I think Tony is right on, we as Christians become so complacent with what has become the norm. Why is it that we are afraid to break out of the box and try to become relevant to the culture we live in? Tony points out that nearly 1/3 of the music sold today on iTunes is either hip-hop/rap or R&B/soul, but playing that in church would make us uncomfortable…

Read more:http://tonymorganlive.com/2009/05/06/the-new-traditional-church-music/

HT:ragamuffinsoul

Prepare Him Room from Tomoka Christian Church on Vimeo.

Gavin was jamming out and dancing to the instrumental rehearsal tonight, had to grab some video. Sorry for the low quality, cell phone cameras are not the greatest.

We had planned on changing the lighting a little, so we worked on that as well, problem to fix tomorrow is a lack of power on the stage for our par cans… Hopefully we will have it all resolved before tomorrow night, so I can program for the weekend early. I am trying to actually get 2 days off in a row. Won’t that be wonderful!

This weekend I got to experience it again, Saturday we have 2 worship services at TCC, well about 10 minutes before the 1st service it started to get bad outside, close lightning, power flickering, pouring rain. My boss and I decided to turn off everything, cause it was going off and on anyway.. so we shut down the PA, computers, projectors, and waited for it to pass, which included delaying the first service about 10 minutes.

Once we felt the storm had sufficiently passed we powered everything back up and started trying to get everything back online. First problem our side projectors wouldn’t show video, second problem moving lights were acting strange, third no internet. First problem wouldn’t normally be an issue, we have 3 screens in the front, and the sides only mirror the center screen lyrics and message notes on a Saturday night, but this was not a normal weekend (are any of them really ever normal at TCC?). This weekend our pastor was gone, and because of all the the summer activities there wasn’t another pastor who was there all weekend to fill his shoes. They decided we’d have a video message, so they filmed ‘on location’ at the local jail (went along with the message). I really wanted to have everything be the same as if the pastor was here, so I decided we’d run message notes like normal and show the pastor on the other screens… the screens which were now down. I had a backup plan in place for every possible problem with the video message, except this one. So some patching in the equipment rack while the worship is going and voila one screen no notes, not the end of the world.

Second problem, one moving light is doing really strange things, we doused the lamp and went on with worship, then a second and third mover starts acting up. So, I tell my LD, douse them all and be done with it. Not a huge deal, except mover #1 is randomly moving on it’s own occasionally. Once we are able to, we pull the breakers to them and are just thankful this is the worst. Third problem, internet is down, thankfully not the network, that’s all still up, just the web. Some investigation and we find that not only is the cable modem down, but the router is down, they are not dead, but the ports on each one of them that connects to each other is. Sunday, kept answering the question “I can’t check my email or get to the web, is the internet down?” and then “when will it be back up?” Not only do I have to tell them “yes it’s down” I have to become psychic and predict the exact moment in time when it will be back up and running.

We were able to get our screens back up and running for Sunday, thankfully it was just a video distribution amplifier that got zapped, one phone call and had one on the there before the second service was over Saturday, thanks Nate! I do appreciate dealers who go out of their way to help you in a crisis (however minor). The lighting is another story, Sunday am unveiled new problems which were seemingly solved by reverting to our old light console. Once the services were over though, we discovered we had a ghost in our DMX, since moving lights and dimmers were receiving DMX without the console on, and were doing weird things. I suspect there is a cable issue, and maybe there is a problem with the termination on the line, that will all be the subject of investigation Monday.

Thankfully the weekend went well, other than the issues we had in the tech booth, and it reminded me that I need to have a backup plan for everything, the lightning damage was minimal, we could have lost everything. All in all feel more exhausted from this weekend than normal, I think it was sure to all the stress I felt. Looking forward to two days off in a row this week, thank you July 4th!

As I sit here with a migraine I was thinking I could catch up on my blog, but even though there is plenty to write about from the last few weeks, none of it really feels ‘blog worthy’ right now. Well I have at least accomplished one item I wanted to do today, write a blog post. I can feel accomplishment at that. Maybe some of what I don’t feel is ‘blog worthy’ will become worthy soon..