The Weekend at Crossroads

It was a slightly different service this weekend at Crossroads. We had baptism scheduled, but none for our Saturday night service. There were 4 for each of the 2 morning services. We had 3 specials. The first 2 pertained to baptism and the 3rd was the lead into Pastor Tim's message "The Impact of a Father.", Tim talked about 4 conversations every father should have with his daughter.

Here is our playlist:

Down To the River To Pray (Alison Krauss)

Friend For Life (Watermark)

Holy Is the Lord (an original by our own Chris Draper)

Awesome God (Hillsong)

You Are Good/All the Earth (medley)

Cinderella (Tomlin)

Now for the bad...Saturday night, we lost control of some of our intelligent lighting fixtures. Of course, it doesn't happen until our run through begins. Lori Biddle, our director of Magnification is away the Saddleback Worship Conference. So, now I've got to deal with directing the service, tracking down the lighting issue, but also making notes of where the baptisms will be taking the next day. I rebooted the lights twice with no success. I made the decision to continue the run through so that at least we could make sure everything else was ok. We made it through and I tried once more to reboot the lights. When that didn't work I made a few last minute edits to help the look of the stage for the evening and we opened the doors. The service went well, although it was dark and without color on the cyc. After the service, we met as usual and made the decision to change the order of the first 2 songs. Other than that everything else stayed the same, except for the many changes to accommodate the baptisms. I then tackled the problem of the lights. The first thing I did as re-edit the cues to accommodate the changes for the Sunday service. Since I had no control over the fixtures, I made the assumption the problem was in the DMX controls. I finally narrowed the problem down to a bad DMX splitter. Luckily I had enough open splits on another one and I was able to re-patch and be back in business.

Sunday morning. 7:45am. I get a call from my video director. He has car problems and might not be able to make it. Normally, I would just slip into the director's chair and let Lori call cues for the service. However, with Lori gone and the service details changed from the previous night, this is not the best option. So I begin to call my other directors. Luckily, I was able to wake Phil up and he agreed to come in and direct cold. He showed up, I went over the details and service begins. Wow! The service turned out great. Phil did a great job directing. The lights all worked and Tim delivered another great message.

I say all this for one simple point. Surrender. With all the little things that were going wrong, I began to stress out a bit and get a bit grouchy. My wife lovingly took me to task and I made the choice to go to Him in prayer and surrender it into His hands. I learn a lesson every time something goes wrong. This weekend I learned how to handle another technical issue. But more importantly, I learned again the importance of giving everything over to God and letting my relationship with Jesus Christ direct my actions.

One last side note. I have a fantastic group of volunteers who run the technical areas every weekend. We could not do service with the level of excellence we maintain without them. I thank God everyday for their commitment, skill and dedication.