - Gunslinger

Here is the latest video for our current series, Answers for Troubled Times. Great job editing Joel!

Flock is a Flop

Okay, Flock is a great brower, it has great fast updating and social networking, but the user interface is not as intuative as Safari, so i'm going to stick with what updates with my phone and works seemlessly with OS X. Thats my 2 cents

Blogged with the Flock Browser

First Update to Blogger with Flock

This is a Test, lets see how it works

Blogged with Flock

Trying out Flock, thinking about starting a podcast

As much as i love Safari, I am thinking about trying Flock out for a season. Jody Early has used it and loved it for social networking, which i want to get better at. Plus I want to start a podcast, so i'm looking at reorganizing my digital life to make things like this happen. I'll post new projects as they come alive. Stay tuned

1 of the 2 Fastest Growing Church's in St. Louis

Last week on Saturday, Element Church had a free carnival, were we served over 2700 people. That is unheard of for a church less than 3 years old. With the move to our new facility, we have grown over 120 people, which means we have grown over 30%, in less than a month. Our growth patterns put us in the top 2 fastest growing churches in St. Louis. Why share all this? Because of the following principles

1. It's God. If you don't follow God, then it's labored in vein, so it's all based on God.
2. We do our part and God makes up the rest. We strive for excellence in everything, we do al we can, and God always comes through with what we can't
3. We believe in healthy thirds. 1/3 is younger, then middle aged, then senior. One third is non believers, new believers, then long time followers of Christ. We see young body pierced kids sitting next to grey haired couples at church every Sunday. A healthy church is a balanced church
4. We strive to be relevant, but form always follows function. We don't want to be to creative, where we lose the message. We always put function first, then form in our marketing, series development, Kids ministry, Youth, Visitors, etc...

My Calling At Element Church

I recently was asked by Pastor Erik to step back into my Creative Pastor role, and out of my executive role. The reason was not because of my performance, but due to some staff changes, there were needs that needed to be filled, and on staff, I am the only one right now that can make things happen in these areas, so he asked me to Assume the Creative Pastor role again, and he would assume the responsibilites of an executive/senior pastor. 

I hear some people in ministry say that they are called to kids, or worship, or youth, etc... and that may be true, but I learned something very valuable from brother Jim Weidman, a mentor in my life, and that is that I am called to be what ever my Pastor needs me to be. I am called to the local church, and what ever it takes to help the local church, serve my pastor, and reach people, that is what I do. 

Sometimes things don't go as we plan, but always remember that God's will is for us to be faithful with another man's vision, as a support staff to a local pastor. When you do that , God honors and smiles on what you do, and that is when favor, blessing, and peacee find it's way to you.

GTD

This is a great post that Google did of a David Allen Teaching, the Author of Getting Things Done. I will be commenting on this method more and more cause it truly is an effective form of organization.

Recording messages for...

Recording messages for churches. One of the best and easiest way to record your messages for your church is to use Garageband. All you need is an M-audio interface and set your Garageband file up like a podcast. Divided chapters which will eventually turn those into tracks when you export the file directly to a CD. Then, all you need is a duplicator and you can have instant messages right after the message for your attendees. It's simple. If you have questions contact me, robertbunch@mac.com

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Streamline Requests and Sign Ups

I had lunch the other day with a great friend, that attends a Church in O'Fallon, MO.  He helps oversee all the volunteers. Since I have just recently stepped into the Executive Role at Element church, he wanted to get together and ask how we do some things. At first I wasn't sure how I would be able to help since I have only been the Executive Pastor for a week, but after he asked a few questions, I felt much more confident that I could help. One of the biggest things that has helped me organize my departments (Which has been over 50% of our church) is an online form builder called wufoo. Since I am Working on a Mac, I can easily use iweb to build a simple site for people to log onto to and I can easily integrate wufoo forms into it. We use wufoo forms for

Event Sign Ups

Giving Online

Media Requests

Online Emailing

And Much More

Why is this so important? Because if you make forms online, you empower people to make requests from home, at work, you empower volunteers and staff to be able to communicate their needs. Instead of turning in a physical form that some one has to drive to your office, you can have them do it online, it can make a copy that gets sent to them and a version comes to you so you can schedule things out to deliver. It's an awesome tool that has let increase our productivity by at least 120% versus have hard copies. The main thing is does is it empowers volunteers! Which is awesome. Email me if you have questions how to set it up, and check out wufoo.com

March for Babies, A Huge Success

This is a great event we have done 2 years in a row to show our community that God loves and cares about babies. We have not only shown walkers God's love, but done what the church should always do, and that is set the standard for all the businesses. Out of all the corporate sponsors, we have one best spirit station 2 years in a row, and we raised the most money for a small corporate sponsor. It's an awesome event, and the video really says it all. Thanks again to our awesome team and volunteers that made this exciting event happen.

What to consider when you want to change something.

This last week I had an awesome opportunity to visit one of the most influential churches in the country, Granger Church, in Indiana. Me and Erik Lawson, the senior pastor of element church, were seriously impacted by this great conference as we were able to spend 2 days with the senior management team of Granger. One of the most helpful things I learned is a simple acronym of what to consider when you want to change something. Any church should be looking to make changes to stay relevant, but changes with out consideration can be deadly. It's real simple, check it out

Achieve

Preserve

Avoid

When making a change, and communicating to your team, define what you want to achieve, which is the goal, then define what we want to preserve. what non-negotiables are on the table that we have to protect and keep sacred. Examples of this could be experiences, atmospheres, philosophies, etc... Finally what things do we consider to be unacceptable losses. If you run big and small changes through this process, you and your team will be sure to stay true to the DNA of your church and organization.

First Blog on robertbunch.com

hey everyone, I'm excited to start this blog. I have been able to learn a lot of great things in church planting and ministry that I hope to share with others through this blog so they can get an edge on things that I didn't have, or had to spend hours of research to find out.