For a technical director in a church like ours, weekends usually start around Wednesday w/ stage setups and rehearsals with the worship teams followed by Thursday production meetings with music leaders and pastors. Fridays are often spent making final adjustments with line assignments, lighting, video clips, repairs, and following up w/ volunteers. This past weekend was a little different. It was our “family celebration” weekend which included children on risers, a humorous video clip, extra microphones & musicians, posters, some creative choreography with the kids, and communion. The pastor spent the past several weeks praying and developing a message about, well …Prayer. And invited 2 guests to be interviewed at the end.
“it’s just hard to focus”. He was right.
But this past weekend was different in another way. Right before rehearsals on Wednesday we received a call from our good friend and colleague that her 6-year-old grandson was in a car accident and was life-flighted to the children’s hospital in Cleveland. The next morning, before production meeting we received word that little Christopher had died. Just like that, a member of our worship team was in the middle of a tragic and unforeseen situation. Her daughter Kate and Kate’s husband, who we all knew very well, had just lost their precious son. We were stunned. I walked around my office in a bit of a haze – didn’t quite know what to think or say. My good friend in the office next to me said several times “it’s just hard to focus”. He was right. There was little detail, other than a couple of txt message updates. It was very sad and a bit surreal.
As the day went on it seemed like we started re-evaluating the weekend service. The big celebration songs, the intricate guitar solos, the humor, the kids. It felt like we maybe started second guessing things that we planned and prayed and sought God’s guidance for. Was it all still appropriate considering the circumstances?
Taking the lead from Pastor Reg who was the teaching pastor that weekend, the decision was made to continue as planned with only one song modification. We notified the teams on Friday and everyone rallied. Our bass player even brought in a stand up bass to bow on a couple of the songs as a special contribution.
In his message Pastor Reg talked about how (when he heard the news) “it took the wind out of his sails”. So he prayed and in a moment of clarity God essentially said “this may have caught you by surprise, but it didn’t me” “Do you trust me?” The entire Bible talks about a God who is Sovereign. During the services Pastor Reg referred to the loss of young Christopher several times, the songs seemed to flow and fit remarkably well, the kids on the stage helped, often thru tears, experess to the family and those in attendance that we were in this together. Pastor Reg discussed how and why we pray anyway. And the interview at the end? It just happend to be with a church couple who lost their 6-year-old son a few years ago to a brain tumor. They talked about their journey and the value of prayer. You see God had just the right things arranged for this weekend – even long before the events of Wednesday took everyone by surprise.
That afternoon I had the privilege of helping with the funeral service following the 2nd service. One of my team members offered to come back and handle presentation and I managed audio. 3 of our worship team provided some music. and I got to help prep visuals for the family on Saturday.
As technical artists we too are sometimes called to serve and create on the fly. One reward is that, from behind the scenes, we witness God at work in ways that not everyone gets to see. Serving in ministry is never about what God can get from us or somehow impressing God with our talents, passions, or dedication. I believe it’s about giving so that we can enter into the flow of what God is doing and to take part in a big story that’s still being written. There’s nothing like serving in a local church. Showing up and living beyond “self” is truly transformational and is a profound part of following Christ – being a disciple.
A few years back I created a scale drawing of our auditorium stage using a product called Microsoft Visio. It was quite useful in that over time I created a library of stage elements that were also drawn to scale. The template allows me to sit in on planning meetings and drag elements on and off the stage to help determine positioning and space requirements/ limits. As the template evolved we added space for channel assignments, notes, and tech assignments. What developed was a nice little tool that creates a document that worship and tech volunteers alike can easily refer to and get consistent answers to common questions such as “where do I stand?”, “what mic am I on?” etc..
Recently I’ve been blessed with a new laptop that runs Win7/ 64-bit. Upgrading Visio to office 2010 seemed quite expensive so I recreated the template using a product called Smart Draw. So far it’s been easy to use and accomplishes the same things that I did w/ Visio. If you’re a Tech Director and would like to check out what I’ve been able to output to a PDF, feel free to download this sample. I’d appreciate any feedback on how it looks and what might make it better. Thanks.
Here’s a PDF sample of a weekend service plot
Stage Plot Chapel Live 05-21-11
Healthy to be suspicious, dangerous to become cynical?
I found a great article a few months back by an unknown author at Relevant Magazine Online that really caught my attention. It caused me to assess myself on several fronts. Am I ever skeptical or cynical and does it matter? I, like many others I believe, kind of lump these together without much thought or concern for the destruction that can come from cynicism. So what’s the difference? We seem to live in a culture that is growing in cynical mindset and It probably isn’t good.
Check out ref: relevant mag article. http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/whole-life/features/18399-why-its-wrong-to-be-cynical
Oct. 2009 – This past weekend was an amazing weekend. I was privileged to witness the generous outpouring of peoples hearts and got to hear a story of forgiveness and reconciliation.
With very little hype or promotion (just a single short 2-min. video clip, a brief announcement about a week ago), people showed up at our church with shoes. slightly worn shoes, brand new shoes, boxes of shoes, bags of shoes. Men brought them, women brought them, children brought them. At the end of the day our teams packaged over 2,200 pairs. All because someone had an idea and a passion – that caught. The original plan, as I understand it, was to collect a few shoes, throw them in the trunk and drop them off at the Nashville collection center on the way to a conference. What resulted was a contribution that required an additional large van and trailer to transport. One of many many efforts by churches all across the US. All because not only was a vision cast, but vision was caught – and the spirit of God moved in the hearts of people.
You see the shoes went to an organization that distributes them to children all over the world. Children who die in large numbers daily from disease they pickup from walking barefoot in communities and villages too poor to maintain adequate sanitation. For these children, shoes were not a fashion item, a comfort item, or even protection from sharp stones or cold weather. Shoes, even used ones, were a life-saving barrier from inevitable sickness.
The vision cast and caught was not to simply collect shoes for some poor kids somewhere. It was about showing God’s care and grace and bringing hope thru a life-saving effort.
Can something be true yet irrelevant?
Can something that is both true and relevant also be meaningless?
If I step off a plane in a foreign country and see a door marked in a strange language that I cannot understand – it is indeed meaningless to me. It could say office, maintanence, storage… who knows? In fact it’s more than meaningless. it’s also irrelevant from my perspective of needs.
Now, let’s make the assumption that the marking on the door in fact says “restroom” and let’s assume that there are indeed restroom facilities behind the door. The writing therefore is abolutely true, but still absolutely meaningless (to me.)
Now, If I step off of the plane and am in desperate urgent need of getting to the restroom facilities, then what’s benind that door is extremely important in the here and now. The writing is indeed absolute truth, the content is absolutely relevant (to my needs), but unfortunately, it remains absolutely meaningless/useless/ lifeless. From my perspective, the word is nothing more than nonsensical scribble on a piece of wood. (assuming the door is made of wood.)
One’s ability to communicate clearly is direclty tied to cultural relevancey. And it changes over time. Culture, media, styles, even meanings of words change. In fact, without cultural relevance, our ability to communicate effectively is compromised because one might resort to insisting on using language and media that the current culture no longer uses or even understands. Does it mean that what is being said is no longer absolutely true? No. Does it mean that what is being said (or read) is no longer relevant? No.
What it does mean is that people can and will effortlessly disregard and ignore even “truth” desipite their immediate and urgent need. I sometimes wonder if it’s too easy to declare “in these post-modern times there is an absence of absolute truth.” When what we might be observing is, that despite shouting louder in obsolete ways, ways that are no longer understood – listeners simply just don’t care. And why should they? It’s maybe not so much a question of truth vs. fiction or right vs. wrong as much as it just doesn’t matter. It appears to me that even profound and absolute truth, without meaningful cultural relevance, can potentially become unrecognizable noise, lost in a sea of various media and content.
There can be danger in the natural tendancy to depend on old tradition, obsolete language, outdated music, that can slowly errode the understandability of absolutely truthful content. This is not to say that one cannot or should not study and learn from old tradition, history, and language or that a person’s heart can’t be stirred by singing songs that were understandable and meaningful in their youth. But why would anyone be surprised or threatened when others find those forms at the least questionable and irrelevant or at worst offensive? Is it possible that too much weight is placed on forms that have become personally nostalgic, overly valued, and even selfishly declared “holy”?
Making the original markings on the (restroom) door larger, bolder, duplicated, more colorful, graphically modern, accessible on the web, phone text, large screen etc. will not make it any more understandable or meaningful. It’s still meaningless scribble, albeit truthful.
However, changing the word on the door to something understandable (or relevant), makes its content accessible. Also, to imply that making something relevant to culture somehow compromises the truth, would be like saying that accurately translating the language of the sign would somehow turn the restroom into a fire-escape.
Finally, it would be silly to assume I would spend several years learning that foriegn language just so I can read that door sign, so that maybe someday I could determine what’s behind the door thus obtaining enough enlightenment to finally get to use the restroom. God’s not given me that level of discipline. If I could simply read the sign, I could more quickly understand the truth, assess my belief, my need would be met, and I might even experience something close to a transformed life of joy instead of misery (as I nervously scamper thru the airport with little or no hope of not embarassing myself.)
What Matters Matters 