If you cannot be heard . . .

I was in Doha recently and was asked to do some magical entertainment for a society ball in the evening. It was in a top flight hotel - really posh. A huge banquet hall was used and over 300 guests in all their finery were sat around the room around 30+ tables.

My first problem was that the stage was in the middle of the room surrounded on all sides by the audience. It felt a little bit like being in a boxing ring . . .

I went dizzy turning around to make sure the audience on all sides could see what I was doing at any one time.

Worse though was that the organisers of the event having splashed out huge money on the entertainers stinted by not getting a decent sound system.

It was terrible. Nothing could be heard. The MC squawked helplessly, the guest ambassador's speech was completely ignored and it killed my act stone dead. The sound engineer was either incapable of fixing the system or simply did not care. So for twenty agonising minutes I was exposed to a room full of people who could not understand a word I said. Although the magic was visual and people who were interested could understand the effects, it simply was not enough. There was no connection with the audience on an emotional level.

If you cannot be heard . . . you might as well not say anything.

The light show dancer who followed my act had it even worse. The sound engineer refused to play her music (which she had rehearsed to for over a month) and played music which had no rhythm or beat. She was so upset afterwards she nearly cried. Our entertainment agent was furious.

Ahhhhh! . . . Life in the real world outside church eh! . Come back my beloved congregation . . . all is forgiven!

The only redeeming feature of the night for me was the requirement to do table hopping magic - and with thirty plus tables I had my work cut out for me. It did assuage my guilt that I was earning the fat fee I was getting paid. At least at the table I got to talk with the people, and there was a connection and the magic was appreciated.

The moral of the story - invest in a decent sound system. If you have something worth saying - make sure you are heard.

It especially seem to me that churches stint on the pa systems too and this is a tragedy. We have something worth sharing.

Keeping the main thing the main thing!

There is a temptation when you are preaching to be struck by a brilliant visual aid or a story which you know will grip the congregation's attention and then you try to fit a Bible message around it.





Instead of presenting a message from Scripture, the congregation gets a story or an illustration with Scripture bolted on to justify its use. That temptation is especially there when we use exciting visual aids like optical illusions or tricks.





To avoid that temptation we must first prepare our message from the Bible and then look to illustrations that can serve the purpose of illustrating the message. Never choose a trick first and then decide what message will go with it.





If you want see what that looks like then I refer you to http://www.gospelemagic.com/. The download-able ebook on How to Do Gospel Magic gives you ten Biblical messages which are illustrated with the tricks.





Enjoy

Entertaining the Guides and Brownies

Last week the Guides and Brownies celebrated their 21st anniversary in Kuwait. Part of the promise made by these girls in the presence of their parents and leaders is to be obedient and to serve God.



I was invited to come and do a magic show and touch on the theme of serving God. However I was told that as the girls come from various faith backgrounds or none and that I was in a country were Christians are not allowed to speak in public of their faith, I could only refer to God in the most general terms!



My goal then was to have these girls laughing and having a great time enjoying fun magic. The first testimony to them is that their local chaplain (and most of them knew me as their local priest) loves life and loves children. This to me is being Christ-like. Christ loved life in all of its fullness and calls us to live life to the full too.

I used Needle Thru Balloon, Topsy Turvy Bottles, Silver Sceptre and a DovePan routine baking lots of Toffee sweets!

I used my juggling talk to bring in the God element. (See my post on Juggling for God).

The best bit is talking to the parents afterwards and making links and invitations with and from the church.

Hope yo are enjoying living life in all its fullness.

Blessings