High Tech

By Chris

Today, I went to church for a meeting and run-through with all the new goodies Parkway Temple has installed in our sanctuary. I'm on a "video" team and will have to run the projection \ AV stuff about once every six weeks with my partner Cohen. In what was a very conservative, mauve-pink sanctuary with gold chandeliers and a choir loft is now a blue-carpeted, blue-pewed three-LCD projector-and-one-plasma-screen high tech assembly of stuff. Everything is digital . . . even the drumbs are now electric, and fed into a new sound system with speakers stragecically placed, well, everywhere. There's even a remote digital video camera operated by a joystick. The new sound "room" in the balcony is all digital with LCD and flat-panel monitors all over the place. Three screens and new mixing software hold many possibilities, I'm told. It's all very impressive, at some level. But, it's pretty funny watching everyone take it all in (I see something funny in nearly every situation). It's probably something like a kid who has driven a reliable Honda Civic for years, suddenly getting into a high-end Porsche. We're not quite sure what to do with it, but we're pretty sure some very cool stuff can happen if we ever figure out how to release the clutch and push the gas just right. After today, I'd say we're screeching at the starting line just a bit, bucking as we grapple for our comfortable stride. It's all very surreal for me. I'm a weirdo who likes hymns and old-school church stuff (Teresa and I took home one of the Gospel Hymnals the other day, which we don't use anymore at Parkway . . . I hope that was o.k.). But, I know God can use LCD's, computers and digital sound systems just like he used hard-back hymn books too. So . . . Ready . . . Set . . . . Go . . . A new day at Parkway. God help us!