Scripture was right when it alluded to our spiritual life as a battle. This week was the kick-off of the Fall Programming – two worship services instead of one, the beginning of AWANA, and the beginning of Youth Group. All three had significant technical issues that required me to jump in and troubleshoot.

Worship Service – we’ve struggled with our monitoring system for as long as I can remember. This week the monitors started crackling so loudly that the vocalists could not hear themselves. Nobody could figure it out. I noticed a brief crackle on Tuesday for AWANA but it went away quickly so I could not isolate the issue. Then on Wednesday for Youth Group the crackle was back. I isolated the crackle between the soundboard and the amps – one of the two were faulty. The crackle went away after ten minutes and there was no time to look further. Thursday it disrupted the worship team. I was out that night so the worship team tried to fix it on their own but to no avail.
I came in on Friday to challenge the monster. Within a half hour I was able to isolate the cause in the soundboard. Channel #14 had been damaged earlier in the year by crossed wires. Somehow, channel #14 started acting up and somehow it got turned on. The fix was simple – turn off channel #14, mute it, and apply warning labels. I’m going to send the soundboard in for repair which will require a loaner replacement.

AWANA – Our worship stage is to the right of the platform but AWANA wanted a puppet show set up center stage with supporting mics. AWANA has their own sound operators but this night was not typical since they were doing a pizza party with parents invited. I set up the stage earlier in the day but when the AWANA techs showed up they could not get the mics to work. I arrived for the program and realized that they had not performed a sound check before the service. The gains were too low as was the master fader. Sound was coming out of the house but the crowd noise drowned it out so the techs thought nothing was working – they did not feel comfortable “cranking” up the volume for fear of feedback. It was now “showtime” and no sound. Yikes. I jumped in and figure out the problem using the visual level indicator and the Mackie “solo” feature. Hours of boredom followed by seconds of terror.

Youth Ministry – Not only did the beastly crackle show up a few hours before the start, but I was relying on several volunteers to do some set-up. The crunch here was new volunteers and volunteers being late. We met the week prior to discuss all the details and all was fine. On Wed my video guys showed up on time but the video girl (teen) was missing. She also had the curtain which was to be used for our video backdrop. There were complications with her ride and she showed up twenty minutes late. The video project did not get completed but we still have a few weeks before it is due. Another set of volunteers thought youth group started later than it did. When they arrived, I had them set up their stuff during the worship time. It all worked out but I was a little frantic trying to compensate for glitches. This is normal for the first night with new volunteers and God intervened on His own behalf. The teens did not notice a thing out of place and the ministry was excellent.