Going to Gurus?

Gurus 2013 is happening soon; starting Tuesday May 21 at Willow Creek in Chicago. Van and I are excited to be going and while we've talked about it on the podcast, I thought we should mention it here as well. If you see us walking around, please come up and say hi. We love talking to you guys and putting faces to the names.

We'll be recording a live ChurchTechWeekly during lunch on Wednesday, with a second segment taking place during the facility tour later in the day. We'd love to hear from you, so look for us in the auditorium and come over and join the fun for a few minutes.

If you can't be there, we hope to be able to broadcast the first half of the podcast during lunch on our Livestream channel. If all goes well, we'll be live sometime around 11:45 AM CDT. We'll also be doing some video coverage—interviews and stories from speakers and attendees alike, so watch the blog for that as well.

The event is free, and it's not too late to register, so if you can get to Chicago by Tuesday, you can still make it happen.

Hope to see you at Gurus!

Merry Christmas!

Today is Christmas day, and as I enjoy my first day off in a few weeks—along with most of you, I suspect—I'm reflecting on how blessed we are. I'm surrounded by family and friends, I work with some amazing people and I get to be part of sharing the good news of the Gospel with people all over Orange County. 

I hear from so many of you who appreciate this blog and ChurchTechWeekly. But I really want to thank you for reading and listening. Without you, dear readers, this site would only be notes to myself.

Friends and technical artists, you are the artisans of today's church. You help proclaim timeless truths in a modern vernacular that resonates with people today. You may be working behind the scenes and away from the spotlight, but you are as important and needed as the priests in the temple. 

Enjoy a time of rest this week. Spend some time alone reflecting on what we get to do. And let's enter into the new year with a renewed sense of excitement about leading our teams and our churches into the presence of our Savior. Merry Christmas!

Sync: Praying for the Christmas Season

They say that Christmas is “the most wonderful time of the year.” And it probably is; unless perhaps you are a church tech. In that case, it’s “the most busiest time of the year.” Most of us will put in plenty of extra hours in the month of December (if we haven’t already started..). That extra time can be draining, and it can become easy to forget why we’re doing this in the first place.

To help keep this in prospective, Church Tech Leaders is holding an “event” called Sync on December 4th at 12:00 CST. I quote event, because it’s really less of an event and more of a time to call church tech leaders all over the country to come together and pray for their fellow techs—both paid and volunteer—and for the impact we’ll have on the Kingdom this Christmas.

We all know that Christmas is a great time to share the Gospel with those in our community. But for us, it can often seem like a ton of extra work, and we can loose sight of the importance of our role. And when that happens, it really just is a bunch of extra work. By taking time to pray for each other, perhaps we can keep our hearts and attitudes pure while we serve our church and community. 

Click on the banner above to sign up for the “event,” and set a reminder to stop and pray for a great outpouring of God’s Spirit on our churches this December.

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Extreme Church Makeover: Tech Edition Update

It’s been a few months since I wrote about our plans to help Grace Chapel of the Coast with our Extreme Church Makeover project. Originally I had hoped to be able to get this project done over the summer. Then along came a giant renovation at my church that not only required me to manage the AVL install, but the entire project as well. So that took pretty much every waking moment from July 30-September 9. So much for the summer.

But perhaps it’s OK because while we had an initially high outpouring of support for the project, once it actually came time to get equipment line up, it was…{cue the crickets SFX}.

Which is kind of a bummer, but I guess it’s not surprising. While we’ve had a bunch of manufacturers tell us they are interesting in helping, they are having a tough time seeing the business case for it. I’ve had a few individuals offer up a couple of pieces of gear, but it’s not nearly enough to do the project. 

So at this point, I’m not sure what to do. Certainly, we’ve been praying about it, asking God to provide for what is a really worthy project. I still believe God is calling us to do this, and right now we’re simply facing some opposition. Your prayer support would certainly be helpful.

If you want to go back and look at the equipment list and see if there is anything you can contribute, please let me know. I’d really love to bless this church with a rockin’ system, but I can’t do it alone. 

Second, if you have contacts at manufacturers you would be willing to talk with, also let me know. I don’t want to do a shotgun blast approach with this, because that may do more harm than good. However, if we can coordinate efforts, and encourage some companies to get on board, that would be great. 

We’ll be getting together soon with the SoCal CTL to talk strategy on this project, and we’ll just see what happens. I wrote a post a while ago asking what are you doing that if God doesn’t show up, it will utterly fail. This is one of those times for me. While it’s uncomfortable, and I don’t really like being in this position (I’m a planner, after all…), this is where God has me right now. 

That’s it for now. Hopefully we will have more to update you on soon!

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