new church life: march / april 2014
involving different volunteers in the work as narrators, singers, actors and set
creators. Several local children have participated and really enjoyed feeling
useful and needed by their church. We have also purposely involved a variety
of adult readers and narrators. The volunteers get excited about helping with
projects, and we love having these connections. We are very grateful to all
those who have shared their talents with us, and so with the world beyond.
It is not necessary to be local to be involved in this work. As well as putting
up our own videos, YouTube allows us to link to and “favorite” other videos we
believe are valuable for our audience. If you have videos you think might be
useful – of religious songs or stories, Sunday school classes, etc. – we would be
interested in hearing from you.
Among our most popular videos are those with readings (by our
volunteers) taken directly from the Word and illustrated with felt dolls, made
mostly by Gretchen Glover, who is also skilled at posing the figures for the
photographs that make up the videos’ visuals. So far, we have been using these
to make holiday videos, for Christmas (www.bitly.com/JesusIsBorn; www.bitly.
com/TheWiseMen), Easter (www.bitly.com/JesusRidesIntoJerusalem), and New
Church Day (www.bitly.com/WomanClothedWithSun).
This past Christmas we experimented with online advertising, which drew
more than 20,000 views in December and early January. It is exciting to think
about the people we are reaching, including a viewer who left this comment: “I
just love this animation. It is so captivating and realistically follows Scripture
and the feel of the story. Well done!”
This quote, along with one from a General Church minister – “It’s cute
and reverent” – perfectly captured our goal in developing these videos: to
reach people with messages from the Lord’s Word communicated with great
affection. Indeed, the videos are a new media experiment, but they are not
a new purpose. Our core goal in developing materials remains what it has
always been: to teach children about the Lord and His Word in the light of our
New Church teachings.
Making every one of our 35 videos has been a learning process, both
challenging and delightful. Sarah and Janet continue to explore new techniques
and technologies to incorporate into the videos now in development.
If you have not yet seen any of our General Church Education videos,
we encourage you to take a look and let us know what you think. If you have
already enjoyed the videos, you might wish to become a “subscriber” to the
channel. Being a subscriber requires only an e-mail address and means you
will be notified whenever a new video is added to our channel.
The next video, coming in April, will celebrate the story of the Lord’s
resurrection on Easter morning.
To contact Rachel Glenn: 267-502-4959, [email protected]
188