Weekend Wraps

We had a great weekend at the Yellow Box.  Here are the pictures to prove it.  I’m just realizing that I didn’t get any pictures from the theater service.  That makes me sad.  But here are some from the gym.  Thanks to everybody who served this weekend.

Have you ever had a weekend that’s so busy and full of stuff that you can’t wait to get back to work on Monday and rest.  That’s kinda what our service felt like this weekend.  We were talking about Celebrating 2.0.  I mean, we didn’t want to get to Monday in a bad way, the services were awesome, it was just that there was so much to get through in an hour that it went really fast.  Here’s what the cue sheet looked like.

yellow-box-cue-sheet-january-10th-and-11th

Scrambled eggs right?

This was also my first weekend in a really long time that I ran the Banmedia computers and that led to some tense moments.  That job should be left to more qualified people.  Like anyone other than me.  Here’s a list of really awesome people.

Band - Danielle DeSouza, Pam Zafiropolous, Chris Puchi, Mike Lueders, Blake Thomas, Scott Thomas, Nathan Singer

Tech - Bill Terrill, Randy Knibb, Adam Menard, Brian Theis, Rachel Winter, myself

Thanks to Bill Terrill for the pictures.

This night is just a blur if you’re in the arts at a church.  You spend two or three months planning for this string of 60 minute services and then it’s 12:30 on Christmas morning and you’re not sure what just happened and why you can’t get to sleep.  It’s such a rush that it just blows by.  We had incredible evenings both the 23rd and 24th here at the Yellow Box.  The 23rd we had the orchestra here which was great as always.  It’s a tradition at the Yellow Box and a good one at that.  The 24th we had services in both the gym and theater.  The gym service was tailored to reflect a weekend service here.  We did pull out a few TSO songs as a prelude and then dove in to the traditional Christmas songs.  In the theater we had the first ever Carols service.  This was a pretty cool service that was based all on the traditional Christmas songs.  We had a minimalist band with keys and acoustic and a vocal ensemble to bring the carols.  It was a really cool vibe.  Thanks to all who gave up their Christmas Eve evening to come in and be a part of the arts here.  It was a memorable night, but it went too fast.  Here’s the visual evidence to prove it.  Thanks to Merlin Mathesius for the pictures.

I’m not sure about you, but Christmas absolutely slayed me this year.  After the Let It Be Christmas run and our regular weekend schedule and 6 Christmas Eve services I was done.  I think I’m just now recovering from it.

I did take the weekend after Christmas off and I hear it was pretty much awesome.  We did the first, that I can remember, Family service where there was an element in the service for every age group.  Darth Vader even showed up.  Not sure what age group that was for.  I think the 30 somethings.  We had kids on stage singing, two teaching pastors, and from what I hear this wasn’t the longest service in the history of the world.  That’s pretty impressive.  Here’s the pics to prove my ramblings.  Thanks to everyone who worked really hard so I could sleep for three days straight.

Band - Chris Puchi, Sean Lueders, Scott Thornburgh, Josh Sherman, Andrew Sutherland, Ray Simpson, Noah Ice

Tech - Bill Terrill, Ralph Cahn, Ryan Sudol, Gary Schuller

This was one of those no pressure weekends because of one reason; kids.  We had what seemed like 500 of them cross the stage over the four services.  It was probably only more like 450, but either way it was a lot.  The great thing about kids on stage in a service is that no one remembers what the adults did.  If you screw up, say something stupid, whatever, they don’t remember.  They only remember the kids.  Which is mostly a good thing, but when you have an outstanding weekend like we did, then they don’t really notice the solid effort put in by everyone either.  But that’s not the point anyway.

We did have to follow the kids version of Joy To The World with our own version of Joy To The World which was quite difficult considering we didn’t have the cool fist pumping actions.  I think it got people in the Christmas spirit anyway.

On an unrelated note, this was the first weekend since she was very little that my daughter, now 15 months, came into the service to catch her dad worship leading.  I hear she enjoyed it quite a bit.  She’s been a music lover since day one, which I’m pretty stoked about.  She has a little dance she does and she prefers Coldplay so far.  She won’t let me play guitar at home, because every time I get it out she wants to play it and if I tell her daddy’s working she throws a fit like no other.  So she plays or no one does.  She’s great at pick retrieval when it falls into the sound hole in my acoustic though.  Those little hands come in… handy.  Anywho, here’s the info from the weekend.

Band - Danielle DeSouza, Dylan Higgins, Ryan Barr, Evan Ciambrone, Sean Cawley, Me, Vocal Ensemble

Tech - Bob Proctor, Ryan Sudol, Adam Menard, Teralyn Gifford, Sam Mullin, Beth Bartlett

Teaching - Dave Ferguson

Set List

Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee - Charlie Hall

Rejoice - Chris Tomlin

Joy To The World - Hillsong

Pictures?  Somebody remind me to take my camera!

Oh, yea, full rehearsals for Let It Be Christmas started right after the end of services this weekend so a big thanks to those techies who stuck it out with me for the full day.  It was long, exhausting, and a pleasure to work with you all.  Only 7 more days to go.

This was one of those weekends where Murphy’s Law ruled.  We had a pastors mic quit between services so there was no way we could know about until he stepped on stage and it didn’t work, our live video feed to the theater decided to get really blurry for no apparent reason and shaking the cables seemed to make it happy, our sound tech had a baby and couldn’t make it for obvious reasons, we had multiple d.i. problems with our acoustic guitars, a really annoying buzz through the house system, and on top of that our cappucino machine and elevator quit.

Even with all that we still had an outstanding weekend.  The 11 am service ended off the hook.  Leroy was leading and was getting a little carried away with the overall energy of the attenders singing.  The new version of “It Is Well” was seriously rad.  Oh yea, Reconsilosec killed for the second year in a row.  Everyone left in Peace.  Thanks to the awesome team that was involved.

Band - Leroy Barncord, Jeremiah Higgins, Danielle DeSouza, Jeff Cybulski, Ryan Whipple, Ross Mathesius, Julie Bullock

Tech - Cheryl Mealle, Ralph Cahn, Merlin Mathesius, Sam Mullin

Set List

O Come All Ye Faithful - Third Day

Angels We Have Heard On High - Third Day

Peace (Saudade) - Extreme

Peace Is Here - Jars Of Clay

It Is Well - Aaron Keyes

You Are Good - Lincoln Brewster Version

Sorry no pictures again.  I forgot my camera this time.

Wow I’m behind in my wrapping.  Maybe it’s the Christmas Eve prep or the Let It Be Christmas prep, or just generally not turning on my computer.  Not sure.  Here’s what went down two weeks ago at the Yellow Box though.

We did an acoustic set as we kicked off the Advent series.  It was a nice change of pace for us and pretty well recieved.  I wasn’t able to pull off the stage design I was looking for partly because I was working the day after thanksgiving and didn’t have much time and also because the screen I rented was a little to big for our stage.  And by a little I mean more than a little.  We were able to get some trees up thought and it made it pretty Christmasy.  The team was awesome and here are their names for proof.

Band - Steve Wood, Scott Thomas, Doug White, Pam Zafiropolous, Beth Bartlett, Me

Tech - Cheryl Mealle, Kirk Denson, Adam Menard, Brian Theis,  Jason Thomas

Set List

Song Of Hope - Robbie Seay Band

Hosanna - Hillsong United

My Hope Is You - Third Day

In Like A Lion - Reliant K

Everything Glorious - David Crowder Band

Sorry no pictures this week.  I was on stage and obviously couldn’t really take any from up there.

There’s something about the way we experience baptisms at Community that makes a certain weekend better than the others.  Behind the scenes it makes things kind of hectic, but a little more fun.  This weekend I think we set three CCC records for special baptism circumstances.

At our first service we had someone who wanted to get baptized who had just started coming to CCC the week prior.  She heard the talk that strongly encouraged baptism and decided that’s what she wanted.  When she got in the tub and it was time for the dunking she just went under on her own.  I believe she’s the first person at CCC to try to baptize themself.  It was a very cool moment.

In the second service I think we set a record for the most people we’ve had in the tub at once.  Check out Nick’s blog here for more info on that.

Then at our fourth service we set a record for people around the tub at one time and the most dressed up family for baptism.  You can see some picture evidence of that below.

All that said, it was a great time, great weekend, and I’d love to do it again.  Thanks to everybody who made it happen.

Set List

Not To Us - Chris Tomlin

Lord You Have My Heart - Delirious

Needful Hands - Jars Of Clay

Solution - Hillsong United

All To You - Lincoln Brewster

Band - Leroy Barncord, Ross Mathesius, Ryan Whipple, Rory Gambrell, Bryan Buckley, Christel Gorman

Tech - Merlin Mathesius, Ralph Cahn, Bob Proctor, Sam Mullin, Ryan Sudol