Can You Hear Me Now?

I used to do sound at a church a while back, and in this particular church we had a lady in the church praise band...let's just call her "Maria." Now, I want to preface this by saying that she is a very sweet, kind lady. In fact she was so nice, our worship leader had a hard time telling her that she is a terrible singer.

Instead, our sound crew was instructed to turn her up in the monitors, so she could hear herself, but off in the speakers, so no one else could. I know what you're thinking...this is awful and cruel. Well that's because you never heard her sing. It was like watching the American Idol recap of the worst auditions.

On one particular Sunday morning, Maria's whole family came into town...and when she asked how she sounded during warm ups, her family said they couldn't hear her. The worship leader, covering his tracks called up to us, "can we get more of Maria in the mains?"

We scramble to take off the mute button, and try our best to dawn a look that says “now, how did that happen?” We got a lot of comments about how worship sounded "different" on that particular morning.

I'm sure that Jesus was particularly upset by the quality output of our music. Luckily, Maria's family left town and hasn't been back since.