We had an amazing night at FBC. It was a series of events that could never happen again without God’s direct involvement.
1. I was originally supposed to be doing a wedding. The other 4 FOH techs were all occupied with other events and the one scheduled had a perforated ear drum and was sick. As a result of this I got a friend to cover the off-campus wedding so I could cover the weekend services at FBC.
2. We had other conflicts in the Mountain tech people too, leaving us without a tech for this weekend in the childrens area. I called Kaleb Wilcox at TBC and one of his techs, Jeremy, came over to cover our children’s services (cause they are awesome!)
3. As we headed into the 1st service I received a text message from weather warn of a Severe Thunder Storm entering our area. Since this was the first of spring, I reminded staff and leaders of Tornado Warning procedures, assuring them we would not need them.
4. 30 mins into the message the storm was getting louder, about then I got a Tornado Warning text as the warning sirens were activated. I gave instructions to the audience to move to the lower level.
5. We piled the 222 people from the Worship Center into our Children’s Theater & lower hallway in the basement along with a bunch of kids too.
We did the end of the message, plus Bill Horn lead us in a closing worship song, then a few more to pass time while the we waited for the Tornado warning to pass.
Since we were already in the basement and there were more storms brewing, we held the 7pm service in the lower level. Our tech and worship teams did an outstanding job of adapting to make it all happen.
This was a weekend that showed God will move the right people at the right time to make sure his message moves forward, even under the oddest of situations!
camera :: Nikon D7000 | 1/60′s second shutter | ISO 4000 | Spot Metered
lens :: Nikkor 18-55 AF-S VR | set at f/3.5 | Auto AF-A Focus
flash :: unused. (probably should have been…)
As a technical director for a really great church, I have the awesome opportunity to see the most important message being shared with people locally and around the world.
Yesterday at FBC we were the host site for a 5K and 15K run to raise money for YoungLife programs in schools. These staff and volunteers do life with students in the Topeka area and are very effective at showing extraordinary love and changing these kids lives forever.
Today we had a video recorded just yesterday in Romania with our lead pastor and a pastor of a church in Romania that we partner with speaking of the strides in family ministry they have been working on this week.
Then today later in the morning I also had the pleasure of shooting todays picture of the day. These are our student mission team who are preparing for a mid-summer trip to the Dominican Republic to help with the Trash Mountain Program.
In 24 hours I got to glimpse into the awesome missions work our staff and volunteers pour into 5 miles from home to 5600 miles from home. In three countries, supporting reaching thousands of people. One Church.
Kudos to these students for following through on a vision to serve and share Christ with others, no matter where that may take them.
I count myself blessed to work everyday with these great servants. Today’s picture was taken on the playground outside our Nursery. It was an honor to have Plastico Heysus in the picture today. He has a very challenging travel schedule but was able to work this shoot in.
Nikon D7000 | 1/160 | ISO 200 | 50mm | f/6.3 | flash: none used
Here is my little friend Caden. Caden’s older brother and dad serve on our Tech.Arts team. Caden came to rehearsal today and I guess those drums and electric guitars were just what he needed… to fall asleep to.
He slept here, on the front row, for quite a long time. The 93 dBa volume was nothing to him. Cymbal crashes did not even make him stir. This boy will have a great future in Tech.Arts just like his brother and dad!
He was bathed in green light from the stage led’s. These work great as back light, but made him look a little Martian like. I decided that a monochrome approach was best, he looks much more like a human little boy.
Nikon D7000 | 1/40 | ISO 1600 | 50mm | f/1.8 | flash: none used
This weekend I had the joy of doing tech for our ‘Mountain‘ program at FBC. The Mountain is the program for our elementary aged kids. We have a worship band that plays at all 4 services on Saturday and Sunday each weekend. I don’t often get down there and forget how great the program really is.
Erik Oldberg is FBC’s NextGen Worship Leader. He leads the worship for this group and our Student Ministry as well. Under his leadership the last few years he has built a great core of student musician leaders who play for Student Ministries and The Mountain.
Today during Hosanna the kids all joined hands and shoulders as they sang the bridge to this song. During the louder songs they jump, clap, spin, and sing. It is quite awesome to see the literal next generation of worshipers ‘in-training’ so to speak. I imagine that our worship in ‘big church’ would be very different if we had this type of worship at their age.
It is more than the current style, they sing songs that adults sing. The leaders break down the songs as they learn them so the kids can digest them. Erik believes, and has demonstrated, that kids have a capacity for worship well beyond “Jesus Loves Me” style of basic, cutesy songs.
This picture was about capturing that moment in time. The conditions were not great, in the audience area the lighting was on about 5% – very dim. It is hard to use a flash in this setting as that would distract immediatly from the worship, and chances are it would take a few shots to get everything balanced out right.
I leveraged the Nikon D7000′s sweet Sony IMX071 image sensor to pull people in from the darkness. Even to the human eye, people details were pretty scarce.
Nikon D7000 | 1/40 | ISO 2000 | 18mm | f/3.5 | flash – not used
Only day three, and I have gained tremendous respect for pro photographers who have to be creative all the time and come up with beautiful shots every single day for many clients. Since I am more tech than creative, this exercise is stretching me in a good way.
Tonight following a great time at the park with my family, (even with my son biting his tongue – literally, all is well now & he is happy) I headed to FBC to pick up my memory card containing a great picture of the day candidate from earlier in the day. As we approached the building was lit up and it was so nice out – I pulled up and too some shots. For those who are not familiar with Fellowship Bible Church in Topeka, we are not a traditional style church, so our building is fairly modern. Our current facility was completed in the fall of 2007, although it gets heavily used every day of the week, it serves our needs very well with the thousands of people that cycle though during an average week.
Nikon D7000 | 1/25 | ISO 500 | 18mm | f/3.5
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