Gospel Brunch

Instead of service yesterday morning, NewSong NOC had a volunteer appreciation event at the House of Blues. Each Sunday, there is a Gospel Brunch at the House of Blues in Downtown Disney and we reserved almost the entire venue with 170 people.

We were told to arrive at 9am at Downtown Disney even though the doors didn't open until 10am. They decided to have a couple of icebreakers on the 2nd floor patio before the event. The first icebreaker was to swap cell phones with someone you didn't know and look through their contact list for interesting names. My cell phone is the Treo 650 from work which has all ~6000 employees in the contact list. Next, they asked for 2 volunteers from each ministry (worship/sound is part of CAM - Creative Arts Ministry). All the other ministries quickly got volunteers except CAM. We stood around pointing at each other until I got called out by the pastor. Anyway, it turned out to be a eating contest of eating applesauce with a pair of pantyhose over your head. Since April was the other "volunteer", I got to eat while she spoon fed me. Long story short, our team won with the "stuff it as fast as you can in my mouth" strategy, and our prize was a 6 1/2 pound can of applesauce.

Since I was lugging around a huge can of applesauce, I ended up at the back of the line and got in last. By then, there was a long line at the omelet bar so I just got some stuff at the buffet line. The food was decent but I wasn't expecting too much for $30 at a Disney attraction. At around 11am, the band (two vocalists, electric guitar, bass, keys, and drums) came on stage and sang for about 45 minutes. Some pictures from the Treo:


There were quite a few monitors at the front of the stage causing feedback if you're not careful.


Bass player


Female vocalist... the other singer called her his "daughter" but he didn't look very old. Yup, that's a Shure SM58UA wireless microphone.


Audience waving on stage. Notice the singer wiping himself off.

The music was pretty good but a bit loud. There was a lot of sound equipment for the small room. All the band members were wearing a suit but each had a towel for wiping sweat. At my old church, we had to wear a shirt and tie to lead/play on the worship and I would always end up sweating like crazy if I was playing guitar. At the end of the show, they started a dance line and got some audience members on stage.

Does anyone want a large quantity of applesauce?