This no longer represents, in any way, my opinion about the church.
(Or, the truest test of leadership is leading volunteers)
I had high aspirations when I became the technical director at Point of Grace. I took over from from the illustrious Mr. Chris Timmons, who I had the highest respect for – though I will admit that at the time, I had a huge list in my head of all of the changes that I was going to make as the new technical director. I was going to completely redo the lighting hang in the auditorium, recruit dozens of new people for the tech team, and be a better leader to them. I was going to build crazy news sets (I had always hated how we used the big white scrims that we used for the stage backdrop), build new lighting effects and utilize our lighting console more effectively, and basically do all of the things that, in my mind, Chris never got around to doing.
Had I thought things through, I would have realized that there were reasons that he didn’t get around to doing all of them.
Chris was incredibly busy with video editing for the church, which party explains why nothing really interesting ever happened with sets or lighting – but beyond that there were a number of roadblocks to doing what he, and eventually I, needed to do to create a healthy technical ministry. Recruiting, for instance, was probably my biggest failure. What I realized only after I had started trying to recruit was that, for every one hundred people in our church, maybe three were interested in joining the tech team. And out of those three, two of them would be friggin’ retards. During the one major campaign that I ran during my time there, I can vividly remember buying pizza for the people I was really hoping were going to show up, and then being horribly disappointed when only two people showed up – and then one left, saying he thought that “tech team” had something to do with working with finances. The one who stayed turned out to be so worthless at even simple tasks like showing up on time and listening to the musicians that I eventually told him to stop coming in to run monitors. A second problem was that nobody wanted to commit. I did my darndest to try and make sure that people weren’t over-scheduled, but with ten positions to fill each weekend and wanting to make sure that the volunteers got enough practice to become proficient at what they were doing I asked them to commit to every other Sunday at first, and then down to once every two weeks. The problem was getting people to come in on their scheduled days. When just one person has to have the week off, it messes everybody else up because then the rest of the volunteers have be shuffled around based on their skill set and availability and then everybody is out of whack. And of course, having someone call in on Sunday at least once a month to say that something came up didn’t help matters, either.
I did have some success in doing what I set out to do – I did completely redesign the lighting hang and started making some really cool sets. (Well, at least the sets I designed were “different” – not sure if they qualify as “really cool”.) I also completely reprogrammed the light board and did my best to be a leader to the tech team instead of just another tech who happened to be in charge.
What does a healthy tech team look like? How should the leader of the technical ministry handle the various challenges that befall the technical side of things every week?
I think the main thing that gets lost on a lot of “church techies” is that first and foremost, the technical things that happen during a service are a ministry. The tech department is a ministry that serves people just like the greeters at the door, the people who take care of your kids during the service, and the janitors who keep the buildings clean and well-running. The primary purpose and reason behind being on the tech team should not be “Hey, blinky lights! Me like!”, or “I guess nobody is around to run the sound board, I suppose I have to do it.” but an attitude of wanting to serve and help and reach the people in the congregation through the things that we do. The congregants, are depending on the tech ministry to make the service hear-able and see-able. We should never forget that our first duty is to the members of the congregation. To that end, it is important for the members of tech team to have a good attitude, and not just in the sense of “not being a dick”. Techies have to keep in mind that they are an important part of the service – just as important as the pastor on the stage – and that as such, excellence in their area of serving is of topmost importance. That means having a teachable spirit, being willing to take criticism and advice. (Sometimes that advice is yelled across the Clear Coms, and you have to be willing to take that, too. Remember, if you’re being yelled at, it’s because something needs to happen right now, not because the person doing the yelling is angry.) Excellence in doing your volunteering also means showing up on time, just like any job. I cannot how stress how much it shows about your character if you hold a job which you presumably show up on time for, but decide that your volunteering commitment means so little to you that you can’t bring yourself to be on time for it.
Secondly, with a healthy tech team, there is a healthy level of trust. Not only between the various members of the team itself, and the team in its leaders, but the pastors of the church in the team. It’s wholly demoralizing to have the senior pastors constantly making last-minute changes to the service order, or have the music pastor constantly messing around the sound system when the sound techs are trying to do something. The time for deciding the order of service is before Sunday morning, and there is no reason for anyone other than the sound techs to be messing around the sound board. This is something that especially gets on my nerves – the music pastor at the church I was TD at constantly meddled with the technology side of the services. He would constantly suggest things that he though were good ideas, and insist on implementing them, when in reality most of his ideas were worthless. For instance, it was suggested on numerous occasions that I leave the faders on the sound board in their positions when I was done mixing – the idea being that there would be a “starting point” for the next service’s mix. The obvious problem with this, as any sound guy will tell you, that different musicians play different each and every week (And even differently from service to service) and that what was right last time probably won’t be right next time. In fact, when mixing, I’m the sort of guy that will completely pull all the faders down during practice and start all over again if I’m not happy with the results. Leaving the faders in place does nothing except give the next sound guy a false sense of security.
Thirdly, it’s important not to treat the technical team as though their sole reason for existence is to fix all the technical problems of the service. The people on the tech team are not supermen – they cannot read minds when you forget the lyrics to a song, or completely fail to follow your sermon outline, or totally forget a cue. And they’re not there to be abused – forcing a lot of last-second changes on them will lead to a great deal of resentment and frustration. A corollary to this is to actively involve (At least the paid staff.) in the production of the service as much as possible – when communication with all levels of a weekend service staff is good across the board, the results will only be good. This was yet another of my biggest failures as the technical director: I failed to communicate a lot of what was going on in the production side of things, and I had trouble keeping my team on top of what was going on during weekend services when sudden changes would be made to the order of things.
This all being said, I’ve never seen an church, or technical director, that does things completely correctly. Willow Creek comes pretty close – they make sure that all their staff gets at least two consecutive days off per week (At least they said they did in the meetings at the Arts Conference) and are sensitive to the needs of their staff. The bottom line, though – for any church – is that it takes the work of all of the staff to make an effective technical ministry work – and it doesn’t happen without effort.
Exit, stage left.
Sparks