homiletics festival day four: jack black meets the matrix

this was a little of what you saw of myself and jonathon in the thursday worship service with brian mclaren at the festival of homiletics. you know my resemblance to jack black, well as beth quick texted me & jonathon affirmed, i put on my matrix look. thus the title of this posting

the idea behind our set up was that jonathon and i would be doing dj & vj responses to the ongoing worship as experienced from the altar... or that was the hope. it was different, something we had never done before. it seemed to be welcomed by many, but i know it wasn't by all. i know this because one lady came up to tell us how moving it was for her, but the person next to her continued on about how it was distracting for them. that is fine, it's a worship at a conference, i've been off put by worship services before. that usually comes when i am not my best self and i become a worship snob.

i used a software program called arkaos. i first heard of it a few years ago from jonny baker but never had a need to use it. what we imagined with the flowing response needed something more than powerpoint (a linear pattern image tool) so i downloaded the 21 day trial and plugged away with it for a few late evenings. it was actually easy to start using. though doing a whole program took some planning, especially for the song lyrics. it isn't set up to do large amounts of text (at least cleanly) so i wouldn't suggest this for a standard praise and worship setting. i'd encourage the worship tech person to download the trial software and play with it. it's a great tool. note: for a free powerpoint option try opensong.

update: check my small collection of pics from homiletics week

Comments

[Eric]

Oh man Gav, I was so thinking Jack Black. Looks like it was an amazing time.

Peace,

E

[Susan Cox-Johnson]

Hey Gavin
Just catching up on your blog. Did you know that that altar parament thing there was made by my former husband, Philip Cox-Johnson, who is a real supporter of Festival of Homiletics? He IS Gospel Colors (along with wonderful Doug Schroeder his business manager who was also there)...pretty cool for me to see you standing there. I was not there...have been in years before.. SKCJ

[gavin]

i actually did notice that one susan. i think we met doug.. didn't see philip which i figured i'd recognize from your blog posting about him a few months back.