Apple Worship Market Team wants to know

[image: flickrich]

While some people just couldn't wait for my recap of a meeting at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, as you may have heard via the twitter chatter of last week, I was invited to Apple's main headquarters to meet with the newly formed Worship Market Team at Apple.  Yes, you heard right, Apple must have read this post of mine and thought, hmmmm . . . . "maybe this church thing is alright."  Or . . . someone at the Presbyterian Center simply talked with our Apple Rep and made the connection.  Smart money is on scenario number two.

Regardless of how the connection was made, it was made and I was invited down to the main headquarters for a meeting and tour.  And yes, I played it cool - I do have a rep to uphold - despite the geek-inspiring Apple feel of the entire place.  I even resisted buying anything at the corporate Apple store.  And no, contrary to popular belief, they do not give out iPhones or PowerBooks as visitor thank you gifts ;-)

So here is the deal.  Apple has decided that the church worship market might be a great place for Apple's interface to well . . . interface.  Everything from podcasting to presentation to marketing to church management, they are looking at ways that Apple can be part of the church/worship experience.  It sounds like this is mostly applications at this point with some hardware integration.  They seem to have a good grasp of church culture regarding particular needs of different sized churches regarding all things technological.  This new venture is only six-months old, but has good support from the powers that be.

So what's next?  First, I will get to be part of some official conversations in the future as they roll out more products and need more input from practitioners.  Second, I told them I would get some input and thoughts from you all . . . So, what does Apple need to know?  What would be helpful in terms of applications, hardware, etc. to make the church leadership experience all that you would hope it would be?

Apple is asking . . .

Comments

[Stead]

High quality database software that doesn't cost a ton. Worship control software(I'd love to discuss this, I think I'm onto something), like a tool to switch applications and blank outputs. Maybe even a video/application hardware crossfader would be cool for transitioning to/from powerpoint and dvd clips.

-Stead(stead@steadwald.com)

[Shawn Coons]

I've used Labora Worship Planning software on and off for a number of years. Basically, it's crap, but it is the only thing out there that is specifically Presbyterian (i.e. Presbyterian Hymnal, Book of Common Worship, Lectionary Dates).

I'd love to have something for planning a service that let me insert pieces from the BCW, the Presbo Hymnal, things that I have collected or found online. Of course there would really need to be a good system of organization with categories and tags. And it would need a calendar that sync'd with the lectionary as well.

[stushie]

I thought you were into inclusiveness and connectionalism, Bruce?

Obviously, you want to set up a breakaway church to be called the MAC(USA), whilst us computer dinosaurs will have to remain in the PC(USA)...:)

[Bruce Reyes-Chow]

Stushie - Don't temp me ;-)

[sarah]

Send the church an Apple Genius on Sundays!

[adam mclane]

Ideas?
Include ProPresenter as standard for the worship package. Maybe even make it lighter so it can run on a Mac Mini. (Think youth ministry, kids ministry, etc. throughout a building.)

Extend the educational pricing to anyone employed at a church.

A touch screen monitor for a check-in system for kids ministry.

A .me-like service that provides SSL for online database storage.

Talk to the people at FellowshipOne about whole church online database systems.

Integrate everything with Mail & iCal.

Integrate it with a CMS.

I could go on forever. My biggest advice is not to build it for megachurches only. The real sweetspot of the market is churches under 1000 per week.

[Mark]

sarah is on to something.

Send an Apple employee to spend a week AT a church. Working in the office, during worship, with the youth group. See how people are making what exists today work, and where the holes are.

[Anna Parkinson]

We use "Easy Worship," which works pretty well and does allow you to import things from all the Presby software stuff. We do that on a regular basis.
My biggest request would be - something you can run from a pulpit instead of a tech booth, and something that a 90 year old can understand and actually use.
Interesting that you posted this. I was thinking just this past week that I wish our church had a Mac based tech booth instead of what we have. It would be less crowded at the very least.

[Rex Espiritu]

Okay, just dreaming and sharing a bit if it hasn't already been thought of and expressed before with regard to applying technology in service of the liturgy.... WIBNI (Wouldn't It Be Nice If) in the palm of my/the pastor's and/or worship leader's hand via an iPhone/iTouch type device, one had the ability/functionality to control/interface with the multimedia presentation being simultaneously displayed in concert with and in support of the sermon and/or singing in praise and worship? One might envision a more wholly integrated open software systems architecture/infrastructure that would provide the environment for this to readily occur, and particularly in such a vertical application for ecclesiastical purposes. We would need this to be a robust, real-time, mission-critical, event-sensitive kind of setup using securely localized high bandwidth wireless network communication media. "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more, exceedingly, abundantly far above all we could ever ask, think, or even imagine..." (Ephesians 3:20)

[David Moon-Wainwright]

Whoa Rex! How cool that would be. Alas, I own no iPhone (whimper)

Bruce, We use Keynote and my biggest gripe is that I cannot link to DVD bookmarks that I've set up and have them show up on a Keynote slide instead of the whole switching inputs thing. The feature could be set to require a CCLI movie license code or something to satisfy Dummywood. (Sorry, but I still believe in Fair Use!)

Hardware: A Mac Mini with a 9" panel mirroring what's on screen.

Being able to use a FrontRow IR remote to navigate Keynote presentations. But Rex's iPhone/iPod Touch idea is way cooler.

Now, if only Apple would talk to the Hymnal people about this crazy idea about killing more trees and help them set up a denomination wide CCLI/Licensing/OneLicense license for every church in the PCUSA, ECLA, UM, and others... I would be thrilled!

How about a Open House Tech Summit for all Nor Cal Pastors?

[becky]

can we be the test church?

[Marci]

Our church is only recently on the technology band wagon and are still building the content of the website.
We would like to more easily manage podcasts and those sorts of files.
And the secretary uses publisher, which I don't really like so much, so would be interested in publishing software that goes online with more ease.
I have a macbook pro, but the secretary is still on a pc. Hopefully that would be the next change here.
I do like the idea someone else mentioned of being able to control the multimedia from your iphone.

[Bruce Reyes-Chow]

Thanks all for your comments. GREAT stuff. Keep 'em coming. Bruce

[Kevin Ledgister]

Check out the Apple Church Network on Facebook that was started by Chris Miller, an Apple employee who works on the Apple Worship Market Team.

And my church does use ProPresenter and it's awesome. We have an electronic switchbox that allows us, with the press of a button, to switch between a speaker's PC at the front of the room and our media room Macs at the back.

For DVD clips, we often use Handbrake to grab a selected clip and convert it to QuickTime instead of trying to cue up a DVD. With Quicktime Pro, you can trim the tracks

[bob Pearson]

Many churches have PC networks, so the Mac must integrate seamlessly into the network as it is migrating to a macs. Church budgets just will not allow a whole scale crossover. Don't forget about the library applications as well. Moving to a database for churches that is easy and that many people can access for the variety of ministry groups is critical. We are still using an ld text based interface application because the cost to switch just seems too great. A really cool new membership app that would work throughout the church and over the net would help get over this hurdle.

[Robin Mohr]

A way for all the committees to keep track of who signed up to do what on Sunday, that would be visible from home, to see, Did I sign up to be a greeter tomorrow? If I did, who else is going to be there on the coffee committee or the child care team?

That would also allow committees to keep their own files, lists, documents separate, but would feed into a church-wide network of the things everybody needs access to.

We're trying to cobble something together like this using Google apps, but it's complicated.

[katherine]

don't have a suggestion, just think it is cool that Apple is exploring this and that you all are having the discussion. I can only imagine how awesome it was to visit their headquarters!

[SJ Austin]

Worth noting that you can control Keynote with the Apple IR Remote. There are a few iPhone/iPod touch apps out there to control it over Wi-Fi, too. Do a search in the iTunes store for "Keynote" and sort it to show only Applications, and you'll find them.

I think one of the things Apple could do would be to tweak Keynote to make it more friendly for use in worship settings. It's by far the best corporate presentation software out there, but it lacks a few abilities that MediaShout and some of the others have, such as the ability to show live video behind a bottom third and a really simple way to navigate to any point in the presentation.

Keep us posted.