passion '07: part 2

Late Nights and Being a Volunteer.

So, in addition to sorting out the lunches, most of us on the meals team also had some shifts to pull during the Late Night events, which were a handful of mini-concerts held all around the venue. There were about a dozen of these on the first 2 nights of the conference, each taking anywhere from 8-15 volunteers to manage.

My late night was the Shawn McDonald one. There was another guy playing that night too...and I can't remember his name (confession: I had to look Shawn up on the grassroots website to remember his last name, which, given what it is, you'd think I'd be able to remember). There's VERY little chance the other guy would ever see this, but I offer my apologies for not remembering your name...I enjoyed your music, but this is a sign of how clued out I am on the music scene these days.

On the first night, my single responsibility was to serve as what I call a "door nazi" at a 'no entry/exit' door (yes, I just used that word in reference to my job at a Christian event...it's hyperbole...roll with it). Being a door nazi isn't too flashy, but I happily went about my job and would rather "hold open the door to the house of the Lord than dwell in the courts of the wicked" (another reference to Louie's pre-conference speech to the volunteers, loosely quoted...and yes, I realize that my job was to hold the door closed, in this case...but hopefully you get the idea).

So, as you can imagine, it wasn't too hard to keep people from entering or exiting, and I was 100% successful in my task. Well, except for the musicians, which were allowed, so I still gave myself a 100% score...even though I tried to kick out the cello player before I knew he was "with the band". He was nice about it, and thanked me for being so good at my job. His name is Neil and we became instant conference friends when I told him that I have a friend who plays the cello. FYI...Conference friends are the ones you make at a conference and get along well with but will never see again.

On the second night, I got upgraded (or downgraded, depending on how you look at it...but I considered it an upgrade in the end) to "hall nazi", where all I had to do was sit in the backstage hall and keep non-production and non-band types from entering/exiting/milling about. Essentially, this meant that I didn't have to do anything but chat more with my new friend Neil the cello player and make an idiot of myself when I had to ask Shawn who he was. But he was cool about it too.

I chatted with Neil and Shawn about London, because they had done some shows in the UK in the summer, and had to fly back to the States a day or two after the most recent terrorist drama...so we had that (and I also still had the cello thing with Neil, who promised to play louder on the second night because I could only hear the cello on 2 songs the first night).

Yeah, it's a random story, and probably seems like one of a million stories I should have from all the new people I met and such...but really, it's not one of a million stories. It's one of very few stories like that, because of how I viewed being a volunteer at Passion...

For me (and lots of others, I'm sure), being a volunteer wasn't about being in the center of all the excitement (as it has been in the past) or making loads of conference friends. It was about being busy and focused on the task. My purpose there was fairly singular: remove any and all distractions possible to make everything flow simply, easily and seamlessly for the students.

On the first day, I held doors open to the building where registration was taking place...we yelled and cheered for them...we told them we were excited they were there...we chatted with them about their journey to Passion...we took their towels and socks that were brought to donate to shelters in the Atlanta area. After that, I only met a few students...because I just didn't need to. I got to hear a lot of cool stories from some of the leaders about specific things God was doing, and I was able attend one of the main sessions and I could see in their total abandon during sung worship and hear in the challenges from God's heart through Louie's talk just a glimpse of what God was doing. And that's all I needed.