Christian conferences are nifty things. A bunch of people who care about the same stuff get together. That’s kind of cool in and of it self. The other neato aspect of the conference is that people are paid to share the secret about how they became really great and how others can as well. There is huge energy and excitement as conference goers go from one class to another to find these secrets.
This weekend, Bayside Placerville, (a church that I lead worship at) gave me a couple of tickets and sent me to just such an event. It was the Christian Musicians Summit at Bayside of Granite Bay (Lincoln Brewster’s Home Church).
The funniest thing that I experienced while I was there was a session that I happened into by accident. I stepped into a room of 500 people, a band that was rocking. An 80’s guy stopped the bands play and moved the musicians to different parts of the stage. Turns out the session was called how to better communicate with your audience and that 85% of communication is what people see rather than hear. The session focused on the visual component of performance, the value of movement on stage, and tips like, move side to side rather than forward and back—it gathers attention better.
It got really great when Mr. 80’s spotted the pretty girl on stage and realized that she would look much better at the head of the stage. He physically guided her to the front of the stage after commenting on her beauty at which point her husband (who was not the 80’s guy) quickly identified the ring on her finger (we all laughed).
It got better still when he had the band sing through the bridge of the song again, this time instructing Miss Pretty (Mrs.) to face the worship leader while she sang her echo line and look into his eyes—evidently, this builds tension. This didn’t do it for him so he had her take a few steps toward the worship leader after she sang her echo. More tension. At the end of the bridge the worship leader and the girl were face to face.
I couldn’t control my laughter through the whole event because it was like I was watching a spoof on church production but it was actually the real deal. I was at the concert that night, the girl that was on stage sat behind me. I got a chance to talk to her about it and we had a great laugh over the whole thing. And just for the record, not all the sessions were silly and inappropriate at this conference…only some.
