Humility

I know it's been quite some time. I've been very busy getting the new sound console up and running and selling the old equipment (which takes quite a bit of time to deal with all the e-mails, photos, descriptions, shipping, etc). Next week I will put together a nice post about that whole process.

However, this week I wanted to talk about what happened last Sunday on our special service. Doug put a lot of special elements that required lots of tech. One of them was during the song "Revelation Song" Erin Bullock was signing. We wanted the camera shot of her on the screens, with the words on the lower third keyed over.

This is something that our current mixer handles very well. However, the past few times, I have not been happy with it. So I called tech support for the manufacturer (TV One) and walked them thru our setup and want I wanted to accomplish. I then had him walk me thru the process of doing it. In that, I found 1 option that needs to be changed that I had never used before. This allowed it to work perfectly and look fantastic. I was psyched! Last Friday I showed it to Bonnie so she could get the powerpoint ready.

Sunday morning when I arrived I tested it to make sure it worked before everyone got there. It worked fine.

Then it came time for it during the service. I went thru all the buttons and....nothing happened. I tried it again. Again nothing. It was at this point that we just put the camera shot of Erin up on screen by itself and left it. I was pretty peeved. It had worked fine just hours before for the 4th time in 5 days. What was going on?!?! It took me several minutes to recover and get back to helping Tally & Jerome with the new sound console.

You know what happened? I had boasted all week about how I had "figured" it out and how great it looked. I wasn't thinking of how the people in the congregation would be served by seeing the signing and seeing the words; I was plain & simple looking for everyone to saw how amazing it looked and to give praise to me. And guess what? Doesn't God have something to say about that in the Bible. James 3:4-6, James 4:15-17, and I John 2:15-17 all have something to say about our boasting. We should only boast in the Lord.

So you ever wondered when I will get my 15 minutes on stage instead of "hiding" in the tech booth? Well, God took care of that last Sunday and humbled me in front of about 900 people (and also broadcast live on the Internet and recorded onto DVD).

So, I would say I certainly learned my lesson. No more boasting about the "great" things I've done.

(PS. As another take away I will be making a Macro for this, so next time it is a lot easier, but that's not the main point).