LCCWorship

Well, the time has come for 4 grown men to climb into a truck, drive down to CA, and pick up our Church on Wheels (CoW) package. At least in 1 day that time has come.

We’ll be leaving Hillsboro sometime Wednesday evening, probably around 8 or 8:30, and drive straight through the night to Madera, CA (about 733 miles). Once in Madera (Thursday morning), we will spend about 5 hours or so at the CoW facilities receiving our equipment as well as some training on using it.

We will leave Madera and drive back to Sacramento, about 150 miles north of Madera, Thursday afternoon and spend the night with someone who used to attend our ‘parent’ church, Brookwood Baptist. Leaving Sacramento Friday morning between 6 and 7 should put us back in Hillsboro sometime between 3 and 6 PM (coming back will be slower due to the additional 4000-7000 pounds we will be pulling).

On Saturday we will meet with the rest of our setup/tear down crew and practice setting up and tearing down a couple of times so we can be ready for our preview service on Sunday. Busy weekend!

Be in prayer as the four of us drive down to Madera and back, especially when pulling a large trailer.

I will try to post some pictures from our trip once we return, I don’t know that I will have a chance to post anything while we are gone.

Let me catch everyone up on what has happened in the last week or so. Last time I posted on this was May 5th and we were supposed to receive our first proposal that day, which did happen.

Our first proposal came in and included absolutely everything we wanted. The key word there being ‘wanted.’  Here are some of the highlights…

• Mackie Onyx 24.4 (I thought the proposal would include either the Mackie Onyx 3280 or the Allen&Heath GL2800 w/32 channels)
•  DBX Drierack PA
• Lexicon MX200
• Fuman M-8L & M-10
• 2 Mackie SA1521z Active Speakers
• 1 Mackie SW1801z Super Active Sub
• 4 Mackie SRM350s for stage monitors
• 2 Behringer DSP1124P Feedback Destroyers
• 2 Benq SP830 Projectors
• 2 62×108 Da-lite rear projection screens
• Leviton/NSI Hon4d-000 and 0056d-000 Lighting packs (8 lights, 1 control board, gels, dmx dimmers, etc)
• 4 extra lights (2 Par56 and 2 Ellipsoidal spots)
• A bunch of stuff for the children’s area
• A bunch of pipe and drape, staging, and skirting
• Trailer system and upgrades
• A whole bunch of carts to store stuff in
• CoW Training - 2 days, 2 CoW staff travel to us, Trailer delivery, etc

For the most part this was exactly what we talked about during the site visit.  Prices were pretty good for most things, but the total cost was about $20,000 more than what we had to spend at the time.

After looking over the proposal in detail, having several meetings online and in person with the rest of the core team, a bunch of calls from Keith to Eric at CoW, searching the internet for better prices on some equipment, and a total of four revisions of the proposal we finally landed on a proposal that we all agreed to. Keep in mind that this all took place in a matter of 3 or 4 days.  Here are some of the highlights of the final proposal…

• Mackie Onyx 24.4
•  DBX Drierack PX
• Lexicon MX200
• Fuman M-8L & M-10
• 2 Mackie SRM450 Active Speakers
• 2 Mackie SRM350s for stage monitors
• 2 Mackie SRM150s for stage monitors
• 2 Behringer DSP1124P Feedback Destroyers
• 1 Benq SP830 Projectors
• 1 62×108 Da-lite rear projection screens
• Elation Lighting pack (8 par56, 1 control board, lighting trees, dmx dimmers, etc)
• A bunch of stuff for the children’s area (we changed out some items for others that cost less)
• A bunch of pipe and drape, staging, and skirting (we took out a few sections of pipe and drape)
• Trailer system and upgrades
• A whole bunch of carts to store stuff in (we got rid of one or two carts that would have just been for extra storage)
• Us traveling to Madera, CA to pick up the Trailer and Equipment and receive 4 hours of training on it

In all we saved over $11,000 from the original proposal.  When we first agreed on this proposal we didn’t know where the extra $10,000 or so would come from so we had to step out in faith that God would provide. Just like always, he did provide. And actually he provided above and beyond back in March without us even knowing. The Interstate Baptist Association had received some funds in March that were designated for us that we didn’t even know about until after we had decided on our order. God is GREAT!

This post is to give an update on how God has provided for us at LCC in just the last few days…

First, we went prayer walking on Sunday in the neighborhoods around Patterson Elementary where we will be holding our services. God’s provision doesn’t have so much to do with the prayer walking itself (although he did provide safety for that) but more the weather. Being spring here in Oregon it can sometimes be hit and miss as to what the weather is actually going to do. The previous weekend the weather was great. It was nice and sunny and in the upper 60s to low 70s (the first ’shorts’ weather for many people in the Northwest). However, this past weekend was a different story. I’ve been trying to locate one of those nice weather icons that forecasters use in the weather reports, but have not been able to track one down that accurately describes last weekend. Friday night and Saturday both were a mixed bag of weather. It kind of seemed  like ‘mother nature’ was just putting her hand in a bag and picking a new weather event every 30 minutes or so. We saw just about everything (Sun, clouds, rain, hail, and snow) within about a 45 minute period on Saturday. It wasn’t just small, light snow flakes either.  It was heavy snow. Snow in April is unheard of in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Anyways, I’ve digressed a bit here, the forecasters were calling for more of the same on Sunday which really would have made prayer walking pretty miserable - enter God’s provision. For the two hours that we prayer walked on Sunday there wasn’t a drop of anything falling from the sky on us, in fact the clouds even cleared up and the sun broke through. I even had to take off my jacket because I was getting hot from the sun. This goes to show that God is faithful to answer prayers and always provides for his people. At some point on Sunday while prayer walking each of us was praying “God, please keep the rain and snow and hail away until we are done.”

Now, the next item…

As I mentioned yesterday we are having our first actual band rehearsal on Thursday. I have been trying to figure out how we can have any sort of productive rehearsal without any equipment (other than our own instruments). No sound board, no mics, no cables, no nothin’.  Well, again God has come through! I sent an email this morning to a couple of the other staff members to see if it would be ok if we went ahead and purchased some minimal equipment that we can use while waiting for our Church on Wheels equipment (not until June). It turns out that God, having seen this need already, had already provided a small portable sound system for us to use. Our Associate Pastor actually has access to a nice portable system that will be more than sufficient for our rehearsals and preview services until we get our own system! Praise God! So it looks like the only excuses now for a bad rehearsal is poor leadership :(.  Pressure’s on now…

These two things really serve as a great reminder that we should not worry about the details and we just need to trust God to take care of them, because as long as we are faithful to him and obey his will he WILL ALWAYS take care of the rest.

Since we are a brand new church that is not having services yet I have been debating on what to begin working on in band rehearsals. I know that we need to begin rehearsals so we can be ready for our May preview service, but I am unsure about what to work on. Currently the band is comprised of people who have all played together before at our sponsor church, Brookwood Baptist Church. Since we have all played together before we shouldn’t have any of that initial weirdness trying to feel each other out. I’m thinking the best option is to start rehearsing songs that will be new to us, as we didn’t play them at Brookwood, but also mix in one or two songs that we did play at Brookwood and really start working on making it our own.

My thought process is also compounded by the fact that we currently have no equipment of our own and wont until late June when we get our equipment from Church on Wheels. I have gotten permission to use some of Brookwood’s equipment along with their portable sound system, but this will still make for some rough, ‘nearly unplugged’ rehearsals.

We’ll see how it all goes, we should be having our first playing rehearsal this week (on Thursday). We already met once for me to go over the info sheet and rules and expectations stuff. I’ll post an update later this week…

If anyone has any ideas, post a comment and let me know.

The Process
Last night was our first meeting and our site visit with our contact from Church on Wheels (CoW). For those who don’t know what Church on Wheels is, they are a company that specializes in mobile church setups. This is really ideal for church plants or really any ministry that has to completely setup and tear down all of their equipment anytime they use it. The end product that CoW provides is a trailer with carts that house all of our equipment and supplies.

The process last night went a little something like this. First, a couple of us (my wife, myself, and our pastor) met at our pastor’s house with our CoW representative so he could begin to understand what some of our equipment needs are (what our band looks like, what sort of setup we are looking at, etc). We talked for about an hour and a half just getting to know each other and bringing him up to speed on what LCC is going to look like. One note, we did not discuss our demographics with him as after our first phone conversation with CoW they did all of that research on their own so they could come up here already knowing the area

After that, we spent about 3.5 hours at Patterson Elementary with our entire leadership team and our CoW rep. This time was spent walking through what a visitor would experience on a typical Sunday, including where greeters will be, signage, hospitality, worship center, children’s areas, etc. We primarily split the time between the worship center and children’s areas. In each of those areas our CoW representative spent a lot of time measuring room sizes, stage sizes, and pretty much any other dimension that could be measured in the rooms. We talked more about the equipment we will need and how it will be setup as we walked through the school. We concluded the evening with a time of prayer.

My Reflections
This experience was very cool and the CoW representative was very prepared and professional. I was very impressed by how thorough he was in all of the measurements he took so CoW can give us equipment that will fit in the space we have with no issues. The measurement that impressed me the most was the electrical measurements. The CoW rep took about 5 minutes measuring Line Voltage, Frequency, Voltage Drop when a load is applied, etc. on each of the outlets in the Worship Center. This will allow CoW to have a complete understanding of where we should plug certain items in (e.g. lighting, sound eqipment, etc) so we can both protect the equipment from damage due to low voltages/frequencies and so we can ensure we don’t trip one of the schools breakers. Overall, using CoW for this will save us time and money in obtaining all of our equipment because we wont have to pay shipping charges for each individual item.

Next Steps

• Our CoW rep will complete space layout including all tables, carts, stage, and children’s areas (~1 week)
• Once we approve the layout, our CoW rep will create an equipment proposal to meet our needs (~1 week)
• We will go over the equipment proposal, cutting out equipment where we can to keep our costs down and place our order
• CoW will build all of our carts (specialized for our equipment) and stock them with all of the equipment we ordered
• CoW will drive our trailer up with all of our carts and equipment and train us on how to set up and tear down the equipment in an efficient manner, the goal for setup time is 45 minutes (June 21st, 2008)
• We will use our new equipment in our first public preview service (June 22nd, 2008)

We are very excited to see this process through to the end. We know God has blessed us with a truly great location at Patterson Elementary School and also by showing us Church on Wheels. God has really been moving in LCC and we are very excited about what he is going to do.

Tonight marks the beginning of our Church on Wheels Experience. There is a lot of excitement among the LCC staff and I am particularly excited. Not only will this be the walk through with Church on Wheels representative, this will actually be our first walk through of our service location, Patterson Elementary School (don’t view that in Firefox, it appears the css is messed up).

I will definitely have much more to say on this tomorrow. We feel blessed by God to have the assistance of Church on Wheels to help us with our equipment needs and launch preparations.