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The National Association of Broadcasters is the second largest conference held in the city of Las Vegas, with over 100,000 attendees. Our church sent Emily and I (don’t go to Vegas without your wife) to this conference, and we got to experience the cutting edge of technology for video, audio, software, lighting, and computer technology.
NAB is absolutely HUGE! We seriously had to spend a couple of hours just getting used to where everything was. The staging areas for companies and products were phenomenally elaborate. Each exhibit had multiple flat panel plasma screens, moving lights, and independent audio systems. And in the middle of one hundred thousand professionals with suits, Bluetooth headsets, and briefcases – we felt like a fish in the ocean.
As expected the conference produced some exceptional products from the heavy hitters, such as Adobe, Microsoft, and Sony. But I was extremely impressed with NAB’s attention to our conference track – Technologies for Worship.
We had 4 days of sessions and classes along with all the booth exhibits to browse through. Each of the session dealt with a specific concept of church technology integration, from lighting to hiring a technical director.
Although this article probably warrants a longer discussion concerning the development of the contemporary church’s use of technology, I have to say that I found the majority of presenters centering on intentional “ministry” within production. It was very encouraging to hear how their perspective, more often than not, put personal value over production value so the individual remains central and not the show.
My overall impression after NAB has revealed to me that our church has done a superb job at remaining up-to-speed with the world’s technology. I saw very little that our church is not already implementing into its worship services, thus revealing that we currently are on the “cutting edge” of church technology. The danger of our technological culture is the potential to worship man over God. Our culture has demanded a lot in terms of flash and show, yet it’s still a long road before we’ve mastered the ability to see our churches and ministries seamlessly speak in a language our culture can understand. Hopefully, this conference has been a step in that direction.