Greetings! I hope you are all having a good start to the spring. The last month has been very full. My amazing team and I have still been working hard on many of the more preparatory-type projects as I spoke about last time. One of these projects I have really enjoyed is the new look and feel we created for the Regeneration outreach our campus hosts at the Montreaux Jazz festival in the summer. We were given a lot of freedom to create something visually striking and exciting.
This outreach focuses around using arts to reach people and leading them to Christ. We zeroed in on the imagery of the star of Bethlehem. From there, I added elements of retro-futurism were added to enhance the overall atmosphere. I am quite happy about the final results, and we hope this sparks the interest of many more people to participate in the outreach this summer.
One of the main reasons the last month so busy was the week-long create and communicate seminar I help to organize and teach at. As some of you might recall, we put on a similar seminar last summer centered around photography. This time around the topic was videography. We had 11 attendees, all other missionaries working in the area of communications/media with YWAM ministries & locations from around the world. Two of them flew all the way from Kentucky just to attend! Over the course of the jam-packed week, through a combination of lecture-style teaching and hands-on workshops, we took each of the students to new levels in their skills, abilities, and passion.
In the weeks leading up to the seminar, there was lots of preparation to do and details to iron out. Our team worked tirelessly to ensure nothing was overlooked. I enjoyed all the careful planning. Even little things like making sure the printed name tags had the same subtle paper texture as the welcome slides on the screens brought me much enjoyment. To me, all of this was a deep expression of my drive for excellence. I wanted the whole experience of the seminar to feel seamless, and we managed to do quite well.
We had an incredible teacher named Joseph Avakian, come to teach on general topics of creativity and communications. The video-specific lectures and workshops were taught by myself and my team. I taught about half of these sessions and the rest were taken on by Jukka and Chloe (both members of the communications team). This was both a wonderful opportunity and a daunting undertaking for me. I love to teach and have a bit of a natural affinity for it. However, my preferred format is one on one, working side by side to mentor someone individually. This was not an option for the seminar, and I taught from the front. The sessions went extremely well and were very well received, but they took quite a lot out of me and by the end of the week, I was completely exhausted.
All of this was worth it though to see what all of this work led to in the students. A number of them came with cameras they had no idea how to use, editing software they had barely opened, and no idea where to start when it came to creating any kind of video. However, by the end of the week, things were a very different story. By the end of the week, each of them had created a video completely by themselves with their own story & vision. Where there was previously uncertainty around their cameras, there was confidence. Where there was intimidation around the use of editing software, there was proficiency.
While all of this was wonderful, I think the biggest difference was the change of demeanor as they became empowered with skills, understanding, and excitement to use video as a key tool in furthering the kingdom in their individual ministry contexts. In this way, we were able to take something we have mastered and impart it to others, multiplying it out to bless others. I have no way to estimate or measure the impact by extension this seminar will have, but I trust we have made a real and lasting impact that will ripple out far into the future through what we have equipped the attendees to do.
As always, thank you for coming along with me in this adventure of faith,
Ben