John 1:29 – ‘the scapegoat’

We wrapped up our “His Glory Appears” series on December 27 by talking about the implications of John the Baptist’s proclamation of Jesus being the Lamb of God, come to take away the sins of the world from John 1:29. As we were talking about ideas for the service, I suggested that we could film part of the message at a local goat farm.

After a few phone calls and gathering some people with the right equipment, we set off to spend a couple of hours with our new friend Eric the farmer and some of his goats. We had a great time putting this video together and the response from our congregation was that it was very helpful in bringing home the point.

Here’s the video we used -

If you’re thinking about exploring the use of video with your church, don’t be scared! Don’t feel like you have to go “all in” right from the bat with full video messages, HD cameras, big lighting and major editing. For this shoot, we used four people (including Earl on screen), two cameras (our church owns a Canon HV20 and we also used a similar camera belonging to a friend), 90 minutes or so of filming, 3-4 hours of editing and a bunch of awesome goats.

Does this mean we’re video experts? Heck no! But it does mean we’re willing to try new things (or at least “new for us” things) to help communicate with our people.

Don’t be afraid! Give it a shot!