The Copyright Queen is at it again, this time with a phenomenal post about what licenses churches need to utilize. This is great stuff! Be sure to read her entire post here.

My friend Susan (better known as the Copyright Queen) wrote a great blog post about U.S. Copyright that I wanted to pass along to churches. I get this question a lot, too, and figured you’d want to know!

One of the most common questions is “I thought churches have an exemption for performance rights. Why do we need a performance license?”

The U.S. Copyright Law actually provides an exemption for churches in one important area: Religious Service Exemption. Exempts performance and display of copyrighted work of a religious nature during religious services.

Remember that copyright owners have five exclusive rights: 1) reproduction 2) display 3) derivative 4) distribution and 5) performance. So, the exemption covers display and performance but ONLY for works of a religious nature in a religious service. This means that performance of non-religious songs during a service are not exempt, and music played or performed outside a religious service requires permission from the copyright owner(s).

Many churches today play or perform music outside the service, and some of the most common examples are:

1. concerts
2. seminars and conferences
3. playing music throughout the church’s facility (in the lobby or narthex before and after services, in books stores or coffee houses and other areas of the church)
4. music-on-hold
5. social events like BBQs, youth gatherings, dinners, etc.
6. dance or aerobics classes

NOTE: some non-profit concerts may also be exempt if 3 criteria area met: 1) no fee is charged (including offerings); 2) the performers, producers or organizers are not paid, and 3) there is no profit motive.

If churches want to legally play or perform non-exempt music, they need to obtain annual facility or special events licenses from ASCAP, BMI and SESAC, the U.S. Performance Rights Organizations (PROs). These three PRO licenses cost about $700/year, plus reporting and possible additional fees throughout the year.

Granger is hosting the Maximizing Media Workshop on June 23rd. If you’re within half a days’ drive of GCC, I highly recommend you and your team make it to this one day event.

Today I was teaching Creative Team Planning on my second trip to meet with the staff of Champion Forest Baptist Church when I made a statement that the executive pastor, Stephen Trammell, asked me to repeat:

“Every church has lots of creative ideas, but most only execute about 1 out of 100 of those ideas.”

To me, this was a rather simple and obvious statement. But it’s exactly because I travel and get to see so many churches that I sometimes forget that I am privileged to see a bigger picture than most people.

Here’s the reality: it’s not that most churches don’t want to be creative and leverage everything they can to be more effective…it’s just that it’s hard to execute lots of great ideas without a team who can take the time to plan, organize and pull together those ideas. In fact, just keeping up with the week-to-week life of church work is very full-time! So I totally understand why it is that so many great ideas never get traction.

But that’s one of the biggest beauties of Creative Team Planning. The brainstorm isn’t the hard part. Executing is. And that’s why creative teams thrive in pulling off, consistently, tremendous ideas with who and what they currently have.

The best part of great ideas is that they don’t cost anything. Executing those ideas will cost something: time.

This past weekend I had the privilege of hanging out with the tech team at Granger Community Church during the Tech Arts Forum and then again on the weekend.

Here are some pictures I took with my cell phone (bad quality, I know). Roll your mouse over each for a description

Adam Callender also got me geeked when he pulled out his SanDisk Ultra II SD/USB card. This is wicked cool!

Then I was uber-geeked when Adam handed it to me as a gift. Very cool. Very generous. Thank you, Adam!

I have one more thing to share in this post. I was most impressed with the humble crew I met at GCC. This is a group that has done a lot of things right, admitted to their mistakes and shortcomings and continues to offer support, resources and, most importantly, their time to churches who want to learn with them. That, my friends, puts this crew way up in my list of churches that I respect.