A glimpse behind the scenes

About halfway through the worship rehearsal this morning, our worship director looked over the keyboards at me and said, "I can so see the wheels turning - you're blogging about this later, I can tell." Well, I'm happy to oblige, at least in general terms, with names withheld to protect the crazy, the troublemakers, the clueless and the very few innocents.

If you've never been backstage for an amateur stage production, whether dramatic, musical or some combination of the two, a description of the chaos confusion crazed chicken-without-a-head camaraderie during rehearsals may seem a bit over the top and exaggerated. Not so. Let's review the cast of characters, shall we?

The Talent
The Music Director - aka She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed (at least in theory): The MD is responsible for choosing, arranging and finding volunteers for non-preaching elements of the service. She also plays keys and sings on most Sundays, and is notable for always wanting more keys in her earbuds.  Because you can never have enough cowbell keys.

The Worship Leader: Smart, sly, witty, our WL guides the congregation through the service, stand up, sit down fight fight fight pray and greet one another. Though you may not think it, he is often the instigator behind the hi jinks during the pre-service run through.  He has been known to (accidentally, we suppose) kick the electrical plug to the keyboards loose from time to time, cutting off the keyboard player.

The Worship Team: The composition of the WT varies from week to week, pulled from a pool of about fifteen singers. This week's team consisted of a husband-wife duo, long suffering and patient, along with a last minute substitute, a young lady with a voice like an angel who had, in the previous twenty-four hours, attended a four hour rehearsal for her high school musical as well as spent the evening (and most of the night) at the winter formal dance. Her Super Mario themed t-shirt (a souvenir from the dance), while bright and cheerful, was covered by a sweater during the service (lest we all start humming the music from the game?).

The Drummer: Hidden behind everyone else, our drummer makes sure the beat goes on.  Steady and reliable, he can be counted on to provide a rimshot at the appropriate time. Which is rather more often than you would suppose, given this is a rehearsal for a church service.

The Reader: Heard but not seen, the reader is responsible for reading the rather lengthy Bible passages that go along with the sermon. Clutching twenty-point printouts of the chapters (the words are projected on the screen and she could just as easily read them from there; reading from the paper is all about maintaining flow, not an indication of distrust of the slide operator, or so she says), she sits near the sound booth, patiently awaiting her turn in the spotlight, um, audio system.

The Technical Crew
The Chief Sound and All-around Tech Genius: The CSAAATG is married to the WD; it may not be a good thing that the CSAAATG has the ability to cut off all sound from the WD at any moment (and he's not afraid to use it). He is responsible for all of our audio/visual set ups and most of the wisecracks pre-service. And in service, for that matter.  In addition to technical understanding, he's a gifted tenor, often singing harmony from the sound board.

The Sound Guy: Fueled primarily by caffeine, our sound guy can make anyone sound good by fiddling with the myriad controls on the board. He has the unenviable job of making sure the singers like the mix they are hearing in their ears, as well as balancing the sound in the house. He can't make everyone happy; if no one is throwing things at him and the sound doesn't cut off mid-service, it's a good day.

The Slide Operators: Most people look at the slide operators as people who simply press "page down", but the reality is that they have the ability to turn the worship team - and by extension, the entire congregation - into gibbering idiots simply by not pressing that key in time. This dedicated crew has the focus of air traffic controllers, as they advance the slides for the words for the songs, the readings and the points in the pastor's sermon. A certain amount of Type-A personality is needed for this job.

There you have the cast of characters - ten to fifteen people on any given Sunday.  It's difficult to describe the banter, teasing, back and forth and outright craziness that goes on before we let the unsuspecting congregation in the doors; perhaps I'll sneak a tape recorder into the room one of these weeks and transcribe the insanity for you.

Then again, for a lot of it, you just had to be there.