Paul Barber, Creative Arts Director at Frontline (Washington, DC)
COLLIDE: Tell us a little bit about Frontline.
Paul Barber: Frontline is the young adult service at McLean Bible Church in Northern Virginia right outside Washington, DC. It’s really a fully functioning biblical community, as opposed to just a service. Small groups, missions, and ministry teams are a huge part of who we are as a church. There are about 3,000 weekly attendees.
In January 2007 we started a Monday night service closer to DC, so another aspect of my job is to translate everything we do to that campus, which is a completely different scenario. We truck everything into a small theater and setup/teardown all the production components each week.
COLLIDE: What is your role at Frontline?
Barber: A lot of what I do involves the planning and execution of the Frontline services from a creative and technical perspective. I work on a really talented team of people who put together the weekly elements of our worship services—everything from music to sermons to lighting/stage design to multimedia to promotions. We heavily depend on volunteers to pull this thing off so organizing and serving them is a big part of our focus.
COLLIDE: What is your background in terms of ministry and the arts?
Barber: I’m a pastor’s kid (don’t hold it against me), so I grew up with a church backstage pass. I also spent several years on the road playing music and being a part of a lot of church events and conferences. You pick up a lot of things when you see all that goes into the production side of ministry in so many different settings (mostly what not to do). My wife Bryn is an amazing photographer and graphic designer and I have had brief stints in video production, sound engineering, and recording studio production. Basically, I’ve been exposed to a lot of different sides of the arts and media and though never really excelling in one particular area, I can appreciate, engage, and communicate with the folks who work in these fields.
COLLIDE: Is there a basic philosophy shared by the staff of Frontline regarding the use of media and technology?
Barber: I’d say the basic idea is to strive for “excellence with significance.” If you lose this balance, you end up with either really cool stuff that doesn’t impact people or a really great message that no one gets. As a church we want to create an environment that is conducive not just to worship and learning, but to life change. There are no cutting-edge media tricks or left-of-center service ideas that can change people; only Christ can do that work. So it’s our job to point people in the right direction.
COLLIDE: What is your process in preparing the media for a given service?
Barber: Our team works in a series format, which is pretty popular in churches these days. We come up with the idea for a sermon series that will last anywhere from 2 to 6 weeks and then just start building all the elements that will help communicate the messages of that series—music sets, graphic design, video, service structures, set design, and promotion. We want all the service elements to be tied to the series as much as possible. Sometimes that means a lot of media in the service; sometimes it means a more simple approach. Just because you have the ability to do something doesn’t mean you have to always do it.
COLLIDE: What is your current media setup for worship experiences?
Barber: Since we share our auditorium with the morning services at McLean Bible Church, everything we do has to have the ability to be quickly set up. They could have had a 60-piece orchestra that morning, so the logistics and planning are huge. The auditorium has 12 fixed screens so figuring out the configuration of what goes where, as well as setting up different scrims to light or project images onto, plus lighting design, all are part of that process. We use three or four Mac laptops running a combination of Apple Keynote or Arkaos VJ for visuals and Ableton Live or Logic Pro for audio.
COLLIDE: What kind of media/arts/tech team, staff and volunteers does it take to carry out the typical service at Frontline?
Barber: We have live video on some of the screens, so that crew is usually seven to nine volunteers and one staff member. The worship leader usually has five or six in the band and they are all volunteers as well. The rest of the crew is made up of four audio engineers, a lighting designer, a stage manager, two or three people running visuals (song lyrics, VJ, and other video), plus a couple guys running our live Internet campus. I’m the guy in back with the headset on making sure everyone is on the same page.
COLLIDE: Are there any creative ways your team has used visuals, music, or technology that you’d like to share with other churches out there?
Barber: Out of their context these might not make much sense, but here are a few:
• Using rear projection, we took the screens down, hazed the room pretty heavily, and just projected into the haze. (OK, we stole that idea from U2.)
• During a series that involved a panel discussion called "Q & A," people could text us their questions live. Ever gotten 300 texts in five minutes? The first one that came in said, "R U guys nuts?" (Wait, did we steal that from U2, too?)
• We’ve been going through the book of Colossians in a series called "Center" and we’d have a pre-recorded voiceover read the passage for the night with accompanying motion graphics. Seems simple, but I thought it did a great job of focusing our congregation on the specific message of the night.
• We had what we called a "silent communion." It wasn’t actually silent, but there was no talking from the stage that night (only singing). Everything was communicated from the screens. We explained how the night would flow and led the congregation through various times of meditation, prayer, and the actual taking of communion. We should bring that one back sometime …
To find out more about Frontline, visit www.frontlinedc.com.