Danny ChaiSometimes I hate that I’m so cerebral. One tiny little thing that registers cognitive confusion can completely take me out of a moment. It sucks. But I yam what I yam.
For example, when to refer to each person of the Trinity completely confuses me. The concept of the Trinity is confusing enough. But when do you refer to each person? If someone could explain it to me, I’d really appreciate it, because I have no clue. To be safe, and because I’m not sure I see in Scripture otherwise, I just always pray to God (the Father). I think that’s fully acceptable. But some – I’m going to say most – Christians switch around and pray to the other Persons from time to time, most notably Jesus. And that usually throws me off of the moment. It’s not that it’s wrong – I’m pretty sure it’s not. It’s just that I personally don’t understand it, when to pray to who. I actually think I’d understand it more if I were Catholic, as they have a system of patron saints that kind of frames how to pray to someone besides God. But as a Protestant, I don’t.
Same thing with worship. I’m actually more OK with singing to different Persons in songs. Come to think of it, I have no idea why there would be any difference to me between songs and prayers, but there is. But when we switch things up in the middle of a song – confusion. For example, at church a few weeks ago, we were singing that Chris Tomlin song, King of Glory. A song I like, and I was into it. But the lyrics confuse me. I think it’s based on Psalm 24, maybe I’m wrong, and that Psalm I think is referring to God. And most of the song refers to God as well. Except at the end, where it sticks in a Jesus reference. Huh? Are we singing to/about God or Jesus or both? And when for each? I have no idea why this confuses me so much, but it does.
Speaking of worship, I had a conversation with ach years ago that I’ve never forgotten, where he talked about how running the slides for worship is one of the most important (and undervalued) parts of worship. If a musician, even the worship leader makes a mistake, in general most of the people can continue. But when the person running slides is distracted or whatever and late in changing slides, it throws a ton of people off. Worship teams spend so much time practicing the music and virtually no time on the slides, when the latter has the greater potential (often realized) to totally interfere with the congregation’s ability to worship.
He was/is absolutely right. When I’m sitting in the congregation and that happens, I either just give up on singing (if I don’t know the song) or just get distracted. So when I run the Powerpoint, I’m super anal about it – I write down (or memorize) the slide numbers so I don’t have to scroll across slides to e.g. get from 2nd verse to chorus and am vigilant about switching slides right after the last line has been sung. It makes a difference. SN. Many others at Baylight are as, or more vigilant with the Powerpoint. I think the most vigilant of the numerous vigilantes was Marcia. She was always my favorite Powerpoint person when I led.
Because of this, it pains me when I mess up, and I totally did last week, royally screwing up 2 slides. In my defense, I was mixing at the same time (I’m even more anal about sound than Powerpoint, so I actively adjust levels pretty much throughout the entire service. One example of my anality – I have a sound theory that marked differences in volume level cause a similar break in energy. Specifically, after the music, when there’s announcements or the sermon, the volume level of the mic is frequently far lower than of the music that just finished. When the difference is too dramatic, people’s attention drops just as dramatically. You can almost see it in the body language. So when I run sound, I pump up the post-music mic level so it’s as close to the level of the preceeding music as is reasonable. But that level is not the level it should naturally be at. So I gradually trim the level of the speaker’s mic throughout the service until it’s at where it should be. I’m that anal. But it matters. Only at our church though, because the music tends to be too loud and the speaker’s mic too soft. When I’ve visited megachurches with great sound systems, they keep the music from being too loud and the speaker from being too soft. You can tell because they frequently have the speaker talk during the end of the music, or have the music start while the speaker is still talking, and the levels are right so you can still hear the speaker. We couldn’t do that – the speaker would be drowned out by the music. No one is reading anymore). But it still pains me.
I think I just spent half an entry bragging. Whoops.