gateslacker

I have been wanting to take a more active role in my church for some time but since I have "let fear take the wheel and steer" with regard to any activities that even remotely involve performance in front of an audience, I have often wondered what to do. Wednesday night an opportunity presented itself. Our church has been newly renovated along with a new sanctuary. During the construction several new high tech features were incorporated. We actually have a sound booth, of all things! We also have this computer system that relays information such as song lyrics, bible verses, power point presentations, and announcements onto a projection screen at the front of the church and a flat panel screen at the back. There is this program (mediashout) whereby you create a schedule of items to show on the screen. You can even import video into this program. In any case, they needed someone to take over for the person who usually does it because he was going to take on a new role in church services. I decided to volunteer, seeing that I enjoy creating and/or playing around with audio visual stuff. Today was my first day on the job as a trainee. Everything was going very well and I got my butt out of bed earlier than usual to get there early. I had already adjusted the announcements and learned the rudimentary basics. When song lyrics are displayed for the congregation the order has already been determined. However, you have to be aware of the best time to transition to the next screen. Since I do have some sense of timing, I anticipated that very well. The first hymn went off without a hitch. At some point during the second hymn, I transitioned the screen as I normally would in the sequence it was listed only to discover that the lyrics on the screen didn't match what the song leader was singing! Ack, shouldn't they delete any lyrics they don't normally sing! As I scrambled to locate the correct lyrics, I noticed a peculiar thing. The boisterous singing had leveled off to a collection of distorted mumbles as folks tried to sing the lyrics on the screen and match the song leader at the same time. With all the distortion, I couldn't figure out what the lyrics even were! Who would have thought the congregation had acclimated itself so readily to the new tech? Did anyone actually open a hymnal anymore? It was then that I completely lost it, laughing, while crouched and hidden behind my pair of computer monitors (one shows the program, one shows what is relayed to the screen), as did most of the congregation. Even so, I eventually found the correct lyric and the song was not lost.

So much for not drawing attention to myself! ROFL!!

Flub ups certainly can make for good stories, can't they?

Okay...off to actually do some assignments for class as I should have been doing all along......