One for the storybooks...

It's a funny thing...no matter how professional one is, the weirdest technical difficulties can happen to anyone. Experience does not matter. Experience will affect how you handle the difficulties, of course, but it will not keep the difficulties from happening.
I'm not saying that I'm Miss Professional or that I have years and years of experience, but I'm just saying--Even the best experience mad feedback sometimes.

Let me put a disclaimer here: I have the privelege of working with some of the most dedicated and diligent volunteers in the universe. Seriously. The band is fantastic, the tech team is wonderful and consistently cheerful, and I couldn't ask for a better group of people. This is not to speak badly about my team at all. My point is that even the best can experience the worst in technical difficulties.

So this past Sunday, we had more technical difficulties than ever. It was almost as bad as some of my Downtown experiences, and those are doozies. Another blog, perhaps.

To give you the whole picture, let's kick it off at 8am. I, of course, was running late, mainly because I just HAD to make a Starbucks run. While I'm going through the drive-through, I call my drummer Gale to make sure the sound guy knew where to put the keyboard. I was all proud of myself because I thought I was being super-diligent and a good leader. At that precise moment, my stomach decided that it was time to react to what I had eaten for dinner the night before. It was not happy, just to let you know. That became an on-going problem for most of the morning, which made everything that happened during that time so much worse.

I finally get to the church around 8:20, and not much is set up. We're supposed to start rehearsing at 8:30. Right. Turns out the main sound guy wasn't there, which is fine because the two back-up people are great, but this morning, for one reason or another, it was taking a lot longer. We didn't actually get powered up until 8:50. To add to the stress, I had not yet had a chance to rehearse the new song we were doing with the guitar player I had that day. So time was extremely limited and we had a lot of work to do--never a good combination.

At that moment, Geoff, Shawn, Josh and Jason arrive with about 12 pastors from around the country. I think God was laughing.

As they lined up in the back of the room to see how professional Summerville was during rehearsal, we finally got started. Things are going well, the song sounds good, and then--BOOM!!!!
The power on the left side of the auditorium (including the stage) shuts off.

Oh, the laughter heard in Heaven at that moment...

Then the sound people (KUDOS to Ron and Karen, by the way--seriously) somehow worked out the problem and at 9:10, we started working on the new song. This was a new worship song, by the way, that I had sent to everyone five days earlier. At 9:15 (15 minutes before the first service), we finished. Then I heard the tech lady in the back call out, "Was that a special?"--meaning that she had not yet entered it into the powerpoint so that everyone could read the words.

After my head spun around a few times, I calmly explained to her that, no, it wasn't, and I told her what I needed done.

It would be tedious to explain the rest, since it really just involved me on the verge of exploding (but holding it in rather well, I thought) after having person after person ask if I was okay. I hate that I wear everything I feel on my face.

The first service was rough, but then I got to play with little Nathaniel and the world was right again. After that, the second service went muuuuuuch better--Hallelujah!

At least I can laugh at those days now. I don't laugh during the actual event, but an hour or so later when I'm explaining it to my mom or Josh and it seems very, very funny.

Those are the times that determine your professionalism. And I think--I hope--I pray that we passed the test. Because I sure don't want those kinds of things happening often. Or ever.