Busy Saturday

I started off the morning today with a jolt.

"It's 8:30, Kris!" Rick nudged me awake. I was supposed to be at church for practice at 9 AM.

"OH, CRAP!" I hissed, leaping out of bed. I stayed up late last night working on that video editing project for church, and I guess my internal wake-up-at-6 clock had shut itself off. I threw on some clothes, ran a pick through my mangled hair, and left.

This morning, we had an orientation meeting at Grace Church, over on the east side. In a couple of weeks, all the churches in the area which were originally planted by Grace (including my own) are holding a giant worship service together at the convention center downtown. All of us who are participating in it had to get together and figure out what we're doing. The worship band (led by Jeff) practiced until 11:30 using Grace Church's sound system.

Can I just interject something here? I was rather underwhelmed by the sound system there at Grace. Their new sanctuary-area (completed just a few years ago, maybe two or three) was not at all set up with decent sound. It's an enormous room, roughly semi-circular, set up with pews (yuk -- I do NOT like pews, they're way too traditional and they're too permanent, meaning they can't all be taken up and the room used for other purposes). A church as big as Grace should've invested way more in their sound system, and I'm not just saying that because I'm a musician. As a worship planner and someone who's spend lots of time studying the issue, I find that a really really excellent sound system makes a major difference in the experience of even the least-musical person in the room. It ought to be THE main expenditure when a church is putting together their worship area, period. Stained-glass windows, carved oak trim... phooey. Useless crap. And this from an artistic person who loves beautiful things. Anyway, you can have the most talented musicians in the city volunteering in your church's worship band, and they'll still sound like a garage band if the sound equipment (and technicians) ain't good.

Anyway, the sound system at Grace is just NOT set up to handle a band. Period. From what I could tell, it's cobbled together with substandard, recycled junk. That equipment ought to be the stuff they use when they set up something outdoors or in the gymnasium. The stuff in their beautiful new worship area ought to be good.

Yes, I'm opinionated. And usually right.

Whatever else its flaws may be, FCC invested in an absolutely top-notch sound system, and it shows. I'm spoiled now, and that's a fact. I'm not content with crappy sound anymore. Yes, I'll make do when I need to -- and I won't complain if there's nothing anyone can do about it, such as if we're traveling in Brazil or something.

Which brings me to the afternoon, and SoulFire practice. The way I see it, we're never going to move ahead and actually take this thing somewhere until we have our own equipment -- speakers, amps, monitors, mics, instruments (for me, anyway), etc. It's going to cost an arm and a leg, but it's what I'm praying for -- if it's God's plan to take SoulFire someplace further, that is. It all belongs to God anyway, and if He wants us to use it to serve Him, He can certainly drop it into our laps.

SoulFire practice went exceptionally well. Tim asked us what we wanted to practice, and I immediately spoke up. "Great and Glorious King," I said.

Chagrined, Tim looked at me. "You're doing that on purpose, aren't you?"

You see, I've noticed that Tim seems very reluctant to do the originals that he wrote. I think it's because he feels a little like it's self-serving or something. I look at it just the opposite, however. The songs he wrote, are really OUR songs. They're SoulFire's songs... sort-of our signatures as a band. They're what sets us down the path of being more than just a cover band. Tim may have written them, but they're mine now, and Mark's, and AJ's, and Amy's. And even Mike's and Steve's. They're ours. And if I have to keep encouraging and pestering Tim to embrace his talent and own it unashamedly, then I will.

Anyway, I insisted that I wanted to play G&GK, so we did. We actually haven't played it in quite a while, and were a little rusty, but once we stretched ourselves back into it, it sounded beautiful. Whenever I listen to the SoulFireLive CD, I remember that it was probably the second or third time I ever played G&GK, and now that it's been a few months since that first concert, I can hear so many places that I'd like to have done differently. I'm so much better at it than I was then. But oh well!

After we'd practiced that, Tim opened the floor again for suggestions (he's a reluctant leader, that's certain) and I piped up again. "I want to do 'Surrender'," I said. He looked at me again with that look. This time, Mark backed me up, as did Steve. So we did it, and then Tim had a suggestion for a slight change in the way we did the song. We added in the change and it sounds fabulous! I can't wait to do it again, and to eventually do it in concert somewhere.

I also spent some time this afternoon reading my statistics textbook. Yeah, that was a big thrill, let me tell you. Standard deviations, z-scores and histograms -- oh my!