I love connecting with other technical artists. I love the chance to be around people that think like me and that struggle with similar issues; to be around people that view the world from a similar vantage point and who help build the kingdom in similar ways.
In my earlier years as a technical artist, I spent a good deal of time looking for community, for people who understood my point of view and wrestled with production type issues in the local church. Cold calling large churches that might have a TD, just so I could commiserate with someone. Reaching out to other churches in the Detroit area, just so we could get together and build each other up.
Fast forward though something called the Tech Forum, held for a few years when I was at Kensington; then onto the Willow Creek Arts Conference and finally Gurus of Tech first in Louisville, then to Willow Creek for the last few years. This list not only points to how passionate I am about bringing technical artists together, but it really points to the need that exists among local church technical artists to be in community together.
At least for this year, Gurus of Tech will not be at Willow Creek, and there isn’t much to it. Just like your church, everything our church does requires production’s involvement. In our case, God has been moving and working in the life of our church and things are growing and changing and requiring us to think differently about how our production team does ministry. Basically, just like many of you, we have a lot going on.
This doesn’t change the fact that there is a need for us technical artists to gather and it doesn’t mean that we don’t believe in what Gurus of Tech stands for. What it does mean, is that our team’s number one priority is to facilitate ministry at our church. Maybe even more than that, it means that we need to devote our best to what God wants to do here in our local community.
We have some really exciting things happening at our church, that we are privileged to work on and put our best energy toward.
The team at Mankin Media is developing plans to carry Gurus of Tech to other places, not just geographically, but in concept. The production team at Willow Creek is excited for the opportunity we’ve had to participate in the very cool idea of Gurus, as participants and as organizers, and we look forward to being involved as much as we can in the future.
