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.