New Rehearsal Time beginning in January

As most of you already know, we are changing Celebration times starting in January of the new year on January 1st and 2nd. (Saturday @ 5:30pm, Sunday @ 9am, 10:30am and 12 noon) Obviously, this will effect our rehearsal time on Saturdays. So beginning January 1st we'll begin rehearsal at 4:30 and tech crew call time will be at 4:15pm. This may change how we handle dinner on Saturday nights. We may switch from providing dinner Saturday night to breakfast Sunday morning. Let me know if you have a preference or any questions. Thanks!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I wanted to take a short moment to wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving. This is one of my favorite holidays of the year. It is an important time for me to pause and reflect on everything God has provided for, and done. I have more blessings than I can count and honestly I get a little overwhelmed thinking about all he has provided and how little I really deserve any of it. I am so thankful to have Stephanie and Spencer in my life, and a cozy roof over my head and a job that I love. Many of good people, friends and family fill my life, even though I am very flawed. I guess we all are undeserving, but The Father still saw to it to make a way to redeem us to Him through His Son. That's what is most mind boggling to me, that He gave His one and only Son. When I watch Spencer play it is hard to fathom how agonizing that must have been. Hard to imagine, but I am thankful for His grace and mercy. I wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving, I pray that each of you get to spend valuable time with your families, and remember what He has done for you.

Change for the New Year

Here is a quick note about a change in 2011.

Celebration's times will shift starting in 2011 on the first weekend of the new year, January 1 and 2. Saturday night will move to 5:30pm and Sunday morning will shift slightly to 9am, 10:30am, and 12pm noon. This will give more time for Children's ministry to get kids checked in and out, and will give us a little more of a breather between celebrations.

This will adjust rehearsal times for us on Saturday, I'll update you on those times as soon as we set them.

Short update

You might have noticed that the house-right auditorium projector has gradually been looking worse and worse. It has a dingy yellow cast to it. The only way to fix it is to send it back to Panasonic. Since we are on the cusp of new equipment all around we have been trying to stretch it until the upgrade. But it just has gotten worse and worse each week. Fortunately, the guys at CSG said we can get the new projectors and put them to use right now. Leadership approved the expense, so we will be getting the new projectors in the next couple of weeks. They are 15,000 lumens so we may use them in 7,500 lumens mode at first and save some of those lumens for the rest of the upgrade. We'll use them in 4:3 mode until the rest of the upgrade in January. I imagine that the screens will really pop just in time for the Christmas show.
Your Brother in Christ,
Bryan

Video Booth Upgrade Update

Hi Team,
After months of research, discussion and deliberation we have chosen a vendor for the upgrade to High Definition video. We went with Church Solutions Group out of Chicago. They are owned by the same guy who designed all of Willow Creeks tech set ups, Bruce Smith.
If you're interested you can check them out @
www.churchsolutionsgroup.com

So here are the basics right now...(which are subject to change)
3 High Definition Panasonic HPX-370 cameras. 2 of which will sit at the back of the auditorium floor, on risers, against the back wall.
One of these will be equipped with an 18X lens with a Lens doubler, effectively making it a 36X lens. This will be the pastor close up/follow cam.
The second one will have a 17X lens and will follow pastor wide, probably head to toe, maybe even wider, but we'll see.

The third Panasonic HPX-370 will be a side view (probably baptistry side but exact location hasn't been determined yet) and also have a 17X lens.


The 370's will have tally lights, nicer zoom and focus controls, return video(which means you'll be able to push a button and see what is in program)

Next, there is a 4th camera which is a smaller Panasonic HPX-170 which can be a hand-held camera or we can lock it down somewhere, we will use it most likely on stage. This camera will very closely match the 370 b/c most of the electronics are exactly the same only the body is different.


We will be using a Panasonic HS450 video switcher which can mix HD and SD sources but ultimately puts out a full HD image.


Also replacing our current projectors which are 3200 lumens(measure of brightness) with 15,000 lumens High Def projectors. They are going to look AMAZING!


Along with the technical changes, we'll have a chance to change some aesthetics in the booth, probably a coat of paint, possibly removing some or all of the counters and maybe make the booth a better place in which to hang out. The new equipment will take up much less space and we should be able to turn the current work space to where the director can just look to his right to see the stage.

Anyway, at this date it will be very tough to get this comfortably done by the Christmas show. So we are pushing it back to start in January. In order to keep the bid down we will need some volunteer help when we start pulling out old gear and installing new gear and cables etc. We think it will take one to two weeks to completely make the change over. I will keep you all up to date right here as more and more details get sketched in. I am really excited to see this project get started. This is a HUGE puzzle piece in leadership's plan for macro and micro sites and we will continue participate in what God is doing through the church in Cincinnati. Exciting isn't?