For as long as I can remember, Sunday Mornings meant that I had to get up early to go to church. I was raised in a home where there was just no negotiation. If the doors were open, we were going to church be it Wednesday or Sunday. When I was 8 years old and attending an old fashioned Spring Revival at FBC Morgan City a little seed was planted in my heart that began to grow. I thought I had come to grips with that later in the spring and told my parents that I had gotten saved. I remember getting baptized shortly after that in the summer. In reality I just got wet.

At the age of 13 I began serving at FBCMC running sound and what not. I knew I enjoyed it, and people told me I had a rare gift, but to me it was just something to do. It wasn’t until I was 17 that I realized this was my calling in life. I eventually found my way onto a staff at a church. At 21, after a frustrating night, I began to ask God for some direction and if need be some change. While I didn’t understand the next couple of months, he knew all a long that It was going to lead up to something pretty important, and thats when I obeyed and moved to Gardendale.

I’ve been here for a year and a half, and have been through some rough stuff. Professionally, personally, and spiritually. The events of the last year particularly started precipitating a good many number of questions. Things that I had taken for granted, felt like they were holding together by a thread. And then in December we lost my grandmother, and other issues came up at the same time, and I just began to doubt a good number of things.

I wish I could remember who told me this, but they told me that the devil lives in doubt, and let me tell you thats the God’s honest truth! Because when you start to doubt one thing thats important to you, you begin to doubt many other things, and then you are just frustrated! You walk around wanting to beat your head against the wall. Its not a very fun place to be, but its where I had to be for God to bring me back to him.

I was trying to do all of the above on my own, and failing miserably at it. And then one Tuesday afternoon, God created a divine appointment with me and Mark Ramsey after a video shoot. God created a safe situation for me to share my heart with Mark, about what was going on in my life, and it was that day Janurary 19, 2010 at 5:05pm that we decided to remove one piece of doubt from the equation, my salvation. I knew I was saved when I was 8 but I the devil had created so much doubt in my life, I doubted if it was real! That’s not really a loose end you want waving in the wind as you drive down the crazy road we call life.

Today (Feb 7, 2010) I stepped into the baptistry at Gardendale First Baptist Church, infront of my peers, leaders, team, and everyone and publicly reaffirmed that I AM a child of God and that the devil is not welcome here. I’ve made a stand, and there is no more doubt in my mind, body, heart and soul that my salvation is real, and no longer in doubt!

Thanks for allowing me to share this.

John

Sorry for the lack of pictures, I just really didn’t think to take any. Shame on me!

My first Gardendale Christmas came and went in a blur! We actually started Christmas back in October with a series of location shoots. In a successful effort to really enhance the drama you see on stage we shoot some scenes on location and intertwine that with live drama. It works out really well and is a neat thing.  That folded itself into our weekly routine and I never really felt that CPBO (Christmas Production Burn-Out) Disease.  For the actual Christmas Production my Boss and I shared FOH duties and miraculously didn’t step on each other.  It was a fun three nights, and we think the program touched a lot of people.

My favorite thing about Gardendale was the Christmas Eve service. The service started at 5:30 but by 4:45 it was hard to find a seat on the main floor, and a comfortable seat in the balcony. By 5:15 it was Standing Room Only in the HALLS! Did I mention we packed the choir loft, and a few chairs in the orchestra as well? I was blown away. It was a sweet service that had the feel of the church I grew up. Very small feeling, considering there were 2100 of our closets friends here!

Christmas Morning I hopped on the first Continental flight out of Birmingham headed to Houston to spend the day, and rest of the week with my parents and brother.  We had a great time. One of the neat things I got to do in Houston was visiting Houston’s First Baptist Church where my friend Brad Duryea is the Technical Director. HFBC recently underwent a 17 million dollar worship center renovation project which forced them into using there gym, chapel, and fellowship halls for 3 services on Sunday Mornings for a while.  I moved before they ever moved back into the worship center so I was excited to how the project turned out. I was very blown away by the renovation, and the new look and feel the room had. You can see some pictures of the room on HFBC’s website.  I got to see for the first time Cameron Ware’s implementation of architectural projection and it’s actually quite cool! Its neat to see that set up, and how once configured/templates built easy it was to utilize.  The all Meyer audio system was very smooth, but admittedly Brad mentioned there were a few things still to work out in the new year.  If you’ve been to Willow Creek then you have an idea of how the room sounds as the same people did the design at HFBC.  It was a neat experience, since I had kind of kept up with the project through friends on staff start to finish. 

I celebrated New Years here in Birmingham, and it is almost 1 month down in 2009.

2009 I’m praying will be a good year for our ministry and for our church. We’re embarking on a new worship center project. It’s very exciting, especially as we get closer and closer to it! I’m praying for a year of growth in our ministry. We’ve got many faithful volunteers, but it never hurts to have a few more, right?! We recently rolled out a new look in a new year for our broadcast which catches up to the live side this week.  Our currently look has been around for some time, so it’ll be interesting to see the feedback we get on the new look! The new Broadcast format has already gotten some good marks.

So all in all, I’m looking forward to a great 2009 here, and wish the same for you!

Don’t forget the ON button,

John

And what an exciting morning it is this morning. This Hope is also singing this week. There a contemporary so. gospel group and they’re pretty good.

Man it feels good to be here!!

How Many People Does It Take?

Originally uploaded by audibleworship

Apparently three. One to hold the card, one to guide the card, and one
to supervise. LOL. This was just one of many great moments last week
as we replaced the ProSys DSP with London BLUs. Pretty powerful DSPs.
We actually put in two BLU80s as Jim managed to use up all the DSP in
one BLU. We have a fairly complex network of exploded clusters through
out the room, all of which are bi and sometimes triamped. Lots of
processinf to get this system to sing like it did today! Yeehaw!
Today was actually my last Sunday at Sugar Creek. Im gunna miss this
place but Gods got big thinks in store for me at Gardendale.

–John

Jim’s cranking away on the new DSP in the worship center. London BLU.

–John

Change is inevitable, especailly in churches. People and churches are always in a season, and sometimes we find ourselves in different seasons.  Good and bad… Luckily mine is good.

I’ve been at Sugar Creek since October ‘06. In that time, I feel like I have done a lot for the ministries I have been involved with, including the Worship Center, which I’ve never had any direct responsibilities.  But with the students, we’ve made tremendous leaps and bounds in the world of lighting, including of taking delivery of our new Vista S1 next week. Audio wise, the guys have all gotten better with there mixing chops. I feel like that team has painted itself into a corner though. The bar has been set so high, that it’s going to be tough for just anyone to walk in and maintain that.  Good and bad.

Video has by far seen the most tremendous growth. When I first came there were a lot of different components in place, some that didn’t need to be there. The VT3 toaster has now gone by the wayside, as had the multiple DVD players, and most importantly, now gone is the days of PowerPoint (except for prompter…). We’re now using ProPresenter 3, and everything has been consolidated to that machine. The quality of visual worship has grown exponentially.

In the worship center, we finally went digital! I feel the most accomplished here because I had been after both of the guys I served under since the day I took the job.  Thats not to take all the credit because Rick did the hard part, getting they money.  I feel bad that I am going to be leaving so soon after taking delivery, but the guys have it. No doubt about it. I have all the confidence in the world.

So leaving a legacy. I just hope I left a good legacy, because I know what it was like when I came in. The guy before me had a bad legacy. I just hope mine will be a good legacy… 

So where am I going?

I’m making a HUGE move in my life. I’m moving to Gardendale, Alabama (north of Birmingham).  I’ve accepted the position of Audio Engineer/Production Management at Gardendale’s First Baptist Church. I am super excited about the possibilities that God has created with this opportunity.  I’ll be getting to focus more on Audio than any other production area, which is my speciality.  I’ll get to interface with the broadcast world, as I’ll be responsible for the TV re-mix each week for the weekly broadcast. I’ll be working along side some great people, sometime I’ll blog about the experience that I had while I was interviewing for this opportunity to serve, it was truly humbling.

I’m sure the blogging will tail off significantly more than it has in the next few weeks/months as I get my feet on the ground, but I’m really hoping to maintain this.

Please keep me in your prayers!

Sugar Creek has been a volunteer based production ministry for a few years now.  One area that was new to volunteers was Audio, as it was always staffed by a staff member.  A lot of people often wonder how we can use volunteers like we do, especially when we implement new technology, like a digital console.  Today is an example of that answer. Our volunteers are eager to meet the challenge.  Pretty simple eh?
This morning one of our stronger A1s was up to mix.  Now, after Wednesday I had kind of had a few concerns because it seemed as if he’d get lost in the console, and loose focus on the mix.  Well this morning, it seemed to be less of a problem, as he was scootin’ around pretty good.  I wasn’t nearly as hands on as I thought I would be. Whew! This volunteer stepped up to the challenge, and not only met it, but succeeded my expectations.  This morning was probably one of the best sounding Sunday’s  I have heard at Sugar Creek in a really long time.  Looking forward to next week. Maybe after Wednesday I’ll be able to sleep in again on Sunday AM….

It’s time to make a new recruiting push to grow my student volunteer team.  I started creating little 1 minute emails once a week called LYF Tech Minutes.  In my last minute last week, I talked about what do we need to do to recruit? I got some very interesting responses, and these are some of them.

• Big recruiting events, don’t work! It’s too intimidating.
• Announcements from the stage, or in our weekly announcements, also don’t work.
• Spreading the word through small group leaders, kind of works, but not well.

The best recruiting technique was suggested, was, word of mouth.  INTERESTING! So I’m going to try something I’ll dub Empty Seat, Open Spot. Granted that means I need to buy some more chairs for my production areas, but I want to see if my students can get some friends involved to fill those empty seats. I originally got this idea from Greg Atkinson.  Very ingenious, and something I want to try. I’m curious to my limited readers out there, what recruiting tricks work for you?  

Second to Audio, I’d have to my next real skill-set is lighting.  However, more slowly I’ve come to really enjoy working with Video. I love directing video, unless Rick is my producer, because on a Veterans day affair this year, I had nothing patriotic but the American flag, so I very creatively found 34 ways (we really counted…) to shoot 2 American flags on the stage during a patriotic medley.  Tommy Franks was our speaker that night, and it was a throughly an enjoyable evening. The organizer for the event recently contacted us about a really nice fund-raiser to be held in our LYF Center.  Being that the organizer is also the chairmen of the Finance Committee, I’m more than willing to go that extra extra mile for him. Jeff Malott taught me that if the Finance Committee can buy into what you’re doing, and appreciate it, getting funds for capital projects, might be easier.Wow, I feel like our senior student pastor, because I totally chased  a rabbit on this one! 

LIGHTING CONSOLES!

It’s time.  The Avolite Pearl’s have finally lived there lives long enough, and have officially become the biggest pain in my technical rear.   I’ve finally joined the hate on avolite discussison group that Rick, and one of my student volunteers have formed.  Well today, I saw a little bit of light. We’ve been on a kick lately about the Jands Vista lighting controllers.  Our local vendor has set up a really sweet deal for our worship center with the T2.  Being large staff of mac snobs, we want to run the software on a Mac Mini, so we’re really looking at the S3, and will likely end up with an S1 in the new gym in the new children’s building we’re building.  So then Rick pops in my cubby hole today, and noticed that I have escaped to Jason’s office for a refreshing change.  More like I am avoiding my desk…. He got some pricing on a Vista S1, and 512 dongle, and how cool would it be to throw that in the LYF Center. The poor LYF Center never had a designated budget in his budget, and getting  the student ministry to open there wallet has always been tough, so he graciously gave me a little bit for each area for a small capital project in each area.  Well, I already bought some lights, but I hadn’t touched my audio portion, so I’ll likely cash that in, and go with this, if we can make the numbers right.  I’ve downloaded the software and have been playing around with it today. SWEET STUFF!  I think I could have programmed a week’s worth of services in 30 minutes.

I’ve got a few methods to my many madnesses. I’ve got a general thought on how things should be done in a church. I’ve seen so many things that work, and so many things that don’t work. Thats not to say I can’t be creative and as this blog develops I hope to open up to some of my many methods.  For lighting in worship, I’m a strong believer in a cue list, programmed to a service, programmed to go along with the service, so that an operator, and maybe even the person who programmed it, can just press GO for the service.  With Avolites, we run it like a lot of the rock guys on the road do. Or so I’ve been told.  I don’t know how else to describe that.   I also believe in multiple playlists, so that if all of a sudden you want to run some pre-programmed movements with intelligents light, you just start working through that programmed cue list.  and then when you click go on the next cue on your original cue list, you pick up where you left off.  With the Pearl, IMPOSSIBLE. I’m hoping we can make this happen, as I think it will be 10X easier to recruit new volunteers for the area of lighting, which is where I feel is a great need for us right now.