The View from the Booth

Copy. Click. Paste. Click. Copy. Click. Paste. These are the sounds of me working in the booth at church. Since last December I've been plugging away, trying to learn enough about the projectors, computers, and software to be useful the team of women who unknowingly took me on as an apprentice. Taking on the jargon of computers has been for me like learning a tonal language. I have a short list of vocabulary words that I can toss around with confidence, but everything else is dangerously fraught with potential double meaning. I prefer to point a lot and stick to words like, "thingy," "stuff," and "button," relying on the vagueness to hold the epistimological door open for me should I decide to bolt. Sometimes I feel challenged and inspired by the difficulty, like I'm about to crack an ancient biblical code that will open up the universe to my viewing. Other times I just feel like I'm copying and pasting like a trained monkey.

Sometimes we work under a vise-like time crunch, entering the message text and preparing song lyrics that inevitably change every fifteen minutes or so as the Spirit leads. I mostly work with the languages, entering Chinese, Japanese, and sometimes Korean text. I can't read any of these languages, so there's some semantic risk in my work. It's like I'm placing sign posts in Beijing or Tokyo with no knowledge of the landscape. On one level, I'm just digging a hole and stuffing a post into it, but there's always the chance that I'll get my instructions mixed up and people will end up taking a Ralph when they should be taking a Louis.

There's a nervous build-up before the service for me. Sometimes my legs shake and sometimes I feel like I want to climb out of the booth and run around shouting with my arms in the air like a panicking lunatic. I prayerfully remain in my rolling desk chair though, staring wildly back and forth at my computer monitor and the big screen in the auditorium, deperately hoping that I'm prepared to administer the correct mouse clicks to follow the winding musical and pastoral trails. It's the equivalent of bungee jumping for me. After the event I find that I'm still dangling by my ankles and that I haven't fallen on the rocks or drowned. My friends and family are waiting to drag me back up to the top of the bridge I just jumped from. It usually takes about a day for the blood flow to regulate itself in my body, but since Sunday is the Sabbath, I have plenty of time to regain liver and brain function.

My team is called 'The Nations Team' and our job is to serve the nations that attend our church. I didn't really understand the connection between my frantic mouse clicking and world evangelism until I sat behind four new Chinese students in the auditorium a few weeks ago. As our pastor gave the message, I saw them looking from the English scripture to the Chinese and back again, taking notes on small pads a paper and wispering to one other while gesturing toward the screen. "They just saw the gospel in their own language," I thought to myself. "How pentecostal!" I checked to see if my hair was on fire. Needless to say, that put new wind in my projecting sails. There is real purpose behind my frenetic booth activity and that makes it even more enjoyable. Purpose, community, a shockingly steep learning curve--what more could a girl like me want?