Sabbatical Countdown

Tonight was my last band rehearsal before my sabbatical starts. I only have our end of term BBQ next week and I will be released to whatever I end up doing for the next three months.

To be honest, it all went too quickly. I had to roll-out lots of new kit, which meant getting the team working together to make it happen before it was time to pack up ;0)

We setup more IEM's, we now have a 4 way mono (dual stereo) system with up to 7 packs. I have re-racked our FOH house rack and our Hd24 multitrack is now in place (just need our MY16AT cards now, for those who are interested.) We got our new wedges (for those not on IEM's) and I am so pleased with them. I didn't get much of a listen but I know them well enough; I spent all of my time at Spring Harvest listening to them. They're a great stand alone PA too, but I digress. (We even got them in black rather than HK Grey which is even better!)

We also removed a broken butterfly catch from a our road trunk and I checked the programming on our Logic LMS.

More importantly, we said a kind of goodbye, and thank you, to John A who has been serving on our PA team for 15 years. I mention him last because he's a good example; a good example of a servant. He has served beyond when he wanted to, beyond when it was convenient for him and it has cost him a lot. I am so glad to be able to release him from his ministry. We took some time to pray for him and kinda celebrate him.

So, in amongst all of that, and line/sound check, getting band members up and running with IEM/s which is a difficult transition to make, guess who drilled out the rivets on the road trunk? and swept up the metal shavings afterwards? John, of course. What a great guy. Showing us how to serve to the very end!

Communion Night

Tonight was our band communion night. We work it so that the band is a contact group in it's own right. Tonight I was leading it. We were tying in with the 40 day lent book which we're following as a church. (It's produced by thereishope.co.uk)

Not everyone is reading it, and those that are, are not necessarily following it religiously, which gave me a chance to open it up a bit. I had a question in my head; Where do you stand? and there words; Lordship, Friendship and Faith.

When I got there, in fact before I got there, I was not up for it: I was not in the mood at all. That could have been problematic, given that I was running it...

It's funny how God often shows you things when you're not looking. Within a few minutes of being with that group of people, I felt lifted. Awesome. What a great team we have. I feel very blessed by how we get on together and how we can just be ourselves.
Thank you God for using me tonight and for encouraging me through my friends.

I specifically made time for us to pray for each other and by the end of the night God had encouraged all of us. How cool is that!