Inside the Christmas Eve Experience

This is a few days late but thought I’d give you a peek into a very exciting yet very challenging Christmas Eve Experience.

• The first challenge for us was the fact that unlike a Sunday morning, there were movies going on before and during our worship experience in the other theaters.
• I had to go over to the theaters in the afternoon to get some stuff out of storage in the children’s theater between movies.  We didn’t use this theater at all on Christmas Eve so we had limited windows to get in and out.
• I had also intended on starting to pull some stuff out of the main theater between movies in the afternoon but I misread the schedule so that meant nothing was able to get done beforehand.
• We have our set-up on Sunday mornings down to about an hour in the main theater but for Christmas Eve we were planning on setting up a lot more additional items so we knew the time table would be pushing it.
• We were allowed into the theater at 5:05pm and our scheduled start was 7pm.
• I quickly noticed that everyone was moving at a faster pace than normal…we also had some additional helpers since the K-5th grade area didn’t need to be set-up.
• Turns out additional help may not have been such a good thing.  :)
• On Sunday mornings everyone knows their role and does there part from start to finish.  In other words, if you run a wire then you’re also the person to hook up that wire in it’s proper location.
• With the additional help we were able to say…”run this cable from here to there”.  That didn’t mean they were hooking it up just that they laid them out.
• And that’s where the problem came.
• One of the cables goes from the computer in the back to a monitor down front that allows myself and the band to see what’s on the movie screen behind us.  That cable is about 100 feet long and just barely is long enough to go from computer to screen.
• There is another cable that then goes from the computer to the projector in the rear.  It is only about 25 feet long but looks identical to the other longer one.
• The problem was someone saw the cable laying there and assumed it was the shorter one.  In other words the longer cable got hooked into the projector.
• I was down front and I noticed the cable wasn’t yet hooked into the monitor…the problem though was we were about 15-20 feet short….hmmmm wonder what’s going on?
• I told the guys we had too much slack in the line and we needed to tighten it up so the cable could reach.
• People start pulling on the cable thinking that we should have plenty of slack….and the next thing you know the projector goes toppling over.
• For those of you who haven’t seen it, this is the same kind of projector the movie theater uses…in other words…not cheap.
• As I watch, they realize oops wrong cable, and switch it out for the right one.  At first glance it appears everything survived.
• It’s not until later after other stuff had been set-up that I went up to try to bring the projector into focus and realize…uh-oh…it’s not coming into focus.  I’m turning the focus dial for all it’s worth and nothing!
• However, I did notice that if I pushed hard on the lens it would come back into focus.
• So we recruited a couple of people who’s job it would now become to constantly hold the lens in it’s proper place for the next hour.
• Finally we tried wedging something in…turns out a door stopper and a wadded up ball of tape can do wonders!
• Thankfully it held the whole time and no one was able to tell.
• Please pray though…the projector is still in the shop for repairs and we’re probably looking at hundreds if not even up to a thousand dollars to get it fixed.
• Lesson learned= When in a rush situation it’s better to go with less people who can do their normal routine than to try to fit in a few new people.
• To be clear…no one was to blame for what happened…it was a bunch of people all trying to do the best they could in a very pressure packed time period and things like this sometimes happen.
• Now with that out of the way…we still had tons of other stuff to get done.
• Big thanks to Andy for getting the additional lights all hooked up.
• While all this is going on, the band by then was trying to do some sound checks, but unlike normal where we can do a full run through with lights, projection, videos, work on transitions, etc…time was running out.
• In fact, we never opened the doors for people to come in until 6:55pm.
• I was definitely praying more than usual…we had so many extra cues and elements than normal…how would it all go?
• Our most elaborate element…the Little Drummer Boy never had a full practice run through  with lights and projection…again uh-oh, are we going to be able to pull this all off…it was going to be very dependent on the look and timing of everything.
• Finally we open the doors and people started pouring in…we had about twice the number of people in the main auditorium than we had just a few days before on Sunday so it took longer than usual for people to get seated.
• I hate starting late but it was about 5 after until the countdown was done and we’d get to see if God was going to bail us out.
• Oh boy did He!
• I won’t rehash each element that we did, but even from the start you could tell the crowd was into it.  From videos to special music, to singing along songs, everything ran smoothly and had a very special feel to it.
• A couple of things I will comment on…
• Big thanks to Steve Kurtz and Jeff Case for doing tons of work on the Little Drummer Boy special…and again thanks to Andy for setting up and writing lighting scenes on the fly.
• In case you haven’t seen it, you can watch the Little Drummer Boy special here.
• I was in the back watching and it was so cool to see the crowd keep getting more and more excited as the song went on.
• Jeff said it was funny the day they went to Lowe’s to buy the trash cans and told the employees, “Hope you don’t mind but were going to go back and play drums on your trash cans”.   He said they had a bunch of them set up in the aisle and they were both beating on them with drum sticks to see which one sounded best.
• Extremely proud of our team for pulling this off…great job guys and gal.
• You can listen to my message for the evening here.
• I talked about getting to know the real Jesus and used this clip from Talladega Nights to help illustrate that many people have a false understanding of who Jesus is.
• At the end…9 more people prayed and asked Jesus to forgive them of their sins and become the leader of their lives.
• That now brings us up to 50 people who have made professions of faith since we started 9 weeks ago!
• Hoping to see many more than that in 2011.
• All in all Christmas Eve was a wonderful night…we learned some lessons for next year and I can’t wait to see the progress we make between now and then.
• This weekend we begin a new series called, “I Believe in You”.
• We think this is going to have a huge impact on both individuals lives and the church as we begin 2011.
• See you then…and don’t forget to invite along a friend!