Coffeehouse act garners attention

Hide your kids, hide your wife, hide your Christmas carols. This past Christmas Coffeehouse, Vision ministries combined a popular YouTube phenomenon and Christmas carols. The resulting video of the performance blew up on YouTube, recently receiving more than one million views and more than 5,000 “likes.”

Senior Bethany Carroll said the team never imagined the video would become so popular, calling the whole experience surreal.

“We had no idea what to expect,” Carroll said. “You don’t really think about it, but you know it’s there.”

In addition to views and “likes,” several hundred viewers left comments saying how funny they thought the video was and how much they loved it.

Frequent comments were made both by viewers at Coffeehouse and of the video about the comedic conductor, Chelsea Gregoire’s hair. Her brunette Mohawk had been styled tall and slick while the sides of her head remained short and buzzed.

“I never spike my Mohawk like that in everyday life,” Gregoire said. “The character I played onstage that night was the eccentric, borderline-insane conductor and I (felt) that the hair was a nice touch and definitely did the trick.”

Gregoire said that because people were watching the video every day, she was not surprised that the video hit the 1-million view mark. However, she is continually amazed that so many people would watch a video made by an unknown ministry team.

“You see some band’s music videos that don’t get anywhere near that amount,” Gregoire said. “It’s crazy to me.”

Not only was the video an overnight YouTube sensation, but it was also featured on numerous television news channels, Comedy Central’s Tosh.0 and websites such as Perez Hilton’s popular blog site.

Carroll and fellow Vision members Becker Breidenbach and Jacob Siner were also call-in guests to a Los Angeles talk radio show where they received a special surprise.

“We were on the phone, and Antoine Dodson surprised us,” Siner said. “(Radio host) Max Tucci had him call in and talk to us. He said he liked the video.”

The students invited Dodson, star of the original Bed Intruder video, to come to Spring Coffeehouse.

Vision remains unsure if they will be performing again, saying it would be hard to top their initial performance.

“We’re not going to try too hard. We did something, and it was great,” Siner said. “So we’ll let it go unless something big happens again.”

The team knows that expectations are much higher now, especially because the video has received so much attention.

“I think everyone has that expectation now, wondering what (we) are going to come up with.” Gregoire said. “I don’t know if we can top it, but knowing the people that are on the team, there’s always something bigger that we can come up with.”

Breidenbach said that at the end of the day, Vision is about a lot more than being on stage.

The ministry team reaches out to teenagers through music and drama by traveling to different churches and leading Discipleship Now conferences and retreats with youth groups.

“Most of the time we spend with these kids are spent just being mentors to them,” Breidenbach said. “We’re creative people, too, but we’re a heart ministry. We’re not just a choir.”