Senheiser USA just added a plug about our new facility on their website. I was at an Expo in Chicago while at the Willowcreek Arts conference and one of the Sennheiser guys saw my name tag and told me about it. I gotta be honest, it felt kind of cool to be “noticed” by their East Coast rep. Apparently two of the guys in Chicago had worked on our wireless coordination. Even though I am not mentioned in the short article, I think I am famous by association right? I mean, A LOT of people read the Sennheiser Houses of Worship news feed right? Hmmm. I think this blog may have more readers (6) than that. Anyway, in a geeky sense, it was cool for them to “know me,” same thing happened at the Meyer Sound booth as well. EDIT: Turns out as I was about to post this, Bo found another article at Lighting & Sound America about the build. REMEMBER, these were written by our systems contractors and not us.

On that same note however, this “new building” thing was already on my mind. Nancy Beach, one of the creative leaders at Willowcreek, said something that really stuck with me yesterday. She discussed how much Willow strives to be known for making a difference in their community and the world and NOT to be known simply as the church with the big building in town. She actually teared up during that part of her talk. It really hit me hard.

I don’t want SSCC to become known only as the big church on the island or anything like that. I don’t think that we SHOULD be known only as that. But it is an important challenge to never forget. The baptisms we regularly hold and the missions teams we send out each year are a constant benchmark for the work that God has called us to do… Even if I do get excited about tech toys and the like. I like the exposure that the facility can give us, I just pray that we use it only to more greatly glorify God.

I feel like I can breathe again. I actually got home during daylight hours yesterday for the first time in probably a month. I sat at home, almost restless, because I have grown accustomed to having a ton of things to do all with the same deadline. Praise-alujah that the deadline has passed and I met the deadline on all but one thing that I can recall. I didn’t have my distributed video working properly. Our camera in service for some reason only wanted to show green on the TVs elsewhere in the building. At 10:45 pm on Saturday night I gave up temporarily. I had already fallen asleep sitting in three different places in the building and realized that I didn’t have it in me to do any more. I needed rest to return somewhat refreshed at 7 am the next day.

I must publicly thank Jerry Davidson and Richard Taylor, two awesome volunteers, for their over-the-top efforts that helped me get everything done. Jerry was everywhere I needed him with regards to getting the sound system up and running and Richard was all over our new lighting system among other things. God always seems to provide the right people for the jobs.

As many of my coworkers have already published (Chris, Fred, Shannon), our first weekend in our new facility went off wonderfully. God showed up in many ways.  David preached a message about the bottom line of our church, “never be the same again.” Our desire as a church is to see Christ impact people in life-changing ways. It was awesome to see him do that yesterday. People hit the altar after both of our services, something they have hardly been able to do for a couple years now because our chairs were all the way TO the altar. We are super-grateful for the tool God has blessed us with. Now we need him to bless us with a parking miracle. Come Lord Jesus, and bring parking spaces. We had around 1600 adults in our two services, around 200 middle school students in RushHour and somewhere around a billion little kids in Tiny Town, FamJam and KidJam. It is kind of a scary feeling to open your new facility that was built FOR GROWTH and have most of its resources packed out the first week. I am sure that numbers will drop some after the curiosity wears off, but still, WOW.

Well, since this blog is supposed to be technical, I should say something technical. Our main service went off almost without a glitch at all. The only issues I faced yesterday were wireless mic signals dropping out a bit. Just a growing pain/learning curve. We had 8 vocal mics, 3 speaker mics, 1 guitar and 11 in-ear monitors all on Sennheiser wireless systems in the main room. In children it was 8 speaker mics, in youth it was 3 vocal mics and 2 in-ears. Needless to say, there is going to have to be more frequency coordination. Worship in the main service turned out great. It was awesome to be in the back and see so many people engaging the Lord like that. The music is coming across full and clear, two things I am thankful for. Our engineer from Baker Audio spent a few hours Saturday night tweaking the room system after our first worship service in there Friday night. He was able to finally hear some tings I had been hearing after his last visit and get them cleared up.

Ok, back to resting for me. I am still whipped.

-Travis