junho park

This upcoming Sunday is going to be a pretty big & important day at the church I’m serving as a worship leader–it’s the grand opening day at our Vernon Hills location.  We moved into the Sullivan Community Center (SCC) a few months back and had our first service there on Sunday, 1/24.   Since then we’ve mailed out tens of thousands of invitation mailers to homes within a 5-mile radius of the church and I’m told that we should expect around 100 – 200 visitors this Sunday.  We normally have about 50-60 adults at our Sunday service so 100+ visitors would be a huge deal for us.  We, as a congregation, have also been encouraged in these last few weeks to invite others to the grand opening and I am certainly hopeful that there will be many visitors present at church on Sunday as a result of personal invitations from our congregants.

Some may argue that our “grand opening” this Sunday may not qualify as one since prior to our move to SCC, we had been meeting in Palatine for about 3 years.  As for me, I really don’t care. :)  Grand opening or not, I’m going to treat it as such while hoping and expecting that we will have a ton of visitors to our church on Sunday morning.  And while it would certainly be nice to have Christian visitors there who are looking to change churches for all sorts of various reasons, what I would really love to see is to have a lot of people there who are not Christians.  People who are unchurched.  People who don’t have a church home.  People who have been away from the whole “church scene” for a long time but have decided to give church, Jesus, and Christians one more try.  Honestly, I’d rather have 10 unchurched people/non-Christians visit us than 100 people who are Christians.

And from my point of view as a worship leader–it would be kinda cool to have 100+ Christian visitors come check us out this Sunday and see a bigger group of people be engaged in worship.  It would be kinda cool to have a bunch of new people who are already at least sort of familiar with the songs we typically sing at church and be able to sing them with us.  It would be great if some of these Christian visitors are skilled musicians who are already familiar with the songs we normally sing on Sunday mornings and are wanting to help in the worship ministry.

BUT it would be even better if we have visitors join us this Sunday who have not been to church in a long time… perhaps never.  People who think that the songs we sing are strange.  People who can’t help but to feel uneasy and awkward during Christian worship just because they’re so unfamiliar with it.  People who don’t know how to pray.

Up until a few years ago, I used to be a member of a church where many (most?) of the congregants had “immigrated” from other churches.  And when I think back on those days, all I can say is that while it was nice to have a lot of additional people show up at church on Sunday mornings, at the same time, it felt a little bit pointless.  It felt pointless because even though the church had a sudden significant jump in numbers, there was absolutely no net increase in the number of Christians.  All of these newcomers had already heard the gospel and they were already members of an existing community of Christians.

So with all this said, I am looking forward to this Sunday.  And I will be praying that people who are unfamiliar with Jesus and His church will come join us this Sunday.  And if that’s the case, this Sunday might be my first Sunday as a worship leader where I don’t mind people who simply look lost during worship. :)

I briefly alluded to this in my last blog post, but sometime early last year, I launched a very simple website for my parents’ shoe repair store (www.moodyshoerepair.com).  And when I say simple, it is *very* simple.  All it has are a number of static pages with a few pictures and some blurbs pertaining to the store.  You know the website is a simple one when the most complex part of the website is the CAPTCHA validation that exists in the ‘Contact Us’ page.

At any rate, here are some things I’ve done so far to maximize the benefits of this website:

1. I submitted the website’s URL to various websites that act as a gateway to other businesses–such as Yelp and Manta.  I thought this would be a good idea since websites such as yelp.com holds information pertaining to a ton of other businesses.  I see it as free advertisement.

2.Business cards:  I ordered new business cards for cheap through Vistaprint and included the website URL in the card.

3. Google AdWords.  I was offered a free trial for Google AdWords.  I believe it was a $10 credit.  It was my first experience with Google AdWords and it was a positive experience.  I was basically given a slew of options that would help AdWords decide when to display the ad (like how you see random ads off to the side when you’re reading your emails in Gmail).  I could decide on options such as keywords, locations of the end users, and types of devices (computers and/or  mobile devices).

4. Google Analytics: I got Google Analytics set up for this website so I can track all sorts of useful information–such as how many people visit the website, how they get to the site (i.e. via search engines, by typing in the site’s URL, or via other websites), which pages people visit, how long they stay on various pages, etc.

5. Pingdom: I got Pingdom setup for this website.  Pingdom is basically a website monitoring service that sends out alerts when the sites it’s monitoring go down.  Being that a website is only useful if it is actually visible to the world, this was a no-brainer.  Very nice is the fact that they have a free edition of the tool.  I got it set up so that it texts me if moodyshoerepair.com goes down.  Pingdom has definitely saved my butt a few times.

6. Facebook:  Although I thought it was silly, I still went ahead and created a Facebook page for it.  I bugged some of my friends to see if they would become a “fan” of Moody Shoe Repair.  22 fans and counting.  Wonderful.

Well, this pretty much sums up everything I’ve done to maximize the site.  It’s been almost a year since the site has gone up and all I can say at this point is that the site is most definitely being underutilized.  I know it’s being underutilized because of the information that Google Analytics tells me.  I know it’s being underutilized because of the (low) number of questions I receive via the website’s contact form.  In order to better reap the benefits of the website, I know that I need to put up some more information that both potential & present customers would find useful–information that tells customers how much it actually costs to get various types of items repaired.

I’ve thought about implementing a customer-login section in the website whereby customers can login and check the statuses of their repairs and view their repair/order history.  However, I decided not to pursue it (at least for now) since I didn’t think that was going to be very helpful in generating new traffic to the website.

Also, I’ve thought about creating a blog for the business as well as a Twitter page.  Again, I decided not to because I question how many customers who frequent the store (or any shoe repair for that matter) would be the kinds of folks who check out blogs and tweet.  I may be wrong here and might be underestimating the tech-savviness of the customers.  I’ll need to do some more research on that.

If you’ve had similar experiences before with trying to cash in on the benefits of a business website, I’d love to hear from you.  Are there things you’ve implemented  that have helped you reap the benefits of your (or your client’s) website?

I have a few minutes to spare while my Ubuntu workspace is being patched up with some security updates so I thought I’d share a little blurp or two about RimuHosting which is the hosting service I’m using to host www.junhopark.com as well as www.moodyshoerepair.com (my parents’ shoe repair business located in Joliet, IL–go check ‘em out if you need shoe repair done!  I can almost guarantee you once you go get your shoes repaired, you’ll be thinking to yourself why did I not think of this before??).

Anyhow, sometime last year, I was looking all over the web (and I mean all over) for a hosting service that could handle Java web hosting.  I googled like crazy and it appeared that they were either too expensive and/or got horrible reviews.  I was discouraged.  And then somehow (I forget how…) I stumbled upon RimuHosting, which has definitely met my needs.  And since RimuHosting’s been good to me, I thought I’d share some highlights of their service in this post:

1) They offer a VPS (Virtual Private Server).  You can read a nice summary about it here on Wikipedia but what it basically boils down to is that on a single server, there are multiple “virtual servers” which runs its own operating system and and can runs independently from the other virtual servers.  It can even be rebooted independently.  End result: It’s sorta like having your own server but at a price that is actually affordable to an average joe like myself.  So… what all this means is that via RimuHosting, you can have yourself a virtual server and you can do what you want with it.  Read about all the things you can do with RimuHosting’s virtual private server here.

2) Their price:  I’m subscribed to their lowest-costing plan at $19.95/month, which I think is quite reasonable for the services I receive.  I get 160 MB of memory (puny, I know–but works for me) and 3.94 GB of disk space (note that your OS and related files will take up a pretty big chunk).  You can always pay them more money to get more memory.

3) Their support:  Those guys have been top-notch.  I haven’t had to use their support in awhile, but in the beginning when I was just getting started with them, I had to make use of their support on a number of occasions.  And those guys were lightning-fast with their responses.  Very impressive.  All support communications were done via web forms and/or emails but the response time was great each and every single time.

For Java hosting, I’ve read over and over again online that it’s a very bad idea to go with shared hosting and so the only obvious choice for me was to go with a VPS.  Simply being able to reboot the darn server has been such a huge plus for me as opposed to a shared hosting plan which I had been using for a number of years before RimuHosting.

Okay, Ubuntu has finished updating.  Now onto installing Chrome on this thing and enjoy faster browsing.

-Junho

Almost every Sunday morning, I am needed to provide live background music, either on the guitar or the piano, at church worship services.  Usually this takes place during the offertory and times of corporate prayers. Since I’ve been doing this almost every Sunday for the last 12 years or so, it comes very naturally to me. It helps that improvising comes very naturally to me. Put some sheet music in front of my eyes and I will freeze up (reason why I disliked piano lessons so much…) but take them away from me and I can sit at the piano and play whatever comes to my head for hours… literally. I understand, however, that for a lot of musicians, it doesn’t come as naturally. They could be extremely skilled instrumentalists, but without the guidance of sheet music or chord charts, a lot of people tend to have a difficult time providing live background music, especially ones that would work well at worship services.

So with that said, I thought I would provide some tips on this very topic. I gave a seminar on this topic at my church to our keyboardists and they found it helpful. Hopefully it’ll be of some help to you as well–especially if you’re having to provide live background music during church services.

[ I. Support the Plot ]

Can you imagine watching a movie without any background music whatsoever?  Just how incredibly dull would that be?  Sound tracks in music are powerful in the ways in which they support the plot.  I’ll bet that a good number of movie sound tracks echo in your heads whenever you think about a movie.  For instance, I remember that one scene in ‘Forrest Gump’ where Forrest runs for the first time in his life and I heard that sound track come on… I remember just how incredibly powerful that scene was.  Without that music in the background, it would not have been nearly as powerful or emotion-provoking.  And that’s just one example I can provide among countless many.

With that said, when you’re in the position to provide live background music during a church service, determine what the plot is.  If you’re asked to play the piano during a corporate prayer time immediately following a sermon centered on the crucifixion of Christ and your pastor is asking the congregation to meditate on Christ’s suffering, the last thing you’ll want to do is to play some kind of a happy-sounding music.  On the other hand, if this is Easter Sunday and your pastor just preached a message on the resurrected Christ and His victory over death, you’d probably want to play something that sounds uplifting.

And remember to change up your music if the “plot” changes.  Whenever I’m playing background tunes while someone is leading the congregation through various prayer topics, I listen carefully to what the person is saying.  For instance, it is very possible that following a sermon that focuses on the cross, the preacher will ask the congregation to first meditate on the cross, repent of their sins, and then give thanks to God for His grace, followed by giving praises to God for His victory over sin and death.  Well, the plot just changed multiple times right there.  It would be a good idea for your background music to support the changing plot.

[ II. Don't Become the Main Attraction ]

When you’re providing live background music during a church service, remember that your music is not to be main attraction.  As stated above, it should support whatever is taking place without attracting unnecessary attention.  Here are some tips that will help your music (and you) to stay in the background:

• Be generic: Try to avoid playing melodies that your congregants may recognize; otherwise, they may start to follow your playing instead of focusing on whatever else they’re supposed to focus on.  And when that happens, you’ve just become the main attraction.  There have been numerous times where I was praying alongside other congregants and the keyboardist started to play very familiar tunes–such as ‘Amazing Grace’ or ‘Great is Thy Faithfulness’.  Well, things like that make it nearly impossible for me to pray.  I probably suffer from it more than most other folks being that I’m so music-minded, but still… I can’t imagine how familiar tunes like that would not draw people’s attention.
• Be simple: Play simple things.  Don’t play so many different notes.  You’re not playing at a piano recital and you’ve got no one to impress when there’s worship going on.  :)
• Repetition: Be repetitious in your playing.  While you don’t have to stick to playing the exact same notes every x measures, it might not be a bad idea to stick to some sort of a basic chord progression.  When we hear music that is repetitious, we tend have an easier time letting it fade away into background.

[ III. Volume Control ]

When you watch a movie (or a TV show or a play, etc.), note how when the background music is playing in scenes where there are dialogues being exchanged between the characters, the volume of the music is lot lower than when the music is being played in scenes where this is not the case.  This obviously allows the audience to make out what the characters are saying.  In the same way, when you’re having to play an instrument in the background during a church service and someone is speaking over your playing, you should soften your playing whenever this person is speaking.  Don’t just turn that volume knob on your keyboard (or depend on your sound person to lower your volume for you) but actually soften your playing.  When the person is done speaking, well, you can then play louder.  Go with the flow.

Well, if you’re having to provide live background music at church (or in various other settings) I hope this post has been of help to you.

Support the plot, stay in the background, and watch your volume!

-Junho

Links to my music have been fixed in the music page.

Yet another rendition of junhopark.com is done… at last!  I decided to forsake my old Blogger posts since it’s been quite awhile since my last blog update and I didn’t want a huge gap showing up on this site between my last blog post and new ones which I’ll be posting (hopefully with some sort of regularity).

I’m glad to finally have something up and running.  I chose to go with WordPress this time around.  We’ll see how much I like this.  So far, I’ve been pretty impressed by it, at least compared to Blogger.

Anyhow, time to sleep.  I promised myself I’d be in bed by 10 pm tonight but…