Our first week

Today marks our first week at Journey. I am so blessed to be here. There is an amazing sense of community. I have met some amazing people and am excited to serve along the staff and volunteers here. I have been feeling a real sense of God moving here. I think he has some great plans to reach the people of Oklahoma through Journey. I think God has brought us here at the perfect time to see him work in unfathomable ways.

I have jumped right in since we got here a week ago. I have rehung the front wash, re-wired the dimmer rack, installed 14 LEDs that were in storage, built all new presets, reprogrammed everything on the console, cleaned backstage, plotted out our new gear plan, lit a comedy show, and even unpacked some at home. Tonight after service we are striking the current set. It's going to be a crazy next few months,but I am very excited.

I just got news today that our new lighting gear will probably arrive on Wednesday. Marty had the great idea of doing a set based on road cases showing the progress of what we are trying to accomplish. I am excited to see if we go through with that. Also, we have been talking about environmental projection and a huge christmas light show for Christmas. Until then, here are some pictures from this past week.

A New Journey (Pun Intended)

Sara, Dorian, and I are starting a new Journey. As many of our close friends know, we are moving to Norman, OK. Monday we left Orlando with a truck full of our stuff (and scenic!). So as with all of my blog posts I will include some pictures.

We are very excited for what God has planned for us and more importantly his church in Oklahoma. We will be serving at Jouney Church in Norman (journeychurch.tv). For those that don't know of Journey, it is a non denominational Christian church that emphasis the importance of relationships. The church's goal is to change the cities one life at a time. Journeys keys to this are Loving God, Building healthy relationships, and having a blast. I am superbly happy that God has seen it fitting to send us to this amazing place. I can't wait to see the great things God is going to do.

I will share some of the specifics of how we are going to create environments for worship in some future posts.

Although we are super excited, we are sad to leave our family in Orlando. Northland has been our home for over 3 years and we have loved every minute of it! We love our amazing friends, who we have got to serve with side by side. I am so excited how God has used his children at Northland to impact the world tremendously. There are so many astounding people at Northland. It is no wonder Northland has had such an impact on the Orlando community and the world.

A scripture that Journey use this last week has really been on my mind. Ephesians 3:20 "God can do anything you know - far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his spirit deeply and gently within us"

God is going to do some amazing things. I am excited and can't wait!

Daddy Daughter Dance 2012

Ever year Northland hosts the Daddy Daughter Dance.  It's a great event to help Fathers and Daughters to get closer.  Each year we have over 2000 people in attendance.  Every March we setup a temporary lighting system in the Foyer of our main building to transform the space.  In the past 2 years we have extended the event from into the Rink as well.  Each year's event has a theme.  The theme for this year was Underwater Waltz.  As you can see from below, it looks like you are dancing under the water.

The entire system in the foyer is a temporary setup.  This year we used 72 lekos and 18 pars for the ambiance lighting.  We also included LEDs, and par uplights through out the room.  Here is a picture of the balcony and some of the lighting we added.

This year, admittedly, we went a little over board with the DJ stage.  We used 12 SS cmys, and 80 Mega lights for the DJ stage.  We created a canopy of LEDS (Under the sea) and used the spots for energy near the dance floor.  The water like content we used on the LEDs looked amazing.

We tied in to the dimming system in the Sanctuary to power everything in the lobby.  A feat that used over 200 adapters through out the room.  Below is some setup pictures and the adapter bin.

 The pictures below don't do it justice.  Curtis was a mad scientist figuring out how to make the rigging work correctly.

We also made some changes in the Rink for the event.  We built truss towers with 1 Mac 250 wash and 3 Versabar LEDs each.

Below are a few more pictures of the event. 

Below is right before focus.  It was super bright, nearly like daylight before all the color was in.

Below is the view from FOH, well side stair well control corner i should say.

We had 3 carts like this pretty much full of fixtures.  The lobby is huge, you learn that very quickly trying to light it.

Kids Church in Big Church

A few weeks ago at Northland we had the pleasure of hosting our kids church services in the main worship room for our weekend services.  Big church, as the kids call it, is a little different than our children's church.  Although both of our services have a primary goal of helping us grow closer to God, we do it in very different ways.  To give you an idea of a normal kids church weekend have a look at the pictures below.

As you can probably tell, this is normally loud and rambunctious.  They do a time of worship, an amazingly themed skit that acts out a portion of the gospel, and small groups that build on that.

So we essentially tried to replicate this amazing atmosphere.  Below is a picture of one of the worship songs. that lead into our service.

The theme for this month skit is about spreading the gospel throughout the universe.  We follow our space explorers as they work through how to serve others and share the gospel.

For the set for this special weekend, we decided that we should try and re-create Skylab Omega (our spaceship in kids church).  George came up with a plan to fly trusses on angles like the outline of the deck on a space ship.  We also layed out some of our Mega-lite LED frames to give it a futuristic look.

One of the coolest special aspects of this design was the space teleporter.  We built a pulley system that raises a "teleporter" that the actors appear in.  Our teleporter is built as a 5' x 5' box that attaches to our pulleys.  From this box, we hung clear 4 mil plastic.  We used a fog machine to fill the tube with smoke and the actors climb out of the teleporter.  One of the coolest aspects is how the actors appear.  They navigate under our stage to an existing trap door.  They remove the trap door and climb a small step ladder, making it look as though they appear out of thin air thick smoke.

It was a pretty fun service, below are some more pictures.

All the amazing lighting design was done by George and Denise.  I am so lucky to be able to work with such a great team.