Relationships. The one word that sticks with me after three months with Orange Thread Media.

This summer I joined the team officially as the intern. My role in the business was to oversee Playback Drive operations, support live events, and be available for whatever was thrown my way. To be honest, I don’t want to talk about any of that.

Although I’ve learned way more than I expected, the business side of things is not even what I’ve really gained from this experience. It’s been the people and the countless times I’ve enjoyed a meal, a drink, or even a short conversation because of Orange Thread. People are inadvertently stressed to be the most important part of this business; It wasn’t the countless hours of copying data to drives, taping boxes, driving 11 hours to Texas, or the constant encouragement from Johnny ). People have made this summer the reason I will remember it for years to come.

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Tags: Internships, philosophy by Stephen Mathew
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One of the most core aspects of Orange Thread Media is it’s focus on creating and building community. It’s in our mission statement, it is a large part of our core values, it how I have chosen to lead this team and is a requirement of any of the guys who work for me. Monday, we had a breakfast for our team at my house. Johnny (marketing extraordinaire) and I made the team some delicious breakfast burritos as we celebrated the future of where we are going as a company. It dawned on me that this isn’t normal. It’s just something we do!

We aren’t just a company, we’re a community and communities can do a whole lot more than a company. You see, companies are full of employees who clock in and clock out. Companies are full of people who just show up to work do their job and leave early. Companies are environments where people cut corners because their boss doesn’t care. Communities are made up of incredible people who care about each other and work together to make something happen!

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Tags: philosophy by Luke McElroy
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I was thinking the other day about how people prepare for events in many various and/or unique ways. I have friends who are musicians that just before they go on stage, they down a Redbull and do 10 jumping jacks. I know others that to prepare for a big presentation rehearse as much as they can… and still others just love that high of walking into any event blind as can be!

I don’t really recommend the last one very much (personal experience). In fact, I recently discovered that I have a unique way of preparing for an event. It’s not the “checklist” method, or the “lets practice all the transitions.” Every time I do an event (production, camera, directing, graphics, powerpoint/lyrics, engineering, etc) I do a pretty consistent (maybe not verbatim) application of the following steps.

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Tags: Teaching, philosophy by Luke McElroy
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In the grand scheme of life an individual, no matter how smart or creative, yields a very small amount of influence or power. When a group of people can rally around an idea or a shared interest they become a much stronger influence. The past three months I had the privileged to travel the United States with a team of people helping facilitate worship to thousands of middle and high school students with an organization called Student Life.

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Tags: philosophy by Preston Gray
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So we’ve been blogging a lot lately, and most of it has been about tech stuff, new content and Orange Thread projects, but today I just want to talk a little about what I believe our call in visual worship leadership is.. I’ll be writing a few more in the coming days, but to not be too long winded, I just wanted to start incorporating this into our types of Blog Posts.
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Tags: Visual Worship, philosophy by Luke McElroy
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