My Church Gig

It’s been too long since I’ve posted anything.  I wanted to wait till the dust settled but this particular dust seems to like to hang in the air a long time.

My church gig is taking on a different nature.  I’ll be going from full time lead audio guy at Cornerstone to joining the ranks of our awesome audio volunteer crew. We have some great guys here.  Turns out that my side programming gig has been God’s leading in a new direction.  I won’t bore you with the deets but I’d like to be a little see-through for a breath or two about the process.  Maybe you’ll find some encouragement in my recent experience.

I’m moving from my church gig into freelance development, primarily with Adobe Flex and AIR.  That’s a pretty sharp left turn from church tech stuff.  I’m discovering all over again that God has plans for us and his plans include not-so-trivial things like pruning for growth.  Good growth rarely happens without a little snip-snip now and then, right?  There’s a saying that God loves you just like you are and he loves you too much to leave you that way.  Realists (or pessimists) like me get to learn that’s not just about the bad stuff.  It’s a little more optimistic sometimes.  He’s got to get rid of some good stuff too once in a while.  You just have to trust that the new growth is worth it.  I don’t doubt it is worth it because that’s been my experience this many years.  I don’t see little nugget of truth changing much.

I’ve lived my whole life just doing the next thing in front of me.  I recommend it as a lifestyle because my journey has been a great ride.  It might not be a cool ride for two though.  It might just keep you single.  Okay, it probably will keep you single.  :)  I’ve been reinvented many times and in many places into things like a machine shop foreman, a fiberglass mold builder, a missionary, a live-in caregiver, a rock star (ok, would you believe a bass player in a touring band with radio play?), a touring FOH and monitor engineer, a computer repair guy, a web developer, and full-time church audio guy… there’s more.

Well, I sat in one of our church services with my sister a few months back when she was visiting.  I hadn’t been to church in a long time – I mean really been to church.  It was enlightening.  It wasn’t until I started to make a real transition (cleaning my cube, tell everyone I’m outtie, buying health insurance…) that I realized I might not have been all that much of a Christian either because I worked as one.  (Yes, that’s an overstatement, but still.)  Now, that’s not true for everyone who works at a church.  I work with some genuine people who don’t lose touch.  I’m different.  I lose touch.  Recently I’ve been able to discern God’s leading, have been given Godly advice, have seen “coincidences” happen for me, have prayed, have been in the Word… all more than I have in maybe the last 15 years. I need this.

By the way, another of my “laws of the universe” (things I’ve learned to be generally true for people) is that when it comes to your spiritual health it’s ok to be selfish.  You have to be.  If you don’t do what’s right for yourself and stay healthy you’ll be of no good use to anyone.  Keep in mind, though, that doing what’s right for yourself involves plenty of selflessness in helping others.  Don’t owe anyone anything but brotherly love.  Take care of yourself and give.

Well that’s about it with the philosophical stuff.  I’m really digging this new direction.  Adobe AIR and Flex development is as fun as it is frustrating.  I’ll hope to get back into some familiar PHP/Javascript/DOM/CSS stuff too at some point.

I owe a lot to the www.planningcenteronline.com team.  I’m working with Jeff Berg to develop an AIR app that’s going to rock.  That dude is seriously a rock star.  (Not saying that because he might read this – it’s just the truth.)  He’s got a great eye for UI and intuitive user experience.  I’m learning a lot from the guy.

I’d also like to put in a shameless plug for Planning Center.  We use them at Cornerstone to manage all of our worship teams and schedules.  They saved our sanity by streamlining scheduling, communication, service order, rehearsal resources… the whole bit.  If you haven’t checked them out then do yourself a favor.

In working with them I can tell you this:  they are really good at what they do, they are kind, integrous, inclusive, generous, and really patient with bad golf partners.  :)  I sit in a work chat room with their whole crew during the day and they are some cool people.

I’ll keep this blog here and keep posting occasionally.  I still have plenty of thoughts about church tech and audio and I’m not going anywhere.  I’m still serving at the church I love.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 11:10 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.