Flying People - Recent News

[tedanderson]

a church in our area has a lighting truss hanging by speaker wire using a loop of speaker wire wrapped around the building's flourescent light fixture and speakers flown by 1/32 cable.

Good grief! I admit that we have done some uncertified DIY rigging over the years but we have always used chains or solid steel brackets that were rated at 3 to 4 times the load of what we were suspending and we have always built in some form of redundancy so of there was ever a failure, it wouldn't all come crashing down at once. Not that I endorse DIY rigging but if you are going to do it, err on the side of caution and excercise overkill.

I wonder if the fault for this accident in some ways isn't the fault of the modern church trying to be relevant. It seems to me that there is a lot of it has to be bigger better more creative/extravagant than the other church in town just to draw numbers these days.

I wouldn't put it past the leadership of some of the churches that I have been to, however, church is more than a numbers game (although many would argue otherwise). Granted there are organizations that appease, entertain, and so-forth but it is too easy to hustle money out of people on a lower scale than to put forth the investment required to put on a show of flying people.

We had acrobats at one of our events. The purpose was not to draw in the numbers but more so to make the event the best that we possibly could. (oh, and we didn't DIY this gig ) But all in all, there is really nothing wrong with putting on a good show provided that the ultimate purpose is ministry. If you have to entertain the lost to get them into the door and then they leave with a different mindset, it was well worth the effort.

[Steve Vanciel]

Originally Posted by Esoteric

I agree but let us also not be salt that is unused because of our intent to do things "the way we have always done them".

And/or the way the world has always done them?

SteveV

[waynehoskins]

Originally Posted by BobM

However I wonder if the fault for this accident in some ways isn't the fault of the modern church trying to be relevant.

I don't think so, not relevant. Maybe rather indirectly...

Originally Posted by BobM

It seems to me that there is a lot of it has to be bigger better more creative/extravagant than the other church in town just to draw numbers these days.

There may be something to that. Or if not more whatever than the church down the road, at least as whatever as the church down the road or the big one in the next city. It's all too easy to get an idea from seeing something somewhere or on television, not realize it's beyond your means, and try to pull it off.

A couple of years ago we had this brilliant idea to do a Christmas play. We had a few people with some degree of performance background, but not many, and the extent of our design people was me. It was cheesy, had a lousy set because I'm not a good set designer (let alone scenic painter), not-very-great lighting because our space isn't set up well in that regard (though better now than then), and I busted my butt for a few weeks solid to get it up. It was well-received, but in terms of production quality it was a flop.

Doing a Christmas play was (and realistically, still is) beyond our means; we know that now, more people than just me. But that's not too bad. It's when what you don't know that you don't know extends into safety things that bad things happen. Unfortunately, that's also more frequent when you try to do what a really big place did with all this cool spectacle.

Ah, spectacle, Aristotle Six. That's a whole other can of worms.

[Steve Vanciel]

Please see philosophical discourse just posted under General Lighting for additional thoughts related to the topic of appropriateness.

SteveV