Hello everybody, my name is Boris Yovanovich and I am Part of the lime micro systems I'm representing in fact lime micro systems and I will talk about adaptive digital predistortion, which is realized using lime SDR boards lime SDR boards that has lime LMS 7002 transceiver IC 2x2C and These boards also involves some FPGA hardware some altero cyclone for chip So I implemented this for this demo and I will show the results at the first I Will not I'm I first must to apologize Myself because I I brought here some Windows laptop Completely missed I I am waiting for 18 18 Zero you want to so until it Gets here, or I will use this. So sorry. I Had some problem with my previous laptop and I replaced it with this so Why predistortion is needed? Well, in fact power amplifier They are basically non-linear devices and their linearization is very important because they by linearization you achieve better power efficiency and the reduced you you should reduce your The cost of your your wireless infrastructure So I create some demo Which involves lime SDR board and some small Power amplifier it's maximum chip at and I intentionally put down lowered the Nominal power supply it which was 5 volts to 3.3 volts in order to get some distortions to be noticeable on FFT So this this is the spectrum. I use WC DMA waveform for for this demo and As you can see you have some distortions and the three distortions and They are because of this power amplifier and it's low power supply so I will use The distortion method that I have implemented within My hardware I will tell you after how I perform this Let me see Just I need to press Well, I have first to to get the samples from The board I have implemented in FPGA predistortion model So I receive the samples from that FPGA at The beginning at the input of predistorter output of predistorted and also in the receive path. I received three streams of data Three streams of data so with these streams I Do the offline calculation that's pre-formed on Intel CPU core so Predistorter implements all the mathematics inside But I received the streams from that predistorter predistorter and I finally Took the take these streams to get new coefficients To upload in the predistorter, which is basically like a filter. These are the results as you can see There's no distortions on the sides of the spectrum of WC DMA signal But there is some Drawback that there is some disadvantage. I Reduced a little bit power Power of the signal it's reduced for two DB's Someone can notice that that but that is because Characteristic of a signal which is called peak to average power ratio I should implement in predistorter model In in in front of this some crest factor reduction block which would deal with these signals with high spikes so when if if I I used both Predistorter model and Crest factor reduction ball block. I would achieve distortion removal and At the same time I will achieve the same power power level as original signal So in this demo I Get distortions out, but There is more the decrease I needed a little bit of Space on FPGA to implement these these blocks so All this is part of limesuit software Limesuit software is software supporting lines line LMS 7200 chip. I Just implemented some new part of the software Maybe Somebody of you have already been using this line software is for configuration of all line LMS 7200 chip. I just added some some new functions and DPD monitoring window and also I have also changed the FPGA gate were though So that is all for demo I Will stop jamming everything I will shut down this power amplifier and I will continue with the presentation so I so I will speak about DPD model and I will then Talk about some implementation Platform how I realized this and I will give some measured results with real hardware with real Power amplifiers Well For some Well, we usually Check some characteristics when we're speaking about quality of signals we find ACPR and EVM So when ACPR is reduced and EVM is improved we can obtain some complex modulation shams and We can implement higher bandwidths and Multicarious signals, so our solution improves the both characteristics both EVM and ACPR It's important to say this that this Solution is open source. It can be downloaded on github But that open source solution is implemented in fact for some other type of the board not this one one SDR, but one other called QPCI express which is 4x4 MIMO and With this board you can do the LLT stack and at the same time you you should run DPD with LT stack basically architecture is based on of Adaptive digital predistortion model, which is given in the figure You have two main blocks called predistorter and posdistorter You will you can see predistorter is implemented within FPGA in it performs Some mathematics past mathematics for example Every sample with the sample rate 30.72. I do some complex mathematics and Which is some something like some filter and The signal at predistorter output is predistorted in order to linearize the the following power amplifier So this this is some kind of baseband processing after the the samples are Upconverted fed to LMS-7002 chip Upconversion is preformed within this transceiver chip and after The output is connected to the power amplifier Post distorter block is implemented within CPU core within in the software in fact so That predistorter just takes the the race of samples of predistorter input output and The signal in receive path and with this stream of samples It calculates the new coefficients new coefficients are then uploaded into the the FPGA into the gate ver So it's some kind of iterative process We we obtain this That the the process converges within one or two iterations. So it's very fast But the thing which is not the fast in fact is communication I Have implemented that that streams are taken from FPGA chip. I Have some I have some I Can read some FPGA registers and take all these samples and According all that samples I can calculate and upload new coefficients So the model itself is based on Volterra series for modeling nonlinear system So the both predistorter and posistorter has has he has the same Have the same model and they share the same complex coefficients According to these streams we do the training which is based on minimizing Recursively square error So that algorithm just changes the the complex coefficients in order to minimize minimize the difference between the signals and add predistorter output and The received signal so At the end when the process converges we have two two equal signals the identity one X and The second Which is received this figure shows the implementation On line as they are bored we have FPGA LMS LMS 7200 chip LMS 7200 chip preforms up conversion and down conversion and a line as they are Preforms it it Preforms the the the predistorter so predistorter is implemented in a line as they are bored and also There are some other blocks for the data used for capturing the samples This board offers two DDR to memories Memory blocks and I used one of them to to store the samples So I have the option from my software to to to tell the chip to start Template to to start Recording the the array of samples into data to to memory and after that when I find out that that array is finished that I Can read all these samples and Took them into the the the software in software I perform all the calculations and after that I will upload The new coefficients in predistorter model, which is inside the FPGA So I have predistorter block Capture RAM blocks for predistorter input output and the received signal and all these signals are Transferred through USB port to CPU core which performs all these calculations Beside the modifications in game fair also created some kind of GUI, which is dedicated to DPD Signal yp is predistorted to cancel the distortion of power amplifier signal x It's a measure of power amplifier output as you can at the beginning. It's quite distorted after when distorted is Run you we have power amplifier linear linearized and predistorter output is Without distortion also we have Here the error between predistorter and polystorter output at the beginning of the process we have huge error and after when conversion Predistortion is is done. The the error is almost zero is it is almost flat line That error is presented on these figures with before predistortion and after the the predistortion so we have for testing Use several power amplifier first test case is power amplifier maximum integrated max 2612 Saturated power was 19 dbm and for that case we use single carrier WCD may test model one with the RF center frequency of 2.14 gigahertz the second case was power amplifier class J gun hemp and In fact, we we we used two amplifiers which are cascaded First maximum before and which is followed by the class J J and hemp amplifier the saturation power is Saturated power is 40 dbm and for that case we use single carrier WCD may test model one with Frequency set center frequency equal to 1.5 gigahertz and the third test case Is with our power amplifier 10 watt power amplifier we used We used 20 mHz LTS signal with RF center frequency 2.65 So this is the video first maximum iterate power amplifier as you can see before Predistortion is run. We have some distortions that are minus 34 dbc's and the EVM was 60.6 point 58 percent after pretty predistortion is implement is is Reformed We have some improvement in ACPR. Sorry It is minus 51 and we have EVM 3.20 24 so with predistortion we improve both EVM and ACPR Also, what I did not mention is that with predistortion you we can also improve not only power amplifier nonlinearity, but we can also Impact IQ imbalance of the transmitter this model Solves two things power amplifier nonlinearity and the other one is IQ imbalance Especially one which is the dynamically frequency dependent. So with this model we Implemented all this we solved all the both both problems The second test case is the class J GN HEMT amplifier Before without with ADPD ACPR was minus 43 dbc's and with ADPD it was minus 53 dbc's So this amplifier is consisted of two amplifiers Maxim 26 12 and gun amplifier with Saturated power or 40 dbm So with using of this you can make your base stations with higher range You should improve your signals significantly The third case was our power amplifier It operates in frequency range 2.1 up to 2.6 gigahertz it produces 30 dbm out of modulated power and it has two Parts pre-deriver and driver. Pre-deriver is based on GAS HEMT transistor and the other part driver is based on HEMT transistor 10 watt Transistor in which covers the frequency range up to 6 gigahertz We using this power amplifier. We tested two signals 20 megahertz LT and 10 megahertz LT signals and the spectrums are given in following slides So without ADPD at the start we had minus 40 dbc's and after dpd is preformed it goes up to minus 49 So we have 10 dbc's improvement. Also we have improvement in EVM That's the case for 20 megahertz LT signal and the second 10 megahertz LT case We have improvement of 11 dbc's in ACPR and also we have improvement in EVM so Finally to conclude our algorithm has been implemented on LIME SDR boards and we Verified it by measured results So it's capable of cancelling any distortion up to system noise floor and we used three cases First one is the most It's the most easy and Second one is more challenging since there There were two PA stages and the third one is the most challenging Which have two pH stages and PA stages and with much higher RF frequency and higher modulation benefit So that's my presentation. Do we have some questions? Super interesting. I'm not sure if I really understand everything. It's a little above my level of But I can relate it to the audio world and Distortion in the audio amplifiers. I'm wondering it's this was this work with every Every individual amplifier, even if it's the same model they might have different characteristics Yes, the system is adaptive Okay, is it up to it? Learns the characteristics characteristics of every amplifier and in fact tries to to to produce the inverse characteristics, so you you Finally got the the results, which is linearized You you you you pre-distort the the signals to To to make the inverse characteristic code of main power amplifier So and the system is iterative and it's kind of Artificial intelligence, but you can easily learn The the characteristics of any amplifier. Yeah, okay. That's makes total sense I mean just to comment on that it also It says that it's adaptive so it even compensates changes in the characteristics over time Right and of a temperature and so on so it's an ongoing process They are slow process slow changes. They do not happen often and suddenly but they changes during the time so that that characteristics are monitored over time and system very quickly adapts to that changes and creates the inverse characteristic of of amplifier or of the current characteristic of amplifier so You when you're doing the training Continuously, or do you if you need to adapt over time? Do you need to the training process? Yes? Basically, it can be preformed continuously with some period I Can I should not do it always? But after some time Depends on operating conditions on I I can do new training and update the coefficients How often do you need to do this? Like once a second or like once an hour? It depends on Prefer I don't know well, I Created our solution to to be able to Implement new coefficient coefficients for several seconds to two seconds. So it's It depends on real application. What do you have what? What's what's a typical CPU usage? And what's a typical FPGA requirement? well for FPGA requirement, I Need enough space for storing the samples I have Three three streams of samples need To make this mathematics. I Do not have I do not use so much samples. I need 16 kilo kilo samples for example so I need Just to to to make this array and After that to collect them it can be done offline interested in like in the pre-distorted part because like storing yeah, I mean you need space but more on the DSP side which is Real-time I avoid real-time. I avoid real-time, but you have you have you have a block the pre-distorted block, which is on the Yes, it Act like a filter, but training is done offline Training of coefficients you have pre-distorted block. It's kind of kind of filter, which is its own Coefficient and how many taps you have how many DSP blocks In pre-distorted. Yes. Well, I'm using Multipliers embedded multipliers 18 by 18 for example, I use for example 40% of these DSP blocks within a cyclone for chip I think 90 multi multipliers for this so it depends on 90 90 90 Multipliers, so it's not so big hardware. Oh see you Beside this multipliers you need some some memory enough memory to store For example, 200 kilowatts of data and after that you just read the data preform offline Calculations to find new coefficients and upload it again into the pre-distorted only fit on FPGA Yeah, well, that's only if you don't have enough bus bandwidth to stream Yes, I will time right well bus bandwidth I Use for some other things for streaming healthy So I spare that bandwidth. No, I'm saying like in general like if I'm not speaking about lime sdr Okay, okay. Okay. I on our restricts. We have plenty of bend this I in previous versions. I the colleagues provided me that streaming continuous streaming and that influence He had influenced on some other characteristics. They could not achieve bandwidth of LTS signals when this Stream everything so I spared the effort and I Have done it it offline. Just I need to store somewhere Them and after that to collect everything Yeah, I just it okay and what kind of Actual sample rate are you using for transmit and receive because if I remember correctly DPD usually needs at least like three times sampling rate So you know on both on transmit and receive side You see You should have the same frequency if you have transmit but you hear you need receive but doing the same frequency. So For example in this hardware, I am running that 30.72 metasamples per second, but in qpc express board I used a little bit higher frequency two times higher and with this higher frequencies 61.44 I used I achieved to To make predistortion running on LTS signals 20 make sorry, I'm confused so 20 meg LT signal requires 30 72 Megasamples right? No. No. No. No. No. I managed with 61.44 somehow, it's not so It I basically you you sample at 61 61 something mega samples and that's enough for all you you Transmit at 61.40 some 44 and you receive at 61.44 and that's enough for you to Yes, DPD is running or that frequency. I Store the samples after collect samples and do the mathematics upload the coefficients and that's it So that's the frequency which is I think good enough for good enough for 20 okay And what about the CPU usage? What kind of in a CPU usage to you? wrong for Post this torture Just floating point mathematics.  What kind of it's Well, it's offline and the most of time is spent on Getting the samples out from FBGA after I do the mathematics Very very very fast and upload the coefficient also very very very fast So it's not so important. It's relaxed It's like I do not upload new coefficients so often. I do not need that Yeah, but I mean, yeah, okay So it's not so so You mentioned that it takes two seconds is it two seconds to actually do all the mathematics Or is it two seconds including the most is to receive the samples. Okay, I Mean the the the post Distortion computation on the CPU that's like a low priority background tasks. So I think it doesn't really matter so much. I mean No Of course, it should you should be done as background task If you only need to like redo the training like every minute or so or longer, it's okay It doesn't matter if it I mean you can run that as the lowest priority on the on your CPU. It doesn't matter Yes, yes, of course, you don't have to run on CPU with high performance Just I need the floating point of mathematics within that CPU and everything would be okay One question I had though is that because you're using the Eric's channel to receive what you transmitted Uh-huh, what then all this your LTE base station works if it doesn't have Eric's anymore Base station, so I this is only for demo. Yeah, of course What solution do you recommend? Well qpc express boards? So in the receive part one receive part is dedicated to dpd and the other would be dedicated for For example for performing LT. I have implemented on some other boards But can they be tuned to different frequency the two the two erics chain? On different frequency you get to LMS 7002 chips. Oh, you have two different LMS chips two different LMS chips on It's not using this the dual channel of the LMS. Yes Yes, that's the trick this one is only for a demonstration and It has one chip and I cannot run LT at the same time running DPD you can probably do tdd mode Yes, of course Which is also Right, we're using td Tdd is very popular. Yeah, China is all tdd India is all tdd. I mean How does the because you said that the So this guy this algorithm can also compensate for the like imperfection of the IQ imbalance, for instance You transmit. Yes, but how does the IQ imbalance of your erics influence because you're gonna Your algorithm is gonna try to compensate for something that isn't really on the Yes, good question I cover our spot at the same frequency In perfection, so receive pot in that DPD the receive we have one real receive pot in the in the other chip so we can Influence only to transmitter pot, okay any more questions No, okay. Thank you


Welcome everyone to PC314 Media and Technology. Let's take a moment to pray and then we get started. Could somebody please pray and we'll start. That's great. Dear Heavenly Father, I come to you under the name of Jesus. I thank you for this day. I thank you for the skills and the talent that we have placed in front of us. We have placed in us Lord and God, I pray for the force that we are learning to help us to understand everything that pastor is teaching us so that we can use it wherever we go for the expansion of your kingdom Jesus. I bless all my classmates. We thank you for Pastor Ashish and God we ask for good welfare connection throughout the session. May your name be glorified. May your name be lifted high. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you. All right. Just to, last week we did not have class. So just very quickly to recap what we had shared in our very first day of classes. We went through some introduction about just being aware of current trends digitally, what's happening around the world. And of course, we have to stay updated in what's happening. The essence of it is that more and more people are connected online using digital tools. And so if this is actually a great opportunity for us to reach people. At the same time, we must be aware how different generations are relating to technology and also being aware that Gen Z, Gen Alpha, basically those who today would be in their teens and twenties, are a generation, they call them as digital natives. They were born with all of this technology. Around then they grew up with that technology. And so how all of that has impacted their lives. We are very aware of it so we can address those needs as we minister to them. Then we went through lessons, chapters two and three. Very quickly we mentioned that we should be open to using contemporary methods in Christian ministry. That's not something we should be averse towards or run away from. See how we can leverage technology in ways that we can be relevant to people, the ways we can be, it'll help us reach people, it'll help us be very responsive to people. And of course we have to be respectful as people reach out to us. It actually helps us be respectful. That means we can provide information without forcing it on them. Letting people explore at their convenience in a way that they would like to explore and explore the Christian thing. And we also looked at some guidelines just to keep this in mind that as we use contemporary methods, tools, technologies, media, et cetera, some things we must not forget while we are being relevant. We do not compromise in the other message. Our message is still the message of Jesus Christ. It's about the cross and everything the Bible teaches. Our motives must be pure. Our motives must not, for instance, be competing with other people. How is that person using technology? How is that church? Let me try to be better than them. I'll keep your motive pure. You're here to glorify God. You're here to reach people. That motivation is good. We must be blameless in our conduct. So as we are becoming relevant using methods and techniques or technology, our conduct must be beyond reproach. People should not find fault with us in the process. We shouldn't lose sight of godliness and integrity and those kinds of, the core values and principles of the teaching of God's Word. And also we must look for lasting truth. We shouldn't just, our goal is not just to entertain or create some excitement. Our goal is life transformation, bringing people to the Lord, helping people encounter God. Yes, we're going to use contemporary methods and we're going to use tools, media and technology, all of that. But what is our goal, lasting fruit? So that we must not. So having given that background today and I've shared these notes, we're going to talk about, hopefully we'll cover at least three more, three areas. Think about it on how things used to be and how things, the methods in these areas are changing. One is about the ministry of God's Word, about the place of worship and about worship itself. So three things we will try to cover today. And if you don't, we can continue it next week. So when you think about, and I would like to have at the end of each of these chapters, we'll have a little time of discussion.  So we can kind of share ideas and thoughts, right? So we'll do a little bit of discussion and see. So in how the Word of God is ministered, typically in a church service or in other settings, when the way we are ministering God's Word has changed, has changed. One very obvious noticeable thing is in the length of sermons, right? In the early days of the Reformation, we're going back into the 1500s, 1600s, the Puritan movement. This was just right after Martin Luther. Those times sermons were one to three hours long. Can you imagine sitting and listening to somebody, but it was like, hey, this is the Bible. It's like people are getting access to the Word. And so there was no, there's not necessarily some sort of a time limit.  They just spoke, explaining the Word of God.  You keep preaching and God is working. And that's it. It could go for more than an hour, sometimes hours when God is moving. Then, you know, we, of course, culturally think we are under change. People wanted to dedicate a certain amount of time in congregational worship.  And nowadays, you know, generally, I'm not saying every church is like this, but generally a sermon may last for 30 minutes, 45 minutes. And then some other churches, sermons may be very quick, 15 to 20 minutes, finished. The whole service may last one hour. Yeah, it's like almost, you know, very, very fast. People come in, 20 minutes of worship, maybe 30 minutes or 20, 30 minutes sermon, 10 minutes in this language, things over, finished. One hour services over, people are in and out. So everything has changed, right? Sermon itself is 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes, you know. Then in the way the message is being preached, things have changed. Early days, it was worse by worse, expository, exposition of a text. So you take a text and you preach and explain every, you know, every aspect of what's in that text. And you start with biblical truths and then you explain it to the people and how they should apply it in their lives. Now the trend has changed. We start with something people are experiencing, facing or feeling. We start with their need and then we're bringing it back to the Bible. So I'm not saying every sermon is like this, but the general trend is like, okay, you first get their attention. You start talking about things that they can relate to and then you try to bring that to the Bible. So I'm not saying that's the right thing to do, but I'm just saying, you know, this is what we're seeing these days. And also we see that many sermons are very narrative, sometimes lots of illustrations, sometimes even in churches or services, you'll have conversational types of, you know, like people sit and have a conversation and that becomes part of a similar, like a dialogue sermons. So so many different things are happening. And then, you know, of course, a lot of sermons are using drama or visual aids, slides, short videos, all those kinds of things. So, you know, I'm not saying everything is good or everything is bad, but this is what we're seeing, how people are communicating God's word in a typical church service setting. And there's, you know, so many contemporary ways in which people communicate things, also using contemporary examples. And I just put two videos, linked to two videos, you probably will watch one of them. You can find many, many things. But I think this one is summoned by Jensen Franklin. He's using pizza and a pizza box as an example. It's like how Jesus in his day would talk about farming, sheep, coins, oil jar, all those kind of things. Bringing home a message. I think, you know, just using a simple pizza and a pizza box to bring a message or just to help people, the audience understand. It's quite interesting. So it's about three or four messages. Well, let's just, let's listen to this. There's so many that you'd find online. I just, you know, let me just pause here and let me, let's just look at it. Just to, you know, this is an example of how, and I'm not promoting any preacher here. I'm just using this as illustration. So let's just give me a minute. Oops. Okay. Let me share my screen and the audio hope it comes through. Just as an example, right? Not specifically promoting any preacher or anything. Just, okay. I hope you can listen to my audio. Pizza guy showing up at your hotel room tonight. And he's got your pizza, but he doesn't have a box. He's just got it in his hand. And the cheese is oozing down all over his clothes. And it's falling all over the floor. And you don't know where that hand has been. You don't know what he's been doing with that. Come on, somebody. And, and can you imagine, you know, the first question you would ask him if he was standing there saying, hi, did you order this pepperoni pizza? The first question you would ask is where is the box? Because I was expecting the product to come in a vessel. I was expecting the product to come in a box. Well, what I want you to understand is this box is only worth 39 cents. It's not very valuable. It's just, but it takes on a tremendous importance and value because of what is placed in it. I want you to understand, listen to me. The box does not give value to the product. It's the product that gives value to the box. We're just the vessel and Christ is in us and we shouldn't get puffed up when God starts using us. We're just the 39 cent box. What I'm preaching to you is you don't have to be great. You don't have to be super good looking and look like a movie star. You don't have to be super talented, but you do have to be clean and you have to be empty. And if you'll just be clean and be empty, God says if you'll give me a vessel, I'll give you a miracle. I'll give you my oil. I'll give you my purpose. I'll give you my wheel for your life. Okay. So that was just, oops, I mean, I was, yeah, I wanted to say it. So, you know, what do you think about that illustration? I think it's too much for an illustration person. Too much? Too much for a, so many illustrations. So many illustrations. Okay. Any other thoughts? I think it helps us to understand better, get the grab the message easily for the people. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that, you know, he's using an example that is relevant to his audience because it's in North America. So pizza, pizza in a box, cheese, pepperoni pizza. Yeah. They're all very aware of it. They probably, you know, have pizza every week or every other week probably. So it's something that his audience can really understand. And he brings home a very simple point, you know, that we are the pizza box, we are vessels and, you know, God uses us to deliver things. So just a simple example, and that's relevant to his audience. And he's picking something that's from, you know, our time. Just like how Jesus in his day used all kinds of examples from his style of people that they could relate to. He's picking an example and he brings it out. So I think it's, you know, and like this, you know, there's so many, so many examples that you'll find online. And the nice thing about these examples, these things stick in our minds, right? You can always, oh, pizza and pizza box. You remember that. And then you connect it back to, okay, what was the point he mentioned? So it kind of helps make the point stick in our minds. So it does help. Like that, you know, we can see that the kinds of things people are doing, illustrations as, you know, is contemporary. However, you'll also find some examples that, you know, that go way off. You know, I've seen one example, some examples where it just goes off where the attention shifts to the example itself. Exam, you know, for instance, in one situation I saw, you know, people playing ping pong or Tableton is on, you know, Sunday sermon, the sermon there, they have a Tableton table on the stage and they're playing, going back and forth. And that's an illustration for that sermon. In some cases, you know, you know, the pastor will come riding on a bike on the stage. It's kind of, in some cases, it just pushes things a little way too much, maybe. So the point is that the attention has shifted to, oh, what bike was he riding and all that stuff, you know, and that they forget the whole sermon itself. And so we have to be a little careful. The other things we're seeing in preaching is, you know, the focus also, you know, it's also like, in the preaching, the messages have been kind of categorized in how you're preaching. You know, we say, okay, gospel crusade, we preach, the focus is to reach the lost. In church services, mainly we talk about discipleship, we talk about equipping the believer. So there's more solid Bible teaching type of messages. And then there was a trend of seeker sensitive services. So, and this was very popular in the 80s, 90s, 2000s when churches were saying, okay, we'll be seeker sensitive. So it was almost like the Sunday service was like a presentation that would attract people who were speaking or trying to attract people who were just exploring the Christian faith. So the service, the message was very seeker sensitive kind of type of message. Now, I, you know, so there has been a lot of questioning about, and necessarily I think it was a good thing to question this whole thing about seeker sensitive preaching which took place. I think the intent was good, meaning, okay, here are people who are looking for or exploring the Christian faith. So let's try to get them in every Sunday to church, make them want to come back, give them, you know, messages that they can relate to type of thing. But then what happened in the long term was you're preaching Sunday after Sunday. If you're preaching just simple, you know, kind of messages, people who have come to faith, they're not able to grow.  But Sunday after Sunday, they're listening to these seeker sensitive type of messages. They're not growing spiritually, they're stagnating. And that came out in a study, I think the study was put out early 2000, I think around 2003. Willow Creek Church in the city in Illinois. They were among the leading churches who started out the seeker sensitive services and movement. But after almost 30 years of doing that, they 20 plus, almost 30 years of doing seeker sensitive services, they did an assessment of the congregation. And they found out that the spiritual formation, the spiritual development of the people was something they lacked.  So that was a drawback. And the nice thing was they did that study.  And so then they had to make course correction and start discipling believers and so on. So that was a drawback of this, this whole type of preaching, preaching messages that were very light and attracting people, but not developing people or growing people. Other delivery styles that we're seeing these days, traditionally we should preach from a pulpit, like a wooden pulpit, a big wooden pulpit.  And nowadays, you know, sometimes you see people pulpit, sometimes you don't see pulpit. There are various ways in which the preacher engages the audience by getting them to speak back or participate in the service itself. For good or worse, better or for worse, I don't know, but the attire of preachers has also changed. You know, there were times when people were something that was more formal and now it's gone to places where preachers are wearing, you know, all kinds of things. And the attire is often so. But that's good or bad. I don't know. And so there's also the change in the physical place of preaching. We'll talk about it in the next chapter.  In the length of the message and how the message is being presented, how the truth is being presented to people and there are kinds of illustrations being used in how the preacher or the pastor, the preacher himself is presenting, coming before the people. All these changes are taking place and it's happening everywhere. It's all over the world in the Christian world, these changes thing. So I want us to just take a little bit of time to discuss, you know, what are your thoughts and what do you feel is good and what do you feel is like, hey, it's not good and we should avoid those kinds of pitfalls. I just want to open for discussion so that we can exchange our thoughts and so on. Okay. All right. So I see a question there from John Paul. Could you share some examples of Seeker-sensitive services, examples of topics? Now, I haven't listened to too much of these Seeker-sensitive services. I'm only read about it because I think the pioneering church in this was Willow Creek Church led by Pastor Bill Heibles. This was back, like I think from starting in the 70s on. But, and I've never attended one, you know, I've not gone to one of the services to attend it myself, but certainly by reading, the whole service was geared towards those who are very, this explore the Christian faith. So it would be a short-term worship, but more of a presentation type of worship, maybe good singing by the choir and so on. The messages would be on themes and topics that these people could relate to. Now, some of the bad examples I've heard of in this whole thing was, you know, Pastor's creatures using segments of, you know, the latest movie, the latest, or maybe even the latest newest book, not necessarily by Christian Autumn, just generally, you know, any movie that's, you know, or any, or even a song that would be, you know, trending at that time, using segments of that as a way to start up the message, as a way to get the attention of the audience and from there trying to present something that is biblical scriptural, right? Or even using these segments of movie segments in their messages or sometimes using immediate needs of the people, you know, what are they going through, you know, maybe trauma or so basically taking the felt needs, but using that as a topic and not necessarily going into some sort of Bible study, but just pointing them, you know, to Jesus. So you could start off with something that's happening in the culture, whether it's entertainment, music, movies. So you could start off with something that's going on with social, society, social matters. You could start off with something that are the felt needs of the people. They're going through, you know, whatever felt needs and then bring in, just point them to Jesus, right? Or point them to one or two scriptures in the word of God. So that way you're addressing something that they can relate to immediately as they come into service and then you're pointing them to one or two scripture. That would be, you know, kind of how they would approach this. The good side, I mean, so I will allow us to discuss that. So what do you think about, so I hope I answered your question, John, that's giving you the answer. So I just want us to discuss here in the preaching and the ministry of the word, you know, we just tried to point out several different changes that are taking place in the contemporary church. So we're trying to use contemporary methods. We're trying to be relevant. We're trying to be contemporary. And so all these changes are being made globally. We're seeing it everywhere. What are the pros and cons, you know, good and the bad? And what are some things we should be very careful about in all of these changes? I just like us to discuss, like, love to hear your thoughts. So feel free to share, please. Collins, please go. So I think the... John, okay. Yeah. So I think the usage of illustrations, the purpose of having pulpit or not pulpit, I think that is quite relatable to people at this time and age, but the thing is when it shifts away the attention of people to the word and when it reaches a point that, for example, one of the things that we discussed regarding the attire of the preacher and a lot of discussion goes on what kind of brand he is using, what costly it is, how costly it is and so on. So that actually diverts people from listening to the truth of the word of God, I believe. Okay, good. Collins, do you want to share something? Yes, Pastor. I think just literally we are here just to avoid the mistakes that many preachers have, especially those who come to minister when they are not trained, properly trained, or they not attend the right university or the right college. But again, I would think that there are three things, two things a person should look at. One should be, you should always be true to the word of God. You should always have your stick here to remain true to the word of God. Number two would be understand your audience. There might be an example that does not work where I stay, but when it can work where we should avoid cut and paste, because if you only copy and paste whatever you see, it might be offensive to some other people. Lastly, but not least, you should always never take anything for granted. We must prepare. We must prepare and listen to the Holy Spirit as we prepare to meet those people. I would like to put a full stop there, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Good, good. Good points. Good points. Anyone else as what are the pros and cons, what are some of the things we should be careful of? Go ahead, Divya. Thank you, Besta. I think with basically with pastors trying to reach out to a large number of people, they tend to mostly, I think, focus on the seeker sensitive kind of kind of an approach. Nothing wrong, but as more people are reached out, as you were rightly saying, like the spiritual growth of those who are already committed, already committed believers, it is actually stunted. Yeah, we have experience being part of the church as churches. So I wouldn't say reaching out to a large number of people is a bad thing. It is a good thing. But at the same time, the spiritual growth of people are challenged. Also, you feel like a drop in the sea. You don't really have a kind of a fellowship because maybe the crowd is changing. The crowd is moving. So maybe you're seeing a different set of people all the time. So that's another one of the negative aspects of trying to reach out to a large number of people. And also what I could say is the attention sometimes is much on the person who is speaking, you know, the pastor who is speaking about his life and we had like situations where they would even show their family, you know, pics of their homes and their yard and all that. So I feel it does. I'm not sure where the focus is at that kind of in those situations. Yeah, and also we have seen kind of the church becomes very in those scenarios. There will be life groups, of course, where you get to connect, but it becomes very especially if it is an international kind of diverse kind of a church. It becomes like a particular nationality or a particular community just come together into a life group that may or may not help for the spiritual growth of each one. So these are some, you know, advantages that we have observed. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, even yeah, I think there is a shift of focus that happens when more people are, you know, getting into and the concerns of people, but especially not in churches, the older generation, the elderly, people who have the wisdom and the, you know, they have the experience, they are less heard. So even if the, they try to, you know, do a kind of try to support in ways of prayer and, you know, giving godly counsel, they might not be heard of much. So what happens in the end, it has caused disintegration of the church slowly like one life group, maybe the elderly people, the life group that they were having, they can completely, you know, stop coming to the church. And it causes the disintegration of the church because people are looking for places where they can grow.  So yeah, yeah, that's something that we have observed. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing. Thank you. Anyone else? What are the pros and cons with these changes that we are seeing in the ministry of the word? You know, so many, so many, I think there's so many, it impacts people in so many ways. Any other thoughts? I would love to talk about the pros. I haven't even, instead of these changes looking back in my place, I haven't seen any change. Still, there are preachers, even though when the pastor says 45 minutes, they go one end of ours and we are all just wondering when the preacher is going to end this. And I feel this length of sermon has changed over time. It's actually a good thing. Because that, like, Sundays or the days, people get dressed so you can't keep preaching for two hours, two hours. And they feel, and the people, they feel like if the pastor says 40 minutes, I should preach one hour. That shows I'm a better preacher. That's the mindset of the people of some people over there. And the format of teaching hasn't changed in some places yet. They still don't have any illustrations. And even last time when I went back, I see the pastors gossiping about others on the pulpit and all this. So I wish they could have little change in the format. It could have some specific orders, specific topic, not just coming and speaking something random. And an illustration actually helps. I wish it happens where it's not happening. Because growing up as a young girl in Christ, I look for illustrations whenever I preach a preach. Even that helps me better growing up. Some of the illustration keeps staying in my mind because I've seen it. Something about this sheen illustration, I think it actually helps. Even when you're teaching about illustration, I remember various illustrations in my mind what I already saw. And even pulpit, it's still some places, they still prefer it. Even pulpit should be there. And when I grew up, there are times when I unfortunately went and stood near the pulpit and it becomes a big sin. Only the pastor has to stand there. And I think even these things should be changed. It's not about the pulpit. It's not about that it's about the message they preach. So I think even that's a good change that we have brought. It's okay if a pulpit is there, if a pulpit is not there, it doesn't matter. It's not about the pulpit anymore. And attires of features, various churches, it's always a controversy. The attires, especially when it comes to women, it becomes very, very heavy. Like everything is being noticed whether they are putting the dupatta over them or not, whether they're covering their heads or not. All this becomes very important. And to an extent, even now when people start doing it, then it becomes what's the price of their salary? Everything comes into focus. I think it's all a good change that we have brought. All this doesn't matter. It's about the message that we preach and I think people should start realizing it. Some changes are good, but the main thing should not be changed. I don't think people holding on to the pulpit, holding on to the attire is going to bring any good spiritual changes in their life. It's just the tradition that they keep following and they feel something holy about it, which obviously I don't prefer. When a pulpit becomes holy, when an attire becomes holy, I think that's where the mistakes of the wrong teachings come from. It's not about the pulpit. There are pastors who carry their pulpit because they feel like something anointing. They don't trust in the anointing that God has given them. So I think some of these changes are good that gives good people a wider perspective. Like, oh, it's not about the pulpit, it's not about the church, it's not about the timings or anything, but it's about the word. So from my side, I've seen this approach as you preach. Thank you for sharing. Very interesting. We had Divya's perspective being in a contemporary church and what has the impact of a lot of emphasis on Sikha sensitive, etc. And then we have Divya's perspective being in a traditional church, how change is very urgently needed. So you've got both ends that we share. That's very interesting. Let's look at John's comment there. As the attention span of people has reduced due to the invasion of media, I think it's good to have 30 to 40 minutes duration for the word. Yeah, I think being sensitive to the attention span, how much of attention of the people that we can keep, 30, 40 minutes is reasonable. It's good. We have to be mindful of that. I think so let's try to summarize this. So the essence of what we want to take away is change is good. If it is serving the purpose of God, advancing God's kingdom, bringing God's word in a way that's relevant and meaningful to the people we administering. And I think the essence of what's being shared is we need to stay true to the word of God. Bring the word of God in a way that's relevant to the audience. But focus on, you know, don't lose sight of while we want to reach new people. We also have to focus on the spiritual growth of people and the community and all those things that need to be built. The spiritual needs of the people must be addressed from the word of God in a very healthy way. So we have to do that. And while we make changes, we must not bring attention to ourselves. So it shouldn't be about, you know, what fancy clothes I'm wearing or what I'm wearing. In fact, if we can be there on, you know, as preaching the word, when you're preaching the word, be there in such a way that people don't want to spend it, pay attention to what you're wearing. It's like, yeah, okay, it's all very simple. Just listen to the word. That's a good thing, I think, and the focus becomes on, okay, this is God's word. Focus on encountering God, encountering His presence, fellowshiping with each other. You know, keep the main things as the main thing. I think that's something we should keep the focus on. And using illustrations, like you said, as long as you're getting the point across, sure, it's very helpful. For people to remember, a practical application. How do you apply the word in that context, in that place, you know, like the columns were saying it will be different in different parts of the world. But how are people in that place going to apply it relevant to them? Don't copy paste, because something in one part of the world may not be relevant in another part of the world. So we have to be very careful. All right. So let's, we'll pause here. Thank you for sharing. I appreciate each month sharing your thoughts. We'll go for a break. When we come back, there are two more things we'll talk about. One is the change of the place and how the congregation is assembling. Again, very interesting to see how that has changed, how that has evolved. And then we will talk about worship, how worship has changed, you know, from the days of the early church, or we could even say from the days of the Bible, Bible times to where worship is today, it's such a huge change. And we have to ask, you know, is the change good or not? And what are some of the things we have to be careful of? So we'll discuss those two things after we come back. So let's be back in about 15 minutes, 11 o'clock, and we'll pick up on those two topics. Thank you.


Hey guys, this is Matt Beck from freesaloneducation.com here with American Salon magazine. Thank you to this guy This is Gordon Miller. So we're at the premier beauty show in Orlando, Florida. Yep Really excited. I love sitting here. I love talking to hairdressers now. You are not a hairdresser, correct?  So thank you. Let's talk about You're with American Salon. I am you just got a promotion. I am sure my titles publisher and vice president of integrated media So I'm still getting used to it. Yeah, what does that mean? That means that I'm a new kind of publisher Okay, so that's that's that's the fun part for me Like you said, I've been in the industry for a long time and I kind of came up in education I have a business degree. I'm not a hairdresser, right? But I like when I was 22 I got a part-time job in a beauty school Okay, didn't plan to stay it was a temporary didn't even tell mom and dad You know, it was like I'm just I didn't know what I was gonna do with my life And I like fell in love with the beauty industry. I fell in love with the people and It's been 38 years, you know grew up in education that kind of informed me I knew how powerful it was and so I had a career in educational publishing Okay, did my own consulting thing for a while and digital and social when I kind of learned it had this opportunity to do Consulting with a couple of the trade magazines finally American They invited me to stay on and and help develop a strategy for social and digital media for publishing Which is a changing world right now, right? And and recently they said you want to be publisher at first I wasn't so sure because publishers are traditionally on the sales and marketing side of the business right I've had a lot of my career has been involved in that but My current passion is content and just this is content, right? Right. I love you because you're a great content producer and you've done a lot of interviews with great hairdressers for us And so I'm honored to be sitting with you But as a publisher my passion and my focus and my everyday life is all about content and making us Just an amazing platform for hairdressers to engage and learn and be inspired from and so that's my life Well, I know and me and you are obviously embracing the thing I love about what American songs doing you right now is you're embracing the new Kind of I don't know if it's culture or what it is, but it is young people and older people creating content Constantly and I like I was just had an interview this morning and we were talking about the 2018 Collection that one of the companies is coming out with which is great But I said I'm from the world now where I think of something today I put it out tomorrow, right, you know because the everything's evolving so quickly. So what do you think? I love the the path that American salon is taking right now So tell me about your vision for what you want media to be like for through American salon and for hairdressers was it starts with, you know 365 days 24-7 because I was just We just did a panel with some social media rock stars. We're doing one tomorrow with you We had Jenny Streebe and Philip ring and and Silas Ricardo Santiago and and we Phil said, you know, he's like, I'm up at five o'clock in the morning online Learning and he's like, that's just who I am Yeah, and the idea that anybody can find anything learn anything engage with other people globally In the moment and there's no limits. Yeah, and then we can embrace those platforms and bring them to hairdressers It's life-changing for many people and it's a game-changer for publishers So for me, it's like when we think about content because that's what we do, you know the magazine It's this is old-school content, but but I'm an old-school guy So I still appreciate it. We know people of all ages still appreciate their print Yeah, appreciate that this is also in an app, but we're gonna be with Sam via in a little bit You're gonna interview Sam via which is really cool, right? Yeah And then we're gonna do one of my editors Andrea is going to do something called word play a new column in American Salon they're gonna do it on video so that when the magazine comes out in August We'll also see Sam talking about it. So my job is to extend content right to make it fit Everybody's need wherever they want it whenever they want it and be creative in doing it and work with people like you our own Editorial team and all the people we know and love in this industry Okay, so so the word play thing is going to be it's it so it gets people involved in every aspect or every format Basically word what word plays an example of something we're doing with Sam Which is really a column in the magazine okay magazine shows up in print it shows up as an app It shows up as a website book and it shows up an article form But the integrated part me being integrated media is now I'm integrating a print article with digital Now with a video component rather than just getting on the phone and doing the interview old school Right now We're gonna let people watch who want to watch that versus maybe read it or both awesome That's really cool. So ever since you you joined American son I know that you made changes to the website you've done quite a bit of things with like daily blogs and different things So tell me about some of that. What's happening day-to-day? with American son Well again 24-7. I feel like we know 24-7. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah content You know creation is a kind of a never-ending task. I have a team. We're so passionate about it. You know We do get up and and sometimes check Instagram while we're still in bed and we're checking the American salon Instagram We hit 450,000 followers yesterday. That's awesome. And we've grown it from 5,000 14 months ago and we did it organically and by just busting our butts and so it's just a lot It's just doing it doing it doing it following the best practices and being authentic being real knowing our audience You know again, you're so good at it You know the you produce content and we share some of your content, right? That's a big part of our job is Identifying and sharing content that we know our audience will engage in Promoting the people we know that are are doing great stuff so that the audience has access to them You know, it's not all about us It's about the audience and it's about providing value and Ultimately connecting them back to our advertiser partners who are also creating great content creating great products tools It's so it's a gigantic job that we are constantly fine-tuning to be able to best serve everybody And you put together a great team and I think a lot of you guys out there that You know, you're looking to grow your social media and all of that Yeah, it's it's great to connect with companies like American sign Like you should be hashtagging American sign and everything that you do because the only way that you are going to be Kind of it's all about building relationships Which we talk about a lot. Yeah build that relationship with a company Let them know that you're doing great content and you're creating stuff You can't just put stuff out there has to have a connection point in there somewhere totally so And that's where I found it I Tag American salon and a lot of the stuff that I do and it gets passed along and then you get Followers from that and it's a great relationship To build there so any of you guys out there that are trying to build that Definitely use American salon hashtag in that way, um, please please so the other a couple other things because I you are You're not just the publisher guy at American salon like you We have conversations on the phone I want to talk about you've been a part of this industry who's talked about it since 22 Is that when I was 22 since 1978? Okay boy so you so when you start in the beauty school and then you worked for other Trade companies. Yeah, and you started doing your consulting. Yeah, so tell me What you think the most important thing is because I think a lot of people just think they go out They work hard and it's just gonna happen Yeah, I know you've built your career on relationships So let's talk about that a little bit because you have more like you do have a lot of connections And you've built that through you know through what how did that happen? Wow So it goes back To my first really mentor and I think mentorship is so important and it's part of the answer to the question Yeah, so the most important mentor in my professional life was Leo Passage Founder pivot point. I call him my business dad. I He passed away a few years ago now as a picture on my desk when I don't know what to do I think what would Leo do? because I believed I learned from him so much and I believed in so much of the things that he believed in that made great Careers for so many people okay beginning with networking, you know He was a master networker and he dragged me along for ten years And I was a part of that with him and he always encouraged me to do more of it And he would send me places when he couldn't go and encourage me to do that And and so I was a kind of a power networker from early on but most important on the mentorship side was he introduced Me to all these really successful people, you know rock stars, you know Rock stars salon owners stylists platformers educators who who Taught me in my conversation. So I'm always like how did you succeed the answer was almost always the same networking? Yeah by Introducing yourself don't be afraid to put yourself out there Don't be afraid to ask questions just because somebody's around just because it's Robert Cromings Don't be afraid to walk up and say hey Robert. I'm Gordon. We've never met before I'm a fan and trust me Robert's gonna give you a hug at minimum Answer any question you probably ask them well And that's I think that was the hard part for me because you look at those people that are out there They're on stage. They're doing they're on YouTube. They're what doing whatever and but you got to realize that they We all start the exact same way We all started in beauty school nervous and confused Yep, and and some people study hard and work hard every day to grow Yeah, and then you know and so don't be nervous to you to jump on to ask questions from people Because everybody if they're in this show floor if they're something they're whole goals to teach yep Yeah, and the other side of that is is Being in a big show, you know is to show up, you know I mean it's to show up You got to show up and do the work and that was Leo was passionate about that He'd tell all of us you got to show up and do the work. I was with him for 11 years I was am a workaholic, but the entire pivot point team back in the day We would we would bleed for him, you know and and because we believe not only in him But he just he taught us the value of showing up and you chose the value of hard work and and what we got back from it Was just was amazing. It was it's fulfillment, you know, it's growth. It's connections And if you do it, all right, you know, you just developed this passion. Yeah, and that's where my passion I think comes from is from my time with him. Yeah, I mean there's not there's not a better family than the pivot point family I actually I have a meeting with them tomorrow that I'm floored about and you know, and that's that's what it's all about It's all about the connections So tell me if there's anything you want to pass along that's coming up or anything neat going on with you Besides the promotion besides the the great content all that stuff. What what would you say? well, I mean the platforms are expanding, you know, so The short version of the bigger social media conversation is you know, and I think you're at the forefront of this In the industry it's going to be all video all the time. Yeah, and so we our plan for 2017 is to blow up video in a really big way. Yeah, both in sharing great content because we're finding more and more great content Producers and we're encouraging other people to come to produce great content. We're producing great stuff Pete win our videographers an amazing guy Helps us puts artist stories one of our series together. We have a great YouTube channel Americans along stories So I think you can find a lot of what we're doing online, obviously We show up at all the events, you know, we're doing two classes here. We'll be teaching at Beacon Next weekend. This may not even be out yet, but the American Board of Certified Hair Colorist. We're doing a keynote there Next 12 months everywhere and anywhere we can get to we'll be doing it and we're starting a series of Instagram pop-up panels around the country where we'll just do a short announcement. We're in New York We're gonna get three or four great Instagrammers together do a pop-up free to our hairdresser friends With short notice and we're gonna be doing those at some of the leading academies around the country Oh, that's cool. That's really cool. Yeah, and so the key thing that I definitely heard you say is great content And I think a lot of you guys out there that are looking to maybe try to build your brands or do whatever It is every time I make a video I look at what I want to watch this and would it bring value to me Yeah, and I think that's something that American Slime definitely looks at because when you watch the content It's all about the hairdresser, you know about growing the hairdresser and let me say one last thing about that You know that's again so powerful that I learned a long time ago And it's been reinforced time and time and time again as I have traveled for all these years is that It's usually like one kind of almost magical thing that somebody bumps into an idea that they hear at a show More often than not today in a video in a Facebook post in an Instagram post that one little spark You know that set you on fire that can transform a life, you know And I'm big about asking people the stories behind their lives Especially some of the stars and there's almost always there's like this moment. Yeah, I met this person I heard these words and that's the power of all the stuff we're talking about and the more you engage in it The more chance you have to find that for some people maybe it's a needle in a haystack But if you don't jump in the haystack, you never gonna find it exactly so true. All right, great Well, let's see so follow American salon everything American salon everything America's on Facebook snapchat YouTube Instagram is American Underscore so long. I mean, I'm sure you guys are following obviously Yep, you never know and use that hashtag and tag American son and everything and also free son education because it's all about if you're Putting out good content. We want to know about it and want to share it with everybody else and thank you Thank you for the professional beauty industry for supporting American salon and to you Matt Beck for doing this with us and being a premiere I'm doing a whole lot of interviews and thank you for having more with you. Yes, awesome Thank you guys so much for watching and we'll see you guys on the next video. Thanks. Thanks Gordon. Thanks