Summer Madness, mark 2

Ok, so here are my feelings on summer madness this year… and seeing as I was helping at a venue at it, I’ll do this in two parts…

Smart1 (exodus venue)
I was helping at Exodus’ venue at Summer Madness this year, Smart1. It was basically the live ‘local’ band venue in the evenings, having the likes of Bluetree, One Hundred Hours, Four Kornerz, Six Star Hotel, The Good Fight… and during the day it hosted seminars and workshops. As I was one of only two members of the visuals team (basically anything to do with the cameras, visuals and powerpoints) I had to be present at every event held in the venue, meaning I missed a LOT of the ‘summer madness’ experience. However, I loved helping out at the venue. I learnt about using visual mixing boards, which was awesome. I made some new friends, which was even more awesome. I did find it quite hard, however, being part of the ‘team’ of helpers. Most people who were on the team seemed to know each other already, whereas apart from the two exodus staff running the thing, I knew one guy, and not even that well. It was kinda hard, trying to fit in, and I have to admit I’ve come away after spending over a week with the team only knowing names of about half of them (which is probably actually due mostly to my memory rather than anything else). But yea, that part was difficult. However, the friends I made on the team are great, and I’m really glad I can call them my friends, they’re great people. And the bands we had in were fantastic. Overall, I enjoyed my time helping at Smart1

Summer Madness
So, the actual event. Being in Smart1 so much kinda limited my whole experience of the actual event, but from what I was a part of, here are my thoughts. Insofar as general banter with people goes, it was fantastic. I caught up with old friends, had some incredible chats, some random chance encounters… and all immensly enjoyable. One chat in particular stands out, with a friend I hadn’t chatted to properly in about a year. We just wandered around the grounds of the Kings hall for over an hour, catching up with each other – I really enjoyed it.
As for the main meetings, I was only able to get into two of them (due to Smart1 responsabilities), so I can only comment on what I saw myself. I heard Bart Campolo talk, and another guy I forget the name of. Whilst I only heard about half of each of their talks, I thought they were very well suited to the age range they were addressing, and were very challenging. Whilst I’m not sure if I agree totally with every little thing I heard them say, they were very inspiring, challenging and biblically accurate in their talks. The worship, however, didn’t sit well with me at all. I realise worship is not a part of the programme that is there for us, but rather is there to facilitate us in praising God. However this is what didn’t sit well with me – the worship just seemed so showy, so performance-esque. I found it really difficult to try to focus and connect during the worship in the main meetings… but maybe it was just me, I don’t know. I guess I should hear some other peoples opinions as well…

Anyway, there you have it, my two cents on Summer Madness this year. There is more I could write, but this is a long enough post already, and its very late and I’m tired. Who knows, maybe I’ll have more thoughts on it further down the line…