RUNwithGOD

Acoustic Set @ CFPB

Had some fun this wknd at CFPB doing an all-acoustic set... Violin, Cello, Double Bass, Acoustic Guitars, Piano, Drums, Conga/Toys... it was nice to mix it up the worship little bit...

From the production standpoint, credit should go to (formerly) @steviewiwi, @therealfarr, @blanza, and @illestdunks for putting in major time redesigning the stage for the new worship elements. The service was AWESOME! The hard work paid off! As far as I'm concerned, @steviewiwi had the best mix of his life this wknd too! Unbelievable!

Sammy was off campus this wknd, so I stuck around at CFPB to make sure things rolled smoothly... what I found was that the volunteers had brought their "A" game, and I was rendered useless.

So, instead of just sitting around, I decided to take some photos...

   

   

       

    

    

     
 
Above are some of the best photos from the wknd, but if you're looking for more, check out http://bit.ly/CFPB_Acoustic to see them on Facebook. If anyone's looking for high res, hit me up online.

Don't know if you realize this, but at CFPB this wknd, the only paid staff person that was actively involved in CFPB's services this wknd was the Teacher (Dave Lopez) and the guy doing announcements (Tony Isaacs). That's how much we trust/value/appreciate volunteers in Worship/Media.

Thanks to the volunteers for continually making the SRVCs happen, not only at CFPB, but at all five campuses across Miami-Dade County. We could not do this without you!

In the Solitude, Missing the Chaos

 

Woke up wide awake at 2am. Enjoying the solitude of the moment. Check out @miBabyGirl sleeping in her new "Big Girl Bed" for the first time. Not sure if all kids are this way, but she is a contortionist-in-training when she sleeps. This is tame compared to some of the positions I find her balled up in.

Good news is she sleeps like her mother. I was able to take this pic with iPhone 4's flash (in a pitch black room) and she didn't even flinch. Bad new is she sleeps like her mother, who is the reason I'm awake now (b/c @incompleteview decided to start muttering things loudly in her sleep.) I'm sure @miBabyGirl will be the reason behind many sleepless nights to come as well.

God, thank you for these moments of solitude. Thank you reminding me, in these quiet moments, how much the chaos of my family means to me.

10 Thoughts on my iPhone 4

10. Hey Steve, you're a great visionary and an incredible salesman. Get someone in your organization that can help you develop a plan to release new devices. Your servers were locked up on PreOrder day, and it took me 3 hours to PreOrder my phone. I wanted to ship the device to my house, but by using the iPhone app shipping to my house was not an option so I have to brave the store for pickup. Then on Release Day at the store I have to stand in line for 5 hours waiting to pick up my PreOrdered iPhone 4? #FAIL.

9. It's heavier than I thought it would be. Glass feels good holding it. More solid that my 3G. Glass on front and back SHOULD last longer than the plastic backing on my 3G.

8. F-A-S-T. Never really played with a 3GS. But the difference between 3G and 4 is incredible. This phone FLIES. Even graphic-intensive games like WORMS are flawless in iPhone 4.

7. Multitasking opens a completely different functionality on the phone. Apps like LOOPT or Pandora running in the background? Awesome stuff. (I wish there was a way to select what applications stay open in Multitasking. Evidently I had Bubble Wrap open in my iPhone 4's memory for 48 hours, and I don't need easy access to pop bubbles...)

6. Signal drop? I really haven't had an issue with it. However, I purchased the $29 black bumper on ReleaseDay. Apple says that by using the bumper physical contact with the antenna is limited and your phone will work flawlessly. Guess your new iPhone 4 is a little more expensive than we thought.

5. I've had one FaceTime chat, and that was with @garyorr. During said conversation I had the thought: "Hey, I wonder if Gary is wearing pants right now..." FaceTime is cool, and definitely will have its place... but I think FaceTime will become like the Nextel "Direct Connect" Walkie Talkie system... it's cool to have, but you're still going to call someone b/c you want to have a private convo with them when you are in public.

4. iBooks on iPhone = Kindle on iPhone. If you could handle reading a book before, it's the same (except iBooks lets you choose what color to highlight). Speaking of Kindle, I forgot to "deregister" my old iPhone, and I've already wiped my old iPhone. As of right now I do not have access to the 20some books I purchased through the Kindle. #FAIL.

3. The camera app is incredible. Quality is so much better than 3G. Not to mention I can now do video for real. USTREAM is awesome now (and with the increase in processor speed and upload speed). iMovie for iPhone was okay, but not very intuitive. After downloading it took me a while to figure out simple tasks (like cutting)).

2. Retina Display. SHARP. CRISP. FOCUSED. This display is awesome. Brightness on it is ridiculous. Seriously, iPhone 4 as a flashlight could blind someone.

1. Battery. Oh won't someone please think of the battery. I'm a heavy user. Lots of data. Lots of voice. Lots of push notification. I get about 14 hours of usage out of my battery. Thankfully, I need it about 14 hours a day (7am-9pm). It's unfortunate that Apple cannot find/create/develop a battery that could actually make it through the day entirely...

In short (too late) I LOVE the phone! Worthy upgrade for anyone using a 3G or 3GS.

CFPB Family Day, the Good and the Bad

What a GREAT DAY that started horribly...

First the good. Today was awesome. So proud of our CFKids for putting on a GREAT SERVICE! The creativity in our student ministry is phenomenal. The stuff that they pull off, every week, is incredible.

And to CFPB Media volunteers, who step up their game every week, thank you for making it happen. For more CFPB Family Day pics, check out http://bit.ly/CFPB_FamilyDay

 

 

But this is the good, and I promised you the bad. CFPB's first Sunday srvc starts at 9am. I am in my office, printing up CFKids Drama scripts for the Deaf translator. The srvc is starting fine. At 9:03 @Jorriss calls my cell. He's MDing the wknd. "Hey Jeff. The sound board is dead. Thought you'd like to know."

Let's back up. Evidently at 9:01am our Soundcraft Power Supply decided to pop a fuse, rendering our FOH sound board useless.

Props to our volunteer @IsaacJT for diving into the situation, to @StevieWiwi for working on Plan "B" or Plan "C", and to @Jorriss for managing the chaos...

In total, the sound board was down for about 7 minutes. We missed part of the game and one worship song, but had the board back online during the worship set.

Great thing is by the beginning of the 10:30 service, we had the broken power supply repaired and available for use. (Always have a "Plan B"...) @IsaacJT had to con his way into a closed Radio Shack... good stuff!

Thanks to CFPB Media vols for owning the ministry, and continually achieving excellence while serving.

Family Night @ CFPB gets @miBabyGirl #SealOfApproval

Great night at CFPB. All CFMiami campuses are celebrating Father's Day by bringing the Way Station into the Worship Center. Games, Skits, Worship and a powerful message. Fun stuff...

All 1st thru 5th graders, instead of going to the Way Station, joined the adults in the worship service. Well, don't tell anyone, but I snuck @miBabyGirl into the worship service during the games, worship and skit.

So at some point this video cue gets fired on the VJ screen, and (according to Amy) @miBabyGirl says "OOOOOHHHH WWWWOOOOOOOWWWWW really loud. Yes, the CFPB Family Night has gotten the coveted @miBabyGirl #SealOfApproval... it actually made a 21 month old say OH WOW.

What else can a Production Director ask for?

I had publicly encouraged my volunteers to make this service very Nickelodeon... they had a lot of fun doing it. Lighting schemes, different VJ cues... tight execution and good stuff. A couple of the camera operators had a little too much fun and did some shots that I wasn't expecting. After the service one of them came up to me...

"So, what did you think of the camera shots..."
"Eh, I don't know..."
"Look. You said you wanted Nickelodeon. I watched two hours of Nickelodeon on TV this morning. That was Nickelodeon."
"You're right. I love it. It's Nickelodeon. Do it."

Love volunteers that dive into the vision of what we're doing, and push us to do bigger and better. Ownership is key. Thank you, media vols, for owning this ministry.

Photos, and (maybe) videos coming tomorrow. 

I'm hyped up for the worship tomorrow at all or campuses. Get to a campus, and make sure you catch the whole service. It's awesome! Happy Fathers' Day!

PS- If you're coming to CFPB, GET THERE EARLY so you can enjoy our 20' FISH TANK in the worship center.

10 Things I Think About (when I should be sleeping)

My blog serves record that I am an incurable insomniac. Lately, it's been getting bad again (doesn't help that I got the flu on vacation this past week). "Coughing up a lung" is not meant to be literal, right?..

So, here's a top 10 for you... 10 Thinks I Think About (when I should be sleeping)...

10) It's now 3am. My alarm was set for 7am. That means I can really snooze # number of times before I'm late to work.

9) I've got 2 hours of Scrubs on TiVO. Why don't I get up and watch some of those episodes again? That Doctor Cox guy is hilarious.

8) Hey, I should totally get on Twitter and harass @Jorriss. The beeping may wake him up. That'll teach him to pick on little ol' innocent me.

7) It's midnight in California. Maybe Steve Jobs just released some new gizmo in the past couple hours that I'll of course want immediately (since I'm a fanboy). I better preorder that sucker NOW before the rest of the world finds out... Huh. Apple's website looks like it did earlier. Maybe I should click refresh. Again. Again. Again. Again.

6) I miss Beowulf.

5) I don't care what people say. The 3am SportsCenter is so much better than the ones that people watch earlier. The editing so much tighter during the late night shift. (Think about it, then think about it some more...)

4) Unfortunately, logic does not always hold true. Dora the Explorer is just as uninteresting at 3am as it is during the day. However, the anticipation of Swiper swiping (or not swiping) is enough to keep me awake. Swiper, you've stolen my sleep once again.

3) Maybe if I log on Basecamp and assign a bunch of responsibilities to the (volunteer) Media Staff right now they'll actually do them... Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking either...

2) How am I supposed to keep up on Montel Williams if I don't stay up to watch his infomercials? A guy needs his Montel fix one way or another...

1) What if I write some ridiculous blog it will make me tired enough to go to sleep? Nope, that didn't work either.

Maybe this'll help... Matthew 6:27-34

So @THATSmiBOY finally has a name...

Caleb John Reed, or CJ for short, will be joining us in November. Caleb, Amy Caitlyn and I can't wait to meet you...

CFPB's Jumbo Screen, a volunteer creation...

If you've made it into CFPB lately, you may have noticed our new digital backdrop, an 18.5' x 8' Projection Screen placed on the floor in the middle of the stage. Occasionally, CFPB volunteers come up with CRAZY ideas. Most of them I laugh off or use as a training session in reality. @robertcrisler posed this idea, and after measuring it's cost-effectiveness and usefulness, we jumped.

Benefits of this are huge:

• During Worship portion of service, VJ is tightly integrated into camerawork.
• Next week, CFKids is coming in the WC, and among other things they are doing a skit. We're using the extra-large screen as a digital backdrop, establishing the look of the scene without a ton of messy props.
• During Teaching portion of service, backdrop reinforces the sermon series "brand" (graphic, color schemes, etc.) The screen serves as a really cool canvas for visual illustrations. If the teacher wants to show a photo as an illustration, we can do so in larger than life fashion. And on camera, the teacher is literally walking around in front of the illustration on the screen. The people can stay connected with him, and still take in the visual illustration.

Once we talked about the benefits it was a no-brainer... as long as it was cheap. We've been experimenting with Coroplast... a type of corrugated plastic sold in panels... To create the physical screen, we purchased several 8'x4' coroplast sheets, cut them to fit within our lighted truss frame, and stapled the sheets together. We also stapled the coroplast sheets to a grid of wooden 8'x1" strip (I think furring strip is the correct term?). Building this frame allows the screen to be hung from the top truss, and gives the screen something "more permanent" than tie wraps. The frame solved several problems: it made the screen straight, stable, and sturdy.

@robertcrisler then, with surgical precision, experimented with how to get the staples and coroplast seams to disappear. After 8-10 samples, the process of elimination led us to high quality scotch packing tape, and flat white paint to paint the entire screen (to give it a solid, seamless surface). Paint covered up the tape seams which covered up the staples, and the entire thing looks like a solid screen/wall... except it's made of low cost PLASTIC!

Cost on doing this was ridiculously inexpensive. A normal customized projection screen would cost in the thousands. Coroplast, with the flat paint, serves high quality functionality without breaking the bank. The coroplast was less than $200 (and we have a several sheets left over). Paint and furring strip wood was less than $50... So, for less than $250 we have this phenomenal, functional, custom-sized screen. Awesome.

Thanks to @robertcrisler and @thetarheelfan for putting in an INCREDIBLE amount of volunteer hours into making this happen.

(Another day I may blog about the logistical nightmare behind having a custom screen that is 25% wider than your standard HD 720p screen. Thanks to ProVideoPlayer and PVP's Network Node for making a incredibly difficult situation only semi-difficult.)

Clearing of the mind...

With the school year over, Amy and I took the opportunity to get away to contemplate some of life's dilemmas... like what to name @THATSmiBOY. Funny thing is, we've been struggling for months to come up with any names, and after an incredible dinner at a raw bar (that included island versions of your favorite Red Hot Chili Pepper songs) I'm proud to say we have a "frontrunner" for a name. And no, I'm not going to tell you yet.

There's something to be said about stepping back, away from the grind, and evaluating. It's amazing to me how clear the forest is when you are not in amongst the trees. God, thank you for being my purpose, my vision, my clarity.

@miBabyGirl on the beach is a BLAST. Been here 24 hours, and already we have 250 pics. I won't bore you with all of them, but feel free to check out my Facebook album.

CFMiami Media Vols, thank you for executing in my absence. Let's end the wknd strong. See you on Friday. PUMPED about Family WKND at all CFMiami campuses!

More soon...

Upcoming News: @THATSmiBOY debuts November 2010

Big news on the homefront. We announced that @miBabyGirl was going to be a big sister, and a couple days ago the doc told us that she'll have a little BROTHER. That's right, we're having a boy.

Honestly we were happy either way. Really. But it's nice knowing we've got the set done (and hopefully we can hush any talk about a third...)

Name for @THATSmiBOY? No idea. We will announce soon I'm sure (keep up with me on Twitter) but for now we cannot wait for the arrival of @THATSmiBOY