“All that is expected of Christian men by the church today is to invite the unchurched to a social event with other Christians – nobody really expects a man to share his faith with others.”
This year’s Northern Men’s Convention challenged Christian men to stand up and make a difference in their world, be that as a husband and father, as a Christian in the workplace or in the mission field. Yes, there was a strong missions focus this year.
I was there with OMNIvision to provide the Visuals for the event.
As the first Christian event of the summer season, the Northern Men’s Convention is always a highlight for me – I think I’ve done it three times now, in different roles. Last year I remember listening to the message and making mental notes while I was on camera – learning about the responsibilities I would soon have as a Husband. This year I had less time to focus on what was being said, but one thing stuck with me: As a husband I should lead my wife in the study of God’s word, and one day when I am a father I should read the bible with and to my children from an early age. Ruth and I have now started a devotional series together which we hope to make a pattern in our lives (in addition to our own personal quiet time).
OMNIvision was there to provide the screens and projectors and to use cameras to magnify the people speaking on stage and to display their Powerpoint presentations and videos, and to display song lyrics during the worship time. My role was graphics – I displayed the song lyrics (and checked them beforehand to make sure they were correct!), the Powerpoints and the videos. It’s a role I’ve always enjoyed at church so I was very happy to do it here.
This year we hit a bit of a snag. There was a partial power outage in the building on the morning of the convention. Whilst we’d had everything set up and working the night before, very little worked in the morning. It was necessary for us to set up our backup solution and discard a lot of the nice equipment in the truck. We were disappointed that the power was not fixed during the convention and that we needed to rely on our backup solution, but I was personally very impressed with the way we worked as a team to make things happen. The engineer for the event, Daniel, had a difficult time reconfiguring many devices to suit the backup plan – yet he was calm and polite to everyone. I was able to take my laptop out of the truck and plug directly into a projector for the first session while the others worked on a solution.
At the end of the event, one organiser said “You guys did a fantastic job despite difficult circumstances” – and then I heard him say how the powerpoints and lyrics were very well timed. That was very satisfying indeed. Whilst God didn’t answer our prayers to have the power switched on – it seemed to me that he had his hand on us the whole time. In the midst of difficulty, we didn’t miss a cue and we didn’t get cross with each other. Thank you God.
