So, it’s official. Today is the start of my final week at The Salvation Army. Mixed feelings, and I suspect those feelings may become, erm, mixier over the coming days. To mark the occasion, I thought I’d run through an A to Z of ‘The Salvation Army and Me’. Here we go…

A is for Altenkirchen

An unassuming small town in Germany became a focal point of Salvation Army activity in August 2014 as it hosted the European Youth Event. Young people flocked to a campsite from all over Europe and I was both part of the tech team and a reporter.

As has often proved to be the case, multiskilling and multitasking was the order of the day (or, in this instance, five very long 24-hour periods!). My main task was to curate the best of the social media activity from delegates for a large ‘social wall’ and to produce content for inclusion in real-time in the several live web streams we provided.

It may be a journalistic failing, but it’s impossible to remain aloof during events like this. The buzz was incredible, and despite a number of technical gremlins (who knew Germany has some of the most stringent rules on live broadcasting in the world?!) many young people responded energetically and enthusiastically to God’s call on their life. I found myself having to divert to operate cameras at more than point, as even the volunteer cameramen felt a divine nudge to go and pray. And the online audience extended well beyond even post-Brexit Europe – people watching in the US, Korea and New Zealand were also impacted by the very clear call to ‘Feel. Speak. Do’.

Highlights? There were many. Capturing on camera the precise moment that one young man decided to become a Salvation Army officer. The impassioned testimony of a delegate from Vietnam who had encountered the church by chance as a student in one European city and clearly heard God telling him to go and establish The Salvation Army in Hanoi. The multilingual chatter around the campfire that led to spontaneous worship songs.

Thank you Jonathan Roberts for the invitation to participate, and to Mark Calleran and Paul Gunnell for graciously sharing your wide experience of live event production.

(More pics and the archive of the live streams are available via sar.my/eye2014)