A Most Peculiar Conference Precursor

As many of you are no doubt aware, I am coor­di­nat­ing Chi Alpha’s San Diego win­ter con­fer­ence.

Now it is vir­tu­al­ly axiomat­ic that every­thing goes crazy pri­or to a Chi Alpha con­fer­ence. For exam­ple, last year I got a tick­et for run­ning a stop sign as I was prepar­ing to head up to our Lake Tahoe win­ter con­fer­ence. For the record, I still dis­pute the legit­i­ma­cy of that tick­et. I think the cop was asleep and was star­tled into con­scious­ness by the vibrant hue of my car. But I digress…

This year things have been crazy as well. Let me high­light one thread of our con­fer­ence preparations–the wor­ship.

This year we part­ed with tra­di­tion and booked an out­side band instead of ask­ing one of our Chi Alpha groups to lead wor­ship. An unex­pect­ed con­se­quence was that unlike our Chi Alpha groups, the band does­n’t nor­mal­ly bring their own sound sys­tem with them.

Now as any­one who has min­is­tered to col­le­gians will attest, hav­ing a good sound sys­tem is fair­ly impor­tant. Most stu­dents are audio­philes or pre­tend to be, and so get­ting the right gear makes a dif­fer­ence.

It is also ridicu­lous­ly expen­sive. We found a com­pe­tent sound guy who also works with equip­ment rentals and he did some research and found us the low, low price of $4,500.

That’s more than our entire con­fer­ence bud­get (exclud­ing hous­ing).

So we went back to the draw­ing board.

I should men­tion that I was strand­ed in Louisiana with­out cell phone cov­er­age most of the time that we were try­ing to fix this. I seem to be aller­gic to the entire state of Lou­siana, because every time I go home I get major aller­gy attacks. So I’m grumpy from my aller­gies and unable to call any­one to make alter­nate plans for the sound equip­ment.

Even­tu­al­ly we got back home and I start­ed work­ing hard to find a back­up sound sys­tem. We accost­ed Chi Alpha min­istries, church­es, and ran­dom passer­by to no avail.

Final­ly my good friend Jeff Devoll came through for us. Jeff has got one of the nicest sound sys­tems I’ve ever seen and is also one of the nicest (and sharpest) guys I’ve ever met. So we were able to get an out­ra­geous­ly good sys­tem as a very rea­son­able price.

Now we had the prob­lem of trans­port­ing this sound sys­tem the 500 miles from Sacra­men­to down to San Diego.

Instant suc­cess–our min­istry in Sacra­men­to has a trail­er for trans­port­ing sound gear.

The heady swell of suc­cess was soon dashed on the hard rocks of real­i­ty. We had a trail­er but no means to haul it.

So we called every sin­gle Chi Alpha min­istry in north­ern Cal­i­for­nia to see who had a pick­up truck or an SUV or even a tow-capa­ble van.

No one. None of the staff and none of their stu­dents have any­thing suit­able.

This is in marked con­trast to my years of min­istry in Spring­field, MO. Find­ing tow vehi­cles was easy. Lim­it­ing myself to female acquain­tances alone I could have drummed up a truck in under five min­utes. But in this eco­topia no one seems to own any­thing sig­nif­i­cant­ly larg­er than a chip­munk.

At this point, I should men­tion that I’m still sick and unable to think as clear­ly as I would like. And the “this point” that I’m ref­er­enc­ing is Christ­mas day.

That’s right–I’m call­ing peo­ple on Christ­mas day to find a hauler. “Mer­ry Christ­mas! Do you have a truck I can bor­row?”

Alas, there were to be no tow-capa­ble Christ­mas gifts for me.

On the day after Christ­mas we decide we have no choice but to rent an exor­bi­tant­ly priced and uncom­fort­able mov­ing truck (we attempt­ed to rent a pick­up truck first, but no com­pa­ny was will­ing to rent us a pick­up to haul a trailer–I guess tow­ing is con­sid­ered a Bad Thing).

Now in order to rent a truck you need a dri­ver. I thought I had one lined up, but he did­n’t work out. I then thought I had a cou­ple lined up, but they did­n’t work out. I thought I had anoth­er guy lined up but he was head­ing to Tahoe to spend time with his fam­i­ly pri­or to con­fer­ence. I final­ly called my ace in the hole and he was dri­ving to Tahoe to spend time with his fiancee pri­ot to con­fer­ence.

What can I say? Tahoe is pop­u­lar.

To make things even more tumul­tuous, the kind­ly Mr. Devoll is in the midst of mov­ing and has left a cru­cial piece of sound equip­ment at his old place in Napa.

It is now Sun­day Decem­ber 26th and Paula and I are fly­ing out at 10:00am tomor­row. We need to get this tak­en care of pron­to.

To our hor­ror, we learn that all the rental places close at noon on Sun­day. Even if we find a dri­ver we’re hosed–we’ll be on a plane before we get a chance to rent a vehi­cle.

It’s around 1:00PM Sun­day after­noon, the equip­ment has to leave tomor­row, parts are still in Napa, we have no dri­ver, and we have no truck.

And then the mag­ic hap­pened.

Tahoe boy (with fiancee) is pass­ing right next to Napa on his way to Tahoe. So he and his fiancee dri­ve to Napa and rum­mage through Jef­f’s garage look­ing for a 24-chan­nel mix­er and a box of micro­phones and cables. I coach them through the process by look­ing at a Microsoft Word sketch of Jef­f’s house marked the like­ly loca­tion of the equip­ment which he sent me in the wee hours of the morn­ing. It takes a while but they final­ly find it.

And then we dis­cov­er that our sound guy (the $4,500 sound sys­tem guy) is going to be dri­ving a truck full of music instru­ments down to San Diego in a rental truck any­way and is hap­py to bring our sound sys­tem as well.

And then we dis­cov­er that the sound guy is going to be hang­ing out that night across the street from the Tahoe cou­ple who have the extra sound equip­ment, so the hand­off will be easy.

And that’s the way it always hap­pens. Every­thing goes nuts and then every­thing works out. To wrench 2 Corinthi­ans 4:8–9 from its con­text:

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; per­plexed, but not in despair; per­se­cut­ed, but not aban­doned; struck down, but not destroyed.

Relieved, Paula and I turn to prepar­ing for our trip tomor­row morn­ing and dis­cov­er that we mis­booked our tick­ets and are leav­ing at 9pm instead of 9am, which mess­es up sev­er­al parts of our sched­ule down south.

Aargh!

To add insult to injury, I’m get­ting a promi­nent facial pim­ple in the first time in for­ev­er. That’s right–take anoth­er look at the pho­to on th e top right. See the blem­ish next to my nose?

Also, I’ve spent much time on my cell phone today that if cell phones real­ly do cause can­cer I’ll be grow­ing a blue rib­bon tumor out of my ear by tomor­row morn­ing.

At least I’m not sick any­more.

But things will work out–the mag­ic will hap­pen and the con­fer­ence will be a smash­ing suc­cess.

In fact, it’s a gen­er­al­ly accept­ed prin­ci­ple that the more hec­tic the pre-con­fer­ence brouha­ha is the bet­ter the con­fer­ence winds up being.

Based on our sound sys­tem prob­lems alone we’re expect­ing either glob­al revival to break out or the rap­ture to occur. We’re not sure which one, but be ready just in case either comes to pass next week.