Ed Lockett came to visit us at Rock Bridge a few weeks ago. This is his story.

*photography by Jeremy Owens from our recent mission trip to Haiti

We recently did a ProPresenter 4 training for about 40 people here at Rock Bridge Community Church. Between the three campuses and various ministries, we have 22 machines currently running ProPresenter 3. In order to upgrade (which you should totally do if you haven’t already) we needed a large scale training to get people comfortable with the basics of the new program.

Most of the content of the training was provided by Stephen Proctor (@worshipvj www.worshipvj.com) so I won’t get into content too much on this post, but I do want to talk about setup.

Thanks to a little help from Renewed Vision, we were able to use an HD projector on a 16’ x 9’ screen in the center of the stage mirroring the laptop display while simultaneously using two 8’ x 6’ screens on the sides of the stage showing the output of ProPresenter. It was fun.

I used the USB-DVI device that Renewed Vision sells to mirror the laptop display and used the internal graphics card (MiniDisplayPort) to run ProPresenter’s output. Here’s the setup process (assuming you’ve never run the USB-DVI before).

• Run all your video cables to their respective places (I’m going to assume you know how to set up a projector) but don’t plug the USB-DVI device into the computer until you…
• Insert the disc, install the drivers
• Now plug in the USB-DVI device
• Using Display Preferences verify all 3 displays operating at optimal resolution/color settings and totally functional
• Make sure mirroring is off
• Arrange the displays in the following order (from left to right, if you don’t do this now it will make it more difficult to find the correct output later): Laptop Display (primary with dock), USB-DVI Display, MiniDisplayPort Display
• OPTION + Click & Drag the Laptop Display onto the USB-DVI Display (this should mirror the Laptop/USB-DVI displays ONLY)
  NOTE: Depending on your laptop display/projector resolutions you might have to find a “best fit” – I adjusted mine to only 1080 lines instead of 1440 to match the projector (this gave me letterboxing on my laptop display but I was ok with it – unhide your dock if you’re having trouble with it)
• Open ProPresenter 4
• Your screen might go black here as ProPresenter isn’t sure what display to use as an output and mine defaulted to the mirrored display on two different machines – Use CMD+1 to hide ProPresenter’s output
• Go to ProPresenter Preferences and click on the Display tab
• Make sure “Scale to Fit Output Display” is checked
• OPTION + Click & Drag the black “OUT” box to the MiniDisplayPort Display that you previously arranged all the way to the right
• Scale the ProPresenter main window as needed to see your screen on the projector

That should do it. You should be able to see everything you do on the laptop and still be able to see the results of that on the side screens. For the number of people we had at the training it really couldn’t have been better. I would also highly recommend bringing in Stephen Proctor to train your team. It fueled some great discussions on making good decisions with content not just how to use the software – which is where every good team needs to go.

A few notes:
The USB-DVI frame rate is around 20fps – noticeably slower than the built-in video card. That’s why I chose to use the USB-DVI device as the mirror instead of the main out. If you switch those you’ll likely run into performance problems playing video through ProPresenter – and nobody likes performance problems.

Always make sure the outputs/displays are working properly before you open ProPresenter. Troubleshooting is a pain if you don’t know whether it’s a system or a software problem.

I wouldn’t suggest doing this setup for anything live (why would you?) as it’s stable but just tricky enough to make me nervous in a live setting, but in my 2hr training we had no problems whatsoever.

I’d just like to add that Renewed Vision went the extra mile to test this out before I ever ordered the equipment. I sent a tweet out to fellow CTDRT members asking if anyone had ever tried to do this and got an unsolicited call from Renewed Vision’s @chriswheat offering his assistance. I told him what I thought would work and he ran off to test it calling me back to confirm.

If you end up using this setup or need any help with it, tweet it to me at @brian_holt, I’d love to see how you do it.

I just bought my first house so I find myself watching HGTV a lot more than I ever have before. My personal favorite is Holmes on Homes. Each week Mike Holmes takes on a project that was done incorrectly (or left unfinished) and “makes it right.”

I was watching a few nights ago and I heard him say the following:

I don’t want to do this, but right now this is my house. As long as this is my house, I’m gonna do it right.

Man.
That’s quality and commitment.

Imagine what would happen if we, as leaders in the church, thought about our people that way.

The students in student ministry are ‘my kids’.
The visitors in the services are ‘my brothers and sisters’.
The children in children’s ministry are ‘my kids’.

There would be things I wouldn’t want to do for someone else’s kids…but that I’d do for mine. There would be an urgency for my brother to see Christ that might not be present for someone I’ve never met. But what if it was?

This morning Stephen Proctor and I were chatting over breakfast about Passion Conferences (among many other things) and one thing came out that we were both so attracted to:

As leaders, we’re attracted to the boldness by which they pursue their vision

God has given them a vision and they are unapologetic about achieving that goal. They could probably make more money if they started “Passion for Singles” or “Passion for Adults” or “Passion for High School Students”…but they haven’t. Those people are welcome to attend, but their audience is and always has been college students. And they don’t apologize that a Passion event might not connect with you if you’re not a college student.

How often to we allow the people in our congregation to determine what we do? Why is that we, as leaders in the church, are so drawn to people who are bold about what they are going to do (and what they are NOT going to do)?

It’s vision and the boldness to support that vision. Everyone wants to follow a leader who is passionate about where they are going – and not willing to waiver to public opinion.

Give me a leader who is boldly following God and His vision and I’ll follow them anywhere. Give me a leader who bows to public opinion and I’ll be out of there pretty quick. We don’t have time to mess around.

P.s. I also need someone to put me in my place and tell me that my great idea doesn’t serve the vision of the church…gently of course.

I love to read. I read a lot. Something happens when you sit down to read someone else’s ideas and synthesize that with your own ideas and your own experiences.

I wrote a tweet last week about reading Sherlock Holmes on my Kindle. I got a few responses from that and thought it might be interesting to share what else is on my Kindle right now (which I absolutely love – my backpack got 5 pounds lighter overnight).

Less Clutter, Less Noise by Kem Meyer*
Sherlock Holmes, the complete collection by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle*
Visual Faith: Art, Theology and Worship by William Dyrness*
Fusion: Turning First-Time Guests into Fully Engaged Members by Searcy & Henson
The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer
High-Tech Worship? by Quentin Schultze
Art and the Bible: Two Essays by Francis Schaeffer
Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes your Faith by Shane Hipps
Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival by Norman Ollestad
Tribes by Seth Godin
A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller

*denotes a book I’m currently reading.

Lots of wisdom up there.
What are you reading and how is it helping you grow?