Eagle Brook Church Blog

My interview with Bob on July 4th

Ok all you WBLer’s – As you all know, living (and working) at a video venue means we are a bit dependant on technology to make a weekend service fly.  Have you ever thought, “What would happen if technology died or even had a significant glitch of some kind?” “Who’s going to fill the 30 minutes?”  “Will we just sing songs, will we have a discussion with our neighbor the whole time?”  “We won’t have to listen to that Graffam guy try to fill the time will we?”

 As you can imagine, it runs through my mind about every weekend and almost at every service.

To be honest, some of you have sat through a service where we did have a technology break down.  If it happens at any service, other than the 4:05 service, we can quickly move to a recording that we take every weekend at 4:05.  This has happened a few times since we started the live-feed and some of the times I wasn’t even aware the shift took place.  It has happened right before connecting to Lino and, even during a few times, it happened midway through the message.

Now, the 4:05 is a whole different deal.  If that service has a glitch, there are obviously no “tapes” to fall back on.  This was brought to life for us on July 4^th, when our technology gave out on Saturday evening.  We sat in the back room looking for videos to use instead.  At one point we were looking at 3 different old messages with less than 20 minutes before the 4:05 was to begin.  At about 10 minutes before the message, we determined we COULD show one of these older messages but felt terrible for the people who just left their 4^th of July picnics to come and be with us.  They deserved more.

At about this time, someone mentioned that Bob (our Sr Pastor) was coming to this particular service.  The light bulb went on and I suggested that he fill the time with something “from the cuff.”  I was told that he doesn’t do “from the cuff.”  I threw out the idea of shifting it to an interview format so he has some help coming up with direction.  I was again reminded that he doesn’t do stuff “off the cuff.”  However, we determined to at least ask.  We jogged through the hallways and café until we found Bob, dragged him into the worship center where, with about 5 minutes before the service begins, we updated Bob that our connection to Lino had died and was wondering if he’d be open to doing a live, spontaneous, interview.  I think it was Laurie (his wife) who first said, “You should do it.”  This helped!  He then said, “I’m open to it.”  I said, “Ummm – How open? – cuz this service starts in like 5 minutes.”  He said he’d do it and we dropped into a room near the multi-purpose room and talked about some topics that he’s been thinking about as the music played in the next room.  I took as many frantic notes as I could, attempted to re-write my notes so I could read them, compile them, prayed, then stood up and realized it was time to walk on to stage.

I gave little thought to how I’d actually inform the congregation what was going on and babbled my way through it on stage.  Eventually, I think people caught on as I introduced Bob for this one-time, exclusive interview on his life as a father, husband, pastor and author.

Here is a link to the interview.  http://www.eaglebrookchurch.com/media_player.asp?type=large&messageID=38281

As it turned out, Bob and I both felt good that our plan B turned out pretty well.  Feel free to leave a comment on what your thoughts were. Hopefully, we won’t have to turn to plan B again, especially at the 4:05, but we do have a little tighter system for what will happen if it does occur again.

Thanks to the 4:05 attenders on July 4^th for their support and grace with allowing us to make the shift.