Mom and I visited Buckhead Church tonight. For those that don’t know, it’s a satellite of North Point. As one person described it, “Definition of a mega-church? 3,000 people show up to a church where they watch the pastor deliver his sermon via video because the main church is 30 minutes away and full”.

Yup.

Awesome experience though. Really inspiring as a church planter to see young churches that are doing so well. North Point is less than 15 years old, and they have two (yeah, 2) sanctuaries (3 services in each) at their main campus in Alpharetta, plus Buckhead Church in Atlanta and Browns Bridge in Cumming. I could go on and on about everything there, but you really have to experience it for yourself. Even though it is huge, it feels as intimate as my church. The people are all friendly and I caught myself conversing with people without even knowing their names. So it is possible to have a mega-church where you are more than “just a number”. And I gotta give props to worship leader Carlos Whittaker (look in my blogroll for Ragamuffin Soul). First off, dude has sleeves. I love that! But, as the production guy at my church, I rarely get a chance to just stand back and worship. I mean, I love what I do, and I believe God has called me to production and music ministry, but every now and then it is nice to go to a place and not have to worry about the sound or video or whatever, and just worship. And Carlos and his band came with their A game. They were prayed up and ready to lead us in worship.

Then they had two baptisms, which was really cool. Each person gave a video testimony and they was baptised.

Finally, we got to see part three of “Letters to the Next President”.
Yup, Andy Stanley on a giant, HD screen, center stage.
Really good message too.

But there is one thing I can’t leave out: they opened service with a Beatles cover band. Full-on “mop top” costumes and wigs, even down to matching suits and the bass player even had a lefty bass shaped like a stand up bass, just like Paul McCartney! Anyways, they performed “Revolution” and nailed it. And the camera shots were projected in black and white on the screens; little things like that are what make it special.

Anyways, all-in-all, great service.

J

P.S.
Added two pics from Buckhead I found online to give you guys an idea of what it looks like. Looks huge (it is), but the seating is really intimate. You don’t realize you’re sitting amongst 3,000 people. And, as a geek, I love that the FOH booth is on the main floor, so the FOH engineer hears exactly what the majority of the congregation hears.

I now have an idea of what a day in the life of a music producer is like. Not that I am as skilled as guys like Rick Rubin, Bob Rock or Brendan O’Brien, but today I spent five hours producing and engineering for the Four Points band. We worked on a grand total of……(drum roll please)……ONE SONG!

It makes me appreciate albums such as Metallica’s black album even more.

Albums that took over a year to record.

Yeah.

I thought five hours was bad.

Imagine spending a year in a studio.

I’m going to bed.

All of you should go listen to the black album just to hear what happens when you spend one year and over $1,000,000 to record an album.

And that was in 1990. Considering inflation, what is the equivalent in 2008?

J