Random stuff & The Green Room

This spring has been a blur so far. I dont' know that I've ever been busier. I think it's a combination of my classwork, expanding the college ministry, and general life insanity. Most people keep up with what I'm doing on twitter, but I'm going to try shorter, more frequent blog postings as well (how many times have I said that now?).

We had some of the best worship at Schweitzer we've ever done on Easter weekend. There was an outstanding drama, a huge tomb built for people to walk through, and great music. Should have posted pictures and some video from the flip cam, but I never got around to it.

After Easter I got to go with a group of 15 students from our college ministry to Port Arthur, TX. During that week the group leveled and refloored a house and reframed the back of a house with a new door and a covered back porch. It was a great week.

Last weekend we were given the check from the college ministry grant we were awarded. We also had our second worship on the Missouri State campus. We're opening the Green Room as a second site ministry in the fall - worship every Sunday night at 9pm directed at college students and young adults. Our goal as a college ministry is to plant an arm of the church that genuinely builds relationships with students on their turf. It's culturally relevant (secular music, movies, tv, etc), media intensive, there are lights that change colors (ooooh), and so far it's been a lot of fun.

Sunday night I set up a camera in the back of the room to capture the action. I like the way this song came out - there are a few glitches, but overall a great experience. We're doing monthly services this spring on campus, hopefully outdoor services over the summer, then every weekend starting August 24. Here's a video from last Sunday:

It's Official!

I'll be appointed at Schweitzer as an associate pastor next conference year. I just got done in a meeting with our Staff Parish Relations Committee with our District Superintendent. It's been a long process, but it's now public that the intent of the Bishop and the Cabinet is to appoint me here. I can't imagine serving on a better team.

Multi Site College Ministry

I'd promised this post last week but never got around to writing it. It's been incredibly busy these last few weeks as those of you who follow my twitter probably know. It's really an exciting time to be in ministry at Schweitzer for a lot of reasons. One of those reasons is our new college ministry.

We started the college ministry here last fall as part of an expanded view of our age-specific ministry strategies. It's been pretty low key up until this spring. We've been really blesssed by the Missouri Conference in supporting this new ministry. As a conference they've made the shift to ministries that local congregations lead from the traditional Wesley model. As part of this we've been dreaming about what a new ministry from Schweitzer would look like. Last fall we were awarded a one-time grant from the conference to help us expand the ministry (see my previous college sound gear post). This winter we applied for another grant to really expand what we're doing.

I'm really excited to say that we received the second grant we requested. It's going to fund this ministry dramatically, essentially matching the investment Schweitzer is putting into my role as a pastor. All of our pastors wear several hats. The two core areas of emphasis for me will be college ministry and creative arts leadership. The title is a bit clunky, pastor of creative arts and college ministry, anybody got better suggestions? It's not officially my title until July 1, so there's some room to play.

The approach we're taking is to plant a second site on the Missouri State campus.  Right now our college worship is a monthly event. Starting in August we'll be opening a new campus at MSU with a weekly Sunday night worship service. Our worship offerings will be Saturday night (5:30pm), Sunday morning (8:30, 9:45, & 11am), and Sunday night @MSU (9pm). Obviously the focus of the site will be college students, but we've got a great group of older folks that are going to be working with us on the worship and other ministries. We've been using the Big Idea worship planning model for about a year now which will let us coordinate the messages I preach at MSU with the weekend on our main campus. Obviously there will be some differences because of the group, but generally we're going to try to keep on the same message.

My favorite part of this approach is that rather than being a traditional campus ministry we're part of a church. Our goal is to offer campus ministry like options with all the depth, opportunity, and community that happens within a local congregation. We're going to be connecting students to service opportunities, leadership development, small groups, discipleship, etc. We really believe that the local church can dramatically impact student's lives.

I'm having a blast planning and working with students for the future of college ministry. The shift to being a multisite church is really challenging. It's taking a lot of work, training, and prayer. I'd really like to talk with some folks doing portable multisite ministry. It's going to be a fun ride and I can't wait to see what God does.

Green Room Runthrough

We had the first runthrough for the Green Room (our college worship) at Missouri State this weekend. I'm incredibly excited about moving our college worship to the campus, but man is portable church a lot of work. We held the group to the core leadership team (about a dozen people), met at the church at 1:30, and headed to the Plaster Student Union. Getting things out of Schweitzer and to MSU was easy. We did leave some key equipment on the floor of the church and had to send a group back to get it. Load out from the room we're using to having things put away in the church was also very quick. I think both of those tasks took less than 40 minutes each. I really see the benefit of a packaged system for portable ministry, but I think we did a decent job putting our kit together given how smoothly we were able to move things. 

Our biggest hurdle was the time it took from getting all of the gear in the room to being setup and ready to run worship. We're going to have to do some substantial training/practice on the tech/band setup. We did okay - we were ready to do worship about two hours after we met at Schweitzer. I'd really like to get that under 90 minutes.  

We're going to do the worship on campus monthly for the rest of this semester to get us ready for the fall.

College Ministry Sound Gear

Justin & Gear

Unboxing


Basic Setup


M400 Boxes

 

 

Last fall we received a grant to help us fund buying a portable audio setup for our college ministry. We're going to be moving our college worship to the Missouri State campus rather than doing it here at Schweitzer.

As far as our research (and a lot of students) have told us we'll be doing the only full-band worship within walking distance of MSU. I'm incredibly excited about the possibilities.

We finally got around to ordering the equipment and it showed up yesterday. I figured it would be fairly big, but I didn't expect what we received. For some perspective on the size I made my friend Justin stand next to the wrapped pallet. It really isn't all that much stuff, but the packing to ship it is ridiculous. 

Several people have been giving me advice about the system so I thought I'd post a basic list of what ended up in our gym yesterday.

• 2 RCF Mains - 12" drivers, 350w
• 2 RCF Subs - 15" drivers, 800w
• 4 Mackie SRM 150s (for monitors)
• 2 ART headphone amps for wired in-ear
• 4 Shure SM58 mics
• 2 Shure SM57 mics
• 2 Shure ULX wireless mics (one Beta 87 and one Countryman headset)
• Bags, cases, and a pile of cables 

I'd had a couple of people tell me that they really liked the Kaltman Cable Coiler, so I decided to give it a try as well. Quality cables are expensive, and if this can make sure they always get coiled properly and can do it quickly it will be an absolute win. 

You'll notice that what's lacking in this setup is any type of a mix console. I'm really torn about that purchase. We decided that we wanted to go digital for a lot of reasons, but that's a different post. I've got experience (as do a lot of people) with Yamaha consoles and been pleased with them. While I was talking to our rep at Full Compass (we love them by the way) he suggested looking at the Roland M-400 system. 

The M-400 is a new console from Roland which raises some issues with me. It's built around the digital snake (40 channels over cat5) that Roland has had out for  awhile and I know many people who have been using it and are happy. We've got a demo unit for the next week so we can evaluate it before making the purchase. Initial impressions are good. We're doing a more thorough review with a full band this weekend so I'll write more later.

More big announcements related to the college ministry next week.