Run with God

Saluting Media Volunteers

Crazy weekend. This week the CFPB Media Crew produced the Saturday sermon portion of the service to be distributed to every multisite venue. Literally, more people will see the Saturday night message on tape than will see the service live.

We nailed the visual elements of the service. We introduced digital signage on the stage during the teaching... a plasma on a rolling cart that is a mirror image of our center screen... and pushed any sermon illustrations (videos, photos, graphics) on that plasma/center screen instead of putting them on the side screen. Very effective. (Already had several people mention to me that they liked it).

And as hard as we worked to nail the visual elements, we had an audio problem (most likely an interfering frequency) with Rick's wireless mic. Sounded like Rice Crispies (Snap, Crackle, Pop) for the majority of the sermon. Not bad live, but HORRENDOUS on tape.

Our plan (as discussed) was during video teaching weeks if the quality is sub CF standards... we need to reshoot the message Saturday night after the service. And that's what we did. 'Til about 10pm Saturday night.

Thanks to Rafael F, Mike C, Charlie B, Keith T, Hector H, Anthony P, and Brian L for sticking around, working through the problems, and helping us produce the message for Video Teaching. CF Media Volunteers are STUDS!

Mental note: Always have a backup plan in place. And don't be afraid to use it.

CFPB Debuts HD, New Control Room

Need to give props to the CF Media Staff and Volunteers...

CFPB debuted our new control room, new HD equipment, new systems for Worship Lyrics and Sermon Slides, tripled the number of cameras... and the service went phenomenal. Couldn't believe how well everyone adapted to the new control systems...

We're not quite at 100%, but we're close. Black burst is not quite working yet on some video inputs, and we're missing a "key" component... our second switcher!

Check out the video below to see a sample of our services...

CFPB Miami Easter Service from Jeff Reed on Vimeo.

Special props need to go to Hector Huyo, who put in a ton of extra hours to get the services working. He really did an incredible job. Kudos to volunteers Charlie Bearham and Juan Musino for directing in the new setup... they adapted very quickly.

On another note, check out Vimeo.com, a challenger to YouTube... I like the compression algorithms MUCH BETTER, although it took well over an hour to upload this video.

CFRedland: "Feels Like Christmas"

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas... and not because we're on the backside of Black Friday, either.

Today was my first opportunity worship at CF Redland. I've blogged it. Cosy. Intimate. Coffeehouse atmosphere. Today I and a packed house at CFR got to experience it. The worship center was packed from wall to wall with people. (It was so crowded there were 6-10 people sitting in the worship center lobby for the length of the service). One of the natives at CFR (read: former member of First Baptist Church of the Redlands) made the comment to me "This many people here only happens at Christmas."

I hear what you're saying... "If it's wall-to-wall people then CF Redland doesn't need my help." NOT TRUE! In the coming weeks we're moving to two services, and we need plenty of volunteers down here. Construction on the children's area is already starting, and when we do a complete launch in 2008 we'll have plenty of room for you at CFR.

Carlos Lollett led a great, acoustic worship set. Rick taught and looked like he felt at home. The room was alive, receptive, vibrant...

I am continually impressed with CFRs Media crew. Met another one of their video/iMag guys, Justin... ends up I went to High School with him. The service went flawlessly. We integrated a Mac Laptop running ProPresenter, in about five minutes, and with 10 minutes of training/orientation - we were set.

Eric's hyped about the photo too! Check out his blog.

God, thank you for allowing us to be part of your plan in Miami. Thank you for the opportunity to serve.

CF Homestead: Weekend Whirlwind

Five letters. Crazy.

There are some weekends where things run smoothly. Praise God this one ended smoothly, but it took a while for us to get there. I often joke that all I do is control chaos. Well, today I don't know how much I controlled it, but there was chaos.

At CF Homestead this morning, two minutes into Mighty to Save, the last song before we were supposed to start the Video Teaching...the lights flickered. I immediately looked for Jorge, since he has a habit of tripping over cables and unplugging devices. I did not find Jorge, but seconds later the room went completely dark. No power in the building. Make that no power in the school. And no power at the homes on the other side of the canal. And no power all the way out at Harris Field. Evidently, no power anywhere in Homestead.

Let me give props where due. Berch and his band did an incredible job continuing on in worship. When the power went off, there was a hideous feedback from the speakers (and I'm still not sure where it came from), but Berch kept on playing accoustic, desperately trying to keep the ambience of worship. Drums picked up too. I did notice he was doing a lot of praying during the rest of Mighty to Save.

After seeing the band was okay, I went to get Jorge. With great joy I told him that it was time for the message, and with video teaching offline Jorge get's to preach. He got his Bible and in about four minutes hammered out what he was going to say.

Once Jorge was comfortable speaking in the dark, we dove into coordinating the next service. I will say this about Homestead campus... it really is a big family. I walked out into that hallway and had about 10 men itching to help the situation out. Matthew Oakey (one of my first blog subscribers) recommended generators. Chuck and Michael said they had generators, and we sent them home to get them. I sent Onan to get gas. Someone else got fans and indoor AC units. Somebody else had a bunch of extension cords.

We made it back with plenty of time to spare. I told the volunteers to put the generators into place, and we would set everything up ASAP.

Jorge, not realizing that the clocks were no longer working (b/c the power was out) was preaching the sermon of a lifetime, in the dark, with no microphone. He finally saw my signal to wrap it up (I think he could have gone for another hour) and we cleared out the building quickly so we could work to set up the generators for the service.

As God as my witness, as soon as we got the room cleared of all of the people, the lights come back on, and the building powers back up. Everyone gets excited and I make the (premature) call to strike the generators because the power is fixed. Not more than 2 minutes after I say that, the power goes out again.

Reliving my fear of Homestead Power, I did not want to have a completely powerless system for the 11:30 service. We set up the generators anyway, and ran all essentials (audio, video, screens, computers) from two different generators. I was doubtful that two generators could handle the load, but I was happy with the results. At least we know now it can be done.

And the power did come back on before the 11:30 service was to start, so we had complete light and AC for the service. So we basically went crazy for about an hour for no reason, but I think God realized I needed to work on stress management.

I will say this. CF would not exist if not for our volunteers. Every week I'm in awe that people continue to give the way they do, and am thankful that they have taken ownership of CFs vision the way they have. Thank you for bouncing ideas, asking questions, analyzing situations, and basically making CF what we are today.

CF Homestead: Six Minutes

After 12-13 weeks of doing CF Homestead, we've finally gotten to the point where the technology is no stress. Video teaching has worked flawlessly for three weeks in a row. We've been using ProVideoSync by Renewed Vision. The software is not flawless, but it does operate like most propietary software I've ever worked with... once you figure out how it thinks, it'll work a lot better for you.

Rick showed up about five minutes behind schedule today. When the worship set is wrapping up and the preacher hasn't showed up yet.... that is a very LONG FIVE MINUTES. We had to throw Jorge on stage (who did a great job vamping while we got Rick set.

Summer is almost here. Other than the obvious climactic changes, you know it's coming because volunteers are starting to be out/away/gone a lot. In talking about infrastructure I wanted to share with you what happened today.

We were missing a lot of volunteers today. I'm totally okay with that. One of my volunteers went on vacation. I asked him before he left what a "vacation" was. I had heard of the word, before, but never quite experienced one before. Another volunteer has a work increase, and is stepping back from the amount he can serve. Two more just finished moving their house, and weren't available after the service for teardown. Several musicians had to leave quickly to lead worship at another venue. Others had to run quickly back to the Palmetto Bay campus because we had "Connection Classes" at that campus.

Point: we were missing a lot of media volunteers. Literally, probably six to eight. And when your crew is ten-twelve people, six to eight missing is a lot. Thankfully, we had a bunch of people come over from other areas. There were people walking up and diving into the work. "What can I do?" "Need any help?" "Where does this go?" These are some of my favorite words!

At the end of the day, I was missing two thirds of my volunteer crew... and we finished everything we were supposed to do six minutes behind schedule from what we should have (if I had a full crew). Teardown takes two hours, and we lost six minutes. Thank God for volunteers!

Rick finished up his Pursuit of Happiness [Beatitudes] series today. Another series put to bed. I think Eric is preaching this week... let's see if we can finally beat the dreaded "Curse of the Geiger." When Eric preaches, it seems we always have technical problems. We've been glitch-free for several weeks now... here's hoping I can say that after next week.

CF Homestead: Hitting the Ground Running

I couldn't sleep last night. My spirit was really on edge. Someone told me today that my two posts last night (Healing and Ten Ways to Hear God) were unintelligible garbage. Evidently I need to apologize for making my readers read unintelligible garbage. I apologize. I was very restless... I couldn't wait for this morning @ CFH.

The services went off without any technical problems. It's been a while since I've been able to say that. Praise God. We needed a smooth service.

Today just felt good. My wife and I were discussing it earlier. CF Homestead is fun. We've got a great group of volunteers, and I will never be able to express truly how much they are appreciated. I came in with a green, unexperienced crew and they truly do shine, adopting to changes in procedures and parameters practically every week. BTW this was our eleventh week of services at CFH. Not that the number is important. It just doesn't feel like eleven weeks.

VOLUNTEER FESTIVAL IS THIS WEEK. FRIDAY, MAY 11TH, 7PM @ THE PALMETTO BAY CAMPUS. BE THERE! IF YOU'RE COMING, REGISTER!

I've worked with churches across this country, and CFH is the first church that feels like a mission field. There's a vibe on the campus. An excitement. A desire. An expectation. Every week we wait for God to show up. Every week we pray for lives to be changed. Every week we work to create an environment of worship to help people Connect to God. And every week we are fortunate enough to see the fruits of our labors blessed by God. God, thank you for the harvest.

Video Teaching, for the first time ever, worked on both Palmetto Bay and Homestead Campuses without any problems. You have no idea how much of a stress relief that is. We have been FREAKING OUT over this, and having the bugs worked out may in fact allow me to start growing hair again.

Rick preached on the Beatitudes "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God." The one glitch we had today was Rick's mic didn't work when he started teaching. (Evidently there is an inset switch on the beltpack that turns the gain that pads the gain up or down. When we tested the mic an hour before everything was fine. When he gets up to speak, that inset switch was switched to -10db, and Rick was not to be heard). Normally this is panic time. He putzed around with the pack for a second, and then called out "uh, Jeff, what do you want me to do?" I bolted for the stage wondering how we were going to continue if his mic didn't get fixed. Since I've heard his sermon twice already I honestly did have the thought "Well, if the mic won't work at least I know the material well enough to preach it." Thankfully, the sound techs fixed the problem in a very short time, and the Homestead audience laughed as we tried to show them "how many idiots it takes to get a mic to work." Thank God you didn't get to hear my version of Rick's message. It would have looked awfully silly to have me introduce my grand-daughter to the audience during my opening illustration (after all, I am only 29).

God, thank you for giving me a calling in life. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to fulfill my calling. And thank you for letting me have fun while I'm doing it!

CF Homestead: It's starting to get fun...

Okay, about this whole BOO-YEAH thing... I really was just kidding about it, but I'll drink the cool-aid. BOO-YEAH for everyone. I found myself saying it several times this morning. It was a good morning.

Since we started the service we have had a lingering technical problem involving a video scaler/switcher that would enable us to switch from a VGA feed to a COMPONENT feed and then output it to a RGBHV Cable hooked up to a HD Projector. Confused? So was I. The good news is that the TVONE 1250 seemed to do the ticket. That made me VERY HAPPY today. I was caught giving a boo-yeah outloud.

Also this week, we had another church's leadership come out. Jorge has been talking with another church plant. Relevant Church is growing in the Miami Lakes area, and they are looking at setting up a portable campus in a cafetorium (sound familiar?). I enjoyed talking with their techie guys, explaining some of the why/where/how in what we do. I've come to a realization that I cannot change the world by myself. Part of being missional is realizing that we need others out there to help us fight the war! To Relevant Church, let's get together!

We were able to say hello to an old friend today. We brought back our original stage... and banished the new stage deep into the storage bin. Mental note for anyone dealing with portable stage... always get stages where the base/legs are separate from the top... I've never really seen volunteers commit mutiny before, but I almost had it last week! Aside from the stage weighing in at 10,000 lbs... 1) it was too low -- 2) the stage transport (which nearly killed me a month ago) broke -- 3) it wasn't durable... needless to say, everyone is much happier now.

Next week we'll probably be using a new camera (JVC GY-HD250) which will allow us iris control in the control room. No more of Rick getting washed out! WooHoo! Not to mention we can start broadcasting the services in HD soon. BOO-YEAH!

We had over 400 people on our campus this week (first time non-Easter). I gotta say, I didn't think we would be growing at this speed. I also wonder how much longer we can keep up at this pace in our current facilities. The great thing is that God will provide...

Thank you, God, for allowing us to work harder for Your Kingdom. Give us the strength and time to do what You would have for us.

Easter Revisited

The downside of 1) owning several Christ-centered businesses and 2) working as a Church production director is that every religious holiday (Easter, Christmas) my workload increases. Even though the time is meant to serve as a time to draw reflection upon the sacrifice of Christ, for me my intimate times don't come around Easter, or December, but in the random times when I can get a couple days off, or in that long commute when I can turn the radio off and pray...

Now that I've guilted myself into "slow-down" mode, let me tell you about my Easter.

Every week I have the pleasure of seeing church on two campuses, Palmetto Bay and Homestead. I love it because it's one church, two campuses, yet the feel/environment is completely different...

Palmetto Bay, this Saturday night, was probably the most vibrant, passionate, energetic crowd I have EVER seen at Christ Fellowship. I've seen some incredible worship services, I've seen some that I wish I could forget. The audience connected with the worship environment that Sammy, Hector, and the rest of the Palmetto Bay Media crew worked to establish. Seriously, order the DVD. The audience was packed, hanging on every note, every verse, every word, every teaching point. Thank you, God, for showing up.

So you've got the big gun, mega-production of Palmetto Bay this weekend... and you've got the intimate settings of Homestead. Well, intimate if you count almost 500 people on campus intimate. We had a lot of new faces on campus today, and I hope and pray that through our service they were able to connect with God. We still have our issues on campus, but the problems are mostly equipment issues, not operator issues... Every week I'm more and more impressed by our volunteers. I know you all read this every week and think that I'm pandering to the crowd. I can say, though, without a doubt that CF Homestead would not be in existance without these people.

After Easter my parents somehow ended up hosting an Easter dinner with just about every CF Pastor under the age of 32 (and their spouses, kids). And if you know the church, you realize that we had like 16 people at the house. Crazy. Mom cooked paella, one of the best dishes she does. (She doesn't cook often, but when she does... O man is it good!)

Afterwards we ended up playing Nintendo Wii for a couple hours. For the record, I beat Jorge Molina in boxing (I was accused of being a big bully). I've added Jorge's name to a growing list of "people I've beat the crap out of" even if that happened in Nintendoland. Eric and Todd ran the table in doubles tennis... (I say that only because I know Eric reads the blog, and if I don't give props he'll give me flack).

Now it's 11pm Easter night, Amy and Beowulf are off to bed, and I'm alone with my thoughts. Another "Christian" holiday has come and gone, and honestly I don't think I gave it the respect due this year. In the Mary/Martha spectrum I have always landed squarely on Martha.

God, thank you for the quietness of this moment. Thank You for Your sacrifice. Lord, let my busyness not be wasted for earthly benefit, but use these hours for the development of Your Kingdom. And please, in these quiet moments, reveal Yourself. Thank you, again, for Your sacrifice. Honestly, I still do not understand why would waste your time on someone like me... but I'm glad you did.

O praise the One who paid my debt and raised this life up from the dead

Boo-Yeah and Baptism

Before I get into the Homestead wrapup, I wanted to say thanks to everyone who gave me the good 'ol fashion BOO-YEAH today. I'm flattered that so many of you actually read this stuff, and that my words can cause such a reaction from bright, intelligent adults. Hey, I got a great idea. Let's start a new fad at CF Homestead. Next week everybody give me $5.

The CF Homestead show felt solid this week. It was produced as best possible. Unfortunately, there were some kinks that were out of our control. (We had to enact the "Duct Tape Philosophy" several times). We had hard drives crash on both campuses, our HD feed for video teaching got corrupted, and another hard drive literally decided to jump off a counter and go crashing to it's death on tile floor. Needless to say, I wasn't standing around looking pretty that much this week. (Hector, one of my MANY bosses, was out of town for most of the week, so I did double duty @ CF Palmetto Bay on Saturday night. That always equates to a CRAZY WEEKEND!)

At Homestead, we've conquered the technology much faster than I would have anticipated. I feel like the volunteers understand what they're doing, which makes me want to do more! It's my tendancy to build that makes me want to push the lever up another level.

Rick preached this week. Having wrapped up the WAR series, Rick wanted to do one sermon that focused on the act of Baptism, and how our obedience literally brings out the "applause of God". It was a great message, using several media illustrations. First we showed last year's Beach Baptism Video, which you can see here. Initially the worship band played "From the Inside Out" for this video, but this week we played the vid under "Nothing But The Blood" (which helped promote the Easter Season).

Rick wanted another element as part of the sermon. Check out the video below... commonly referred to as Cannonball Baptism.

BTW, if you watched this video in the sermon, you really should watch the full clip (above). The funniest part of the video is not the action, but the REaction from the Pastor. That just made me want to smile.

It's exciting to see the ministry of the church expand. We had two people accept Christ today, and there were several other rededications/renewals. The CF Homestead youth group baptized 5 people in Eric's pool earlier this week. Since the campus is smaller than Palmetto Bay, you get to see people's faces. You hear the reactions. You get to experience them. They are no longer faces on the other side of a TV screen, they are legitimate people seeking to be connected to God... Being in Homestead reminds me of what ministry is all about. And I'm loving every second of it.

In closing, Rick's Quote of the Day: "At the end of my days, I'd rather burn out than rust out!" AMEN, er, BOO-YEAH!

Band-Aid Weekend @ CF Homestead

When I was Production Director at CF Palmetto Bay, I operated on the Duct-Tape Philosophy...that philosophy basically says "when it breaks, don't fix it...just get through the weekend and worry about it later. At all cost the current weekend must work smoothly." The Duct-Tape philosophy worked well for me there.

At CF Homestead, I'm adopting a new philosophy, the Band-Aid Philosophy, which calmly states that "when things come crashing down on you, try not to get hurt."

If you're one of my regular readers, you may think I'm speaking figuratively here. Nah, take it quite literally this time. This week I did everything in my abilities to hurt myself:
-a solid steel carrier/rack decided to collapse on me, giving me a deep bruise on my knee
-the stage rack decided to collapse on me a second time, fully loaded with stage, and there were no volunteers around to dig me out of the rubble
-a bunge chord snapped today, and the broken end of the chord decided to wrap itself around my head, giving me a cool "scarface" look for a couple days.

When I was in high school, my dream was to be a roadie for my friend's band. Now, I remember why I don't want to be a roadie. There's not enough band-aids.

This week was great at CF Homestead. The show is really coming together. More than that, the volunteers are taking ownership. I love it when a volunteer comes up to me and has a "what if" conversation.
"What if we lit the stage differently?"
"What if we rearranged the stage?"
"What if we EQed Jorge differently?"
"What if we used this door instead?"
"What if we raised the camera platform higher?"

It's enthralling to me when a volunteer understands their area so well they discover ways to do it better. That is when Jeff works himself out of a job.

It was pretty cool. During the services I really didn't do anything. After five services the crew really is clicking and I basically stand around looking pretty (and trying not to get hurt during set up and tear down).

On a side note, this week Eric did a great video illustration during his sermon today... involving Mentos and Diet Coke. View the video here. And for more information on how the Diet Coke/Mentos thing works, check out EEPYBIRD.COM or Discovery Channel's Mythbusters taking a crack at the scientific reasons why Diet Coke and Mentos should not go together.

Great weekend. Can't wait to see what God brings next week!