Chan's Personal Blog

This entry is a bit late but better late then never. Last Saturday was Ignition which was a big youth rally at the Save-On-Foods Centre. $10 to see three bands and a sermon by Will Graham (Billy Graham's grandson), that is a bargain. The bands were Salvador, Joy Williams, and Tree63. I personally had never heard of any of these bands before, but they were pretty good. It was also the first time that I visited the new arena.

I was expecting this to be like HistoryMaker, but it was a little different. For example, the music was like a concert rather than a praise service. It's fine, just not what I expected. I was surprised how many people showed up. They almost packed the entire arena. There were 5,000 people there.

It was kind of funny seeing the audience as each church sat together more or less. There was this large section of asians on the floor, and you knew they were from the asian churches. Why wasn't I sitting with them? I fly under the flag of North Douglas Church now. Oh, shout out to Lianne as well who was part of the asian collective . One of my arch-nemesis were there too. I also saw quite a PCSers there. I saw Bethany and Heather who were from my class as well.

Our group was able to score some really great seats. Our youth pastor was there really early, so he was able to grab front row seats at stage left. Only disadvantage was that we were really close to the speakers, so it was really loud. Earplugs would have been a good idea. There were some kids that were standing less than a foot away from an array of giant arena speakers, and I don't know how their hearing could have survived.

One of the things that I always observe at these concerts is their sound system, their lights, their security, and their multimedia systems. It's just a habit from being a sound/light/computer guy for so long. They had setup two rear projection screens, a crap load of intelligent lighting, and a massive array of speakers. The lighting design was quite gorgeous. I thought the projection screens were a little too small, so it was kind of hard to read from.

Security definitely had their hands full as the arena had a rule about no stage diving, no crowd surfing, and you couldn't sit on top of someone's shoulders. So, security was going after quite a few people. I guess the arena does that for liability reasons.

The bands were pretty good. Joy Williams, a little too pop for my liking. Most of the songs that were played, I had never heard in my life, so it wasn't as enjoyable as it could have been. Tree63 was a good rock band, and I could appreciate them. I knew three songs that they played so that was good.

The speaker, Will Graham had a decent sermon. He is strikingly similar to his grandfather. When he gave the alter call, hundreds upon hundreds of people gave their hearts to Jesus. It was quite a spectacle to see. The Kingdom of God grew quite a bit that night.

All in all, best $10 I ever spent. The night was quite a success, and a lot of people were saved.