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

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?