There is some great discussion happening over at the Church Technical Artist’s Network online http://ctanonline.com. If you are not a member of CTANonline, you may benefit by joining and jumping into the discussions that are going on. There are now over 400 members representing full time, part time and volunteer technical artists from a wide range of church sizes and denominations.
The Church Technical Artist’s Network is a resource that is free and available to anyone serving in any capacity on their local church technical team. The Network exists to equip those serving on technical ministry teams by fostering relationships amongst its members, facilitating peer learning, and encouraging synergy through the sharing of ideas. The hope is to accomplish this primarily via the web utilizing the online community.
The focus of CTAN will be to continue to develop the online community for church and ministry technical personnel community which will be available to the CTAN membership. That online community includes...
>member pages to share pictures and ideas from your own ministry
>blogs
>active and relevant discussion forums on the topics of audio, video, lighting, CG, projection and stage design
>live online and video chat
>groups in related areas of church production
>industry news that is pertinent to the church tech industry
>and we have an occasional contest such as our current (recent) Stage Lighting Design where the first and second place winners will receive a generous package of LED lighting.
CTANonline grew out of a vision that established CTDRT. The Church Technical Director’s Roundtable (www.ctdrt.com) was officially launched in August of 2009 for the full time Technical/Production Directors that serve full time in the local church. As CTDRT has grown and gained momentum in the past year we have seen a growing need and desire in the local church for a resource like CTDRT. The vision for CTDRT meant that part time and volunteer TD’s along with other full time Tech staff such as Associate/Assistant TD’s, Video, Audio or Lighting staff could not take part, let alone any volunteer technical artist. And, to their credit, they proved that they needed and wanted a valuable resource like CTDRT.
So, you will see much of the same vision for CTAN as we have for CTDRT. But, CTAN is opened to anyone. Oh, there are CTDRT members playing an active role in CTAN. See, while we all need our place to connect people in similar ministry environments like ours, its also important to connect with people who serve in different ministry environments and capacities.
The value of this community is the gathering of the technical brilliance and experience in today’s Church in place to share ideas, information and build relationships. The actual online structure probably won’t be found to be groundbreaking but those individual members visiting CTANonline and contributing to the online experience will benefit through seeing the vision of CTAN fleshed out.
