Eric's Eddyfications

Getting excited about Let It Be Christmas

Well, it's beginning to look a little more like Christmas here in Naperville, as snow flurries are falling for the first time.

I'm excited about Let It Be Christmas: the gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, George & Ringo. Not only will our weekend series at www.communitychristian.org be using the music of the Beatles to share the story of Christmas, but we will be restaging last year's wildly successful Epic Theatre Company staging of the musical, Let It Be Christmas.

The show runs two weekends, Friday thru Sunday, Dec 11-13 and 18-20. A recommended donation of $10 a ticket for adults and $5 for students and kids can be made online - simply visit the Epic Theatre website at www.epictheatrecompany.org to reserve your tickets. Do it now before we sell out! (You can also reserve your tickets on the website and make your donation at the will call table the night of the show)

I will be reprising my role as one of the wise men bringing gifts to the newborn king. I think my name is Billshazzar, but it's not exactly clear in the lyrics John and Paul wrote. But it's definitely in the subtext.

Can't wait to see you there!

Story Conference - photo log

I was very proud of the hard work that went into the Story Conference this past week, and in particular, the work of the Epic Theatre Company, Community Christian's theatre team. We provided actors in costume to greet attenders as they were arriving for story (my family included!), and some awesome photographers got some great shots of them in action. (I've posted pics of our team here, but go to the flicker site to see them all)

In addition, my brother Elic and I worked in the main sessions as "anti-hosts" - a couple of goofballs who would interrupt the "real host" Scott Hodge, and provide some light entertainment and hopefully laughs as we pushed through the necessary evil of thanking sponsors from onstage. Here are pics from all of that, and at the bottom, a renegade video of the parody song we composed for the sponsors, a parody of "seasons of love" from Rent. Enjoy!

WFX Conference - Multisite Video Teaching

This morning I spoke in a workshop at the WFX Conference in Charlotte. Had a lot of fun. I promised the people that I spoke to that I would upload a couple of files for them to peruse. So if you are one of those people, this post will make a lot of sense. If you're not, then it probably won't. Either way, here are the files. Hope everyone is having a great day!Download WFX_Charlotte_ericbramlett Download Teaching Team Assessment Tool

The dilemna when Social networking changes everything

So it used to be that I would get on this blog account here and "embed" a video or two from our church's youtube account, as a way to share with all my friends what's going on in the creative world of our church and my job.

But now everything has changed. I have a very active facebook account and twitter account, and youtube will automatically post to my facebook and twitter whenever I post a new video on youtube. So... Is it possible that I don't need this blog anymore? Is it all over?

If I were to stop blogging, should I start doing something else? If this blog turned into a podcast (audio or video?) would anyone listen/watch? Does it matter? Do I have anything to say, even if I wanted to?

These are the questions that surround my psyche right now. Happy Columbus Day, everyone.

Oh, and go to www.youtube.com/bramsvan for a bunch of our new videos. They're pretty funny.

#Innovate09 Arts Mashup - In case you missed it!

In case you missed the arts mashup from the Innovate Conference last week, Granger just posted the video content from that session as well as all the sessions from the conference on their media player. You can check it all out here. Session 5 begins with an instrumental prelude, 2 acoustic praise choruses, and then Community's entry into the arts mashup. And don't stop there - the remaining three are fantastic! For that matter, take a look at all the sessions - they're all golden!

#Innovate09 and the Arts Mashup

As you may have read from my earlier posts, Community Christian is represented at the Innovate Conference through an idea I had a long time ago called an "arts Mashup."
We have rehearsal tonight for the mashup, but tomorrow morning, we will be the first of four churches presenting our take/art/stuff on one big idea: Philippians 2:3, which reads: "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in all humility consider others better than yourselves."
Instead of reporting to you how it went, why don't you watch it LIVE on the interweb! They are streaming the entire conference, including the mashup, on their website. The Mashup starts tomorrow morning, Friday, at 8:30 Eastern Standard Time. So wake up early, grab a cup of coffee, and enjoy an early morning arts mashup for breakfast!
You can watch the conference here.

David Crowder - Intentional Homage or Accident?

You be the judge... I'm kinda hoping it was intentional...

You say it's my birthday

What a great way to spend my birthday! Thanks Elic and thanks Wrigley!

MTV music awards and DA Bears

I was going back and forth last night between the Bears game and the MTV VMA's. You know, trying to stay hip with the kids. Here are some observations from the MTV event:

• At the red carpet, Lady Gaga showed up in a limo with Kermit the Frog. I don't know much about her, and judging from her twisted performance, she's gonna need a lot of counseling before she gets to be Madonna's age, but the genius to arrive with Kermit was priceless.
• Pink is quite the acrobat, and the used the vocal from her live mic much more often then I thought they would.
• Obviously, Kanye is an idiot. Taylor Swift is totally cool, and Beyonce might be even cooler.
• I enjoyed the MJ tribute, I thought that it was cool that they took the SCream video and removed Janet from it so that she could dance "live" with her brother.
• I also thought it was brilliant and subtle to give Madonna such a platform to make a speech about MJ. Her speech was from her point of view and didn't pull any punches or try to glamorize how messed up MJ actually was, while simultaneously acknowledging his genius. The only thing that would have made that moment better would have been to see Prince (also born that same year) play a guitar tribute to MJ. I guess I'll be waiting for that one for a while.
• Green Day is kind of a joke to me at this point. Hey kids, guess what? These 35 year olds are cynical and angry about religion! That's new!
• And it's been said before, but beyond Single Ladies, had anyone actually seen these videos? On what platform are videos still accessible? It's certainly not MTV.

Them's my thoughts. As I finished scrubbing through it, I quickly skipped over to the last 10 minutes of the Bears game. Glad that I wasn't watching that live. Felt good at least to scrub past all the mistakes. Kanye should apologize for Cutler too.

I'm going to the Innovate Conference

In a couple weeks I'm headed to the Innovate Conference with some teammates and artists to participate in the "Arts Mashup" at the conference at Granger Church. You can register for it here. Tim Stevens is gracious enough to have given me credit for the arts mashup idea in the first place, as you'll see here on the "countdown2innovate" podcast. They gave me a call to interview me on the interwebs, and I agreed to chat for a while. Check it out!

C2I Video Podcast | Episode 11 from Granger Community on Vimeo.