First I had to find someone that could go up in the projection room to switch the slide trays after the praise and worship section. This would be about half of the way through the service.
The drummer for that night was also a tech volunteer—this was perfect! After the praise and worship section and during the announcements he could go up in the projection room and switch the slide trays.
I even thought ahead enough to double-check to make sure the sync track on the audio recording was sending signal up to the slide presentation controller. Everything checked out, the plan was in place and I was beaming!
For some reason the praise and worship that night seemed richer than normal, I was feeling blessed. As the announcements started I saw the drummer quietly slip out through the worship platform door as he headed to the projection room. Great, I thought, all is going as planned.
The missions pastor concluded the announcements and began setting up the video (I mean slideshow) encouraging everyone to pay careful attention to the numbers on the charts and graphs as they really told the whole story. As he wrapped up the announcements I had the lights beginning to dim, the audio channel open on the sound console and my finger on the 4 track reel to reel play button.
As the lights hit black I hit play and looked down at the audio board to make sure my finger was on the right audio channel. It was at this moment I heard the first chuckle, followed by many more and quickly some outright laughter. In my head I thought this is not a funny slide presentation, in fact it was particularly technical with all the charts and graphs.
This was much different than the typical slide presentation I put together where the focus would be on the human/emotional side and, often used very close up shots of people’s faces. As my brain was processing the laughter I confirmed with my ears that the audio level was good. I now could take my hands and eyes off the mixing console and look up to see what the laughter was about.
As I looked up and saw the screen reality hit me like a ton of bricks…I had never flipped the slides around from when I transferred the slide presentation to video. I was projecting slides set up for front projection on a rear projection screen!
Translated, all the slides were backwards. Every chart and graph and every number that the missions pastor asked the people to watch carefully was being projected backwards! I realized my only options were to either stop the presentation and not show it or let it roll and hope people would get enough out of the audio track to understand it.
Needless to say that was the longest 5 minutes and 37 seconds of my life.
When the presentation finally ended, the senior pastor (the one who asked me to play the “video”/slide presentation) got up and saved the day. His comments were along the lines of the early church turning the world upside down, and he loosely quoted Acts 17:6, and then went on to say how we were about the business of turning our world inside out.
Laughter once again filled the room and as it died down he quipped, “And oh, by the way, we’re taking applications for the position of director of technical ministries.”
Thankfully I knew that he has a great sense of humor and was just shooting a jab at me. In fact later during the week he told me that he wondered if perhaps the slide presentation was even more effective because people had to pay such close attention to it.
He quickly followed that statement telling me I better not ever do that again. I never have, but at least at the moment when all was awry and I wanted to disappear from the tech booth, my world had been turned upside down and inside out.