I asked if Bill would write an article and share some wisdom.  When he sent me the article, I realized the best time to publish this, was just shortly before Easter…a time when church techs are burned out, discouraged, and they feel like they have lost their sense of meaning and purpose.  He talks abou a Christmas production in it but it can just as easily apply to the high stress levels that we experience around Easter as well.  If that’s how you feel, this article is for you.  Be encouraged…hopefully, this article can serve as a healing balm on the hearts of the techs that read this.

Let me Encourage You

Serving in ministry for a good part of my adult life I’ve been around long enough that I have experienced disappointments in ministry.  I’ve been in situations that have left me exhausted, disillusioned and sometimes, devalued.  I’ve found some of those disappointments have been because I have lost sight of God’s calling on my life.

It was around Christmas a few years ago. We hadn’t even got to the prep for the Christmas Eve services and I had already hit my wall.  I was exhausted. I was head down focused on getting the long list of To-Dos done. I had switched into survival mode….just make it through to the next day.  I was sitting at lunch, with lots of details in my head, while my pastor was speaking to the church staff about the upcoming Christmas season.  As he wrapped up he spoke these words.  These words came over me like a healing salve.  “You’re not crazy. You’re not alone. God is using you to impact His Kingdom.”

I often share those words of encouragement with church technical leaders over phone calls, at events I’m privileged to be a part of and have even tweeted them.  While I believe they are some of the most encouraging words for a church technical leader, they can impact anyone serving in ministry.

You’re not crazy.

Really.  You’re not.  It may seem like it after spending hours upon hours on a set design or new system install.  You may feel that each weekend with the amount of stress you carry to ensure your volunteers execute the worship services .  You may reach the point where you wonder if it is all worth it.  Let me assure you, if the reason you do what you do is to serve God, then you are not crazy.

Even though it may go unnoticed by others, God is in every little detail that you care for.  He has entrusted you to help communicate the Gospel.  When you remember that, it is an incredible privilege to be serving Him in the ministry He has called you to.

You’re not alone.

Ministry is a unique profession.  We are often put into situations where the details, process or denominations can isolate us, even as we work with others.  It can be a lonely job.  I encourage you to find and reach out to others that share your heart for ministry.  There are many networks available for ministry professionals, like Church Technical Leaders, or pick up the phone and call your counterpart at the other church down the street.

God did not intend for you to be alone.  It is easy for church technical leaders, or even senior pastors, to be consumed by responsibility and to feel like everything is on their shoulders.  Build your team by adding people who have skillsets that you may lack.  By doing this you will not only have help to get the job done but it will help you become a better leader too.  And, it deepens the community you are called to.  Allowing others to step into His story with you and helping them use the gifts God has given them will benefit everyone.

God is using you to impact His Kingdom.

It is easy to lose sight of what you are called to do; not just in the busyness of holidays but in our day to day operations.  Being in ministry is often mistaken for making church ‘happen’ and we tend to lose ourselves in the tasks instead of His story.  You may even question the how or the why of where you are serving.  If you are being faithful to God wherever He has you then I believe He is using you to impact His Kingdom.  I encourage you to start finding the stories of how God is working in the community you serve.  It’s important for you to hear the stories of how God is moving within your church community.  Take the step to talk with your leadership to find those stories.

I will catch myself feeling sorry for myself.  Then God reminds me that He has called me to do this.  I’m not sure why I am privileged to do this or why I get to do this, and sometimes why I am stuck doing this.  But I know His plans are bigger and better than mine.  Those words bring me back to the vision and mission of what I do.

So, again, let me encourage you.  You are not crazy, you are not alone and God is using you to impact His Kingdom.

Doing things well doesn’t just start on Sunday morning; it starts long in advance with strategic planning and attentiveness to detail.  Kevin Poole is a friend of mine who is the tech director at Mobbery Baptist Church in Longview, TX.  I had the opportunity to see his workflow and ideas first hand as they were planning things out for their Christmas production this year.  He goes into detail on how they’ve planned automation in worship and for special events that they do.  The only way you can get to this level of excellence is through careful planning, attention to detail along sensitivity and maturity in understanding how the Holy Spirit will lead the congregation and anticipating it.  Kevin gets it.  This article may be advanced for some but I do believe that there is something that every church can take away from it.  Make sure you follow Kevin Poole on Twitter at @kevinrpoole …he’s full of great insight and ideas!  Check out his article:

Automation in Worship

Before I start this, let me give credit where credit is due. There are three men that taught me and led me along this workflow, I would know none of this without the help of Jon Daggett, Mike Gerringer, and Daniel Albert of Thomas Road Baptist Church and Liberty University.

Excellence is critical; Make it as easy as possible

In worship settings, we strive for excellence. In a volunteer driven technical ministry, many of the team members have careers that are none technical. They serve faithfully, learning the craft as they go. My goal was to create systems that could be used in worship and production that would allow anyone to operate the gear. The preproduction planning of people who have chosen the technical disciplines as their ministry would help lower the learning curve of technically advanced gear.

Sync is a big deal in production. Time is constant and can never be paused or slowed down. Therefore, we as a team all have to be in sync. Musically, this is accomplished through a director with tempo. Technologically, this is accomplished with timecode. These are the two foundations of this post. This does not eliminate the need for execution by a technical ministry, but it helps control the number of moving parts and failure points.

Keeping the musicality

Lets start musically. Our worship team, which includes a praise team of 10, 30-piece orchestra, 6-piece rhythm section, and a 100-voice choir. When I started down this path, we were not using click. The first thing we needed to do was to create a means for them to hear a click source and start learning to play in a time specific constraint. We bought a metronome beat station and inputted that into our console. The rhythm section was already on ears, I had to get the director on ears so he could hear it. Currently, only our rhythm section and director have the ability to hear click. This has worked for now, but we are seeking to allow the orchestra members this option.

Next, we had to get the source click to coincide with a technical timecode of some flavor. There are several applications that allow this. We choose Digital Performer (DP), mostly because I had seen it done by the mighty three mentioned above. DP allowed me to create tempo maps from demo tracks provided by my Worship Pastor. DP could then output timecode along with a click so that digital devices would track in time with musical moments signaled by click.

Now I had to figure out how to get multiple types of devices talk to each other given the same timecode source. Our largest devices we wanted to sync were video playback, lighting control, and audio cues. I found that these three types of devices like to talk sync, but they each talked a different kind of sync, or had a different sync input type. Some strategic purchases had to be made to make sure that all would speak the same timecode.

The workflow

For our workflow, we are using two types of timecode simultaneously. First, DP is very good at handling midi. DP allows multiple tracks of midi, much like audio tracks. They can be assigned to different outputs of an interface (see diagram below). Once I could get midi out, I could then get midi in to other devices, either natively or through an interface. I won’t mention brands of gear because most gear has this ability, and if not, may have a work around.

I set DP to output Midi Time Code (MTC) and connected my midi interface to my lighting desk. I also connected midi thru my audio console. Some audio consoles allow for MTC, but for me, all I needed was midi note values to recall presets in my audio desk. So now as DP tracks along in time, the MTC flows to a timeline in my lighting console which is programmed with cues, and my audio desk listens for midi notes telling it to recall specific presets. My lighting now is automated with my mix/mic cues.

Now lets talk about video. This is a bit more complicated yet easier. Video playback has a frame rate that plays back at a certain specified number of frames per second. In our case, we sync video playback to 30fps. DP allows you to set this playback amount with in the app, so if 29.97 or 24 or 60fps is your workflow, there are ways to do this as well. Finding a video playback device that listens to MTC is difficult. The video world has seemed to standardize on SMPTE as its timecode of choice for this kind of workflow. I’m an audio guy first and foremost, so if I badger anything here, please give me grace.

DP is also capable of outputting SMPTE timecode as an audio source. As an audio guy, I found this very comforting. It was simple to then route audio through XLR cable to a video playback box which the capability of inputting and tracking to SMPTE.

In DP, there is a feature called “Chunks. “ Our workflow uses this feature as discreet multitrack sessions, each being labeled as one song. I can then set each chunk to its own specified timecode hour. I set our video playback box to play the appropriate video at the appropriate timecode hour related to the song in DP. Now, when I press play in DP, my audio desk will fire the appropriate preset for the song, lighting will start its thing, and video playback will start. All three disciplines, one play button.

In this workflow, the only position that was required to make the look happen was a TD switching video. While there are means to automate points of a switcher, we have not taken it that far yet. GPIs are limited in what they can do, and can be complicated to wire. This may be a next stage for us. I’m not saying we would automate every camera dissolve, but perhaps we could automate a cut when video playback starts so that first frame of the video is not missed. We haven’t yet seen a need for this.

There are other ways to fire video playback such as via a midi note. Some would say this is an appropriate method in this kind of workflow. This has one fatal flaw in my mind. Simply starting a video does not ensure frame accurate alignment or constant playback speed. If the video playback jitters, or audio slows, the lip sync, or the alignment of video transitions will not follow. Its perceived as a failure or less than excellent. Purchasing a video playback device capable of SMPTE chase is more money, agreed. Our goal is to not create distractions but eliminate them. The margin of money to the security of not having distractions seemed appropriate. We purchased the more expensive device in this case.

There is one more fun feature to this workflow. As an audio engineer, one task of my role I prefer not to do is cueing and firing playback tracks. There is always that awkward moment if the track fires late, if you miss a cue, or if the device freezes. While DP is remarkably stable in starting and stopping playback, it also allows for remote control of transport via an iPad app.

I have placed an iPad on a stand near our director running DP Control. I have set DP to cue the following chunk at the end of each song, and waits for the play command. My director then presses one button in the course of the service/production: play. The director does not need to know the ins and outs of DP, just when he wants the next element to start.

This workflow will not happen over night. There are many moving parts, and many pieces of gear that must work together in order for the end product to come across as seamless. Once the foundation is set, however, the workflow opens all kinds of possibilities. Remember, midi can control many devices, and DP can have many autonomous midi tracks. I think I once saw a midi controlled coffee pot…maybe that was DMX, but I could still automate through lighting!

I hope you can see the power of preproduction and automation. Remember, poorly planned productions will lead to poorly executed productions.

Check out some other guest blog posts in this series:

Allen & Heath GLD vs. Midas Pro 1 Hands on Review by Peter Wituszynski

Behind the Scenes Technology: A Children’s Pastor’s Perspective

Check it out on Mike Sessler’s website here.

Check it out on iTunes here.

Google Drive in Kids Ministry

Being a leader of a Child Evangelism team, Light Children’s Ministry, means that a lot of work we have to get done throughout the week is when we are apart from each other. I have people on my team who run projection and audio, people who run the puppets, and some help with games. I have people everywhere doing very different things. My challenge was how do I communicate with my entire team in a way that we can work together, see what each other is working on, and see our progress. My answer was Google Drive, formerly known as Google Docs.

Google Docs has been an incredible asset from the beginning of my team. In preparation for the upcoming school year for kids, my co-leader and I began by creating a shared folder in Google Drive that we both had access to with full permissions, read/write. This was the start of utilizing technology so far behind the scenes that nobody being ministered to knows about it but without our team utilizing Google Drive as an asset for communication our ministry would not be the same.

One of the greatest features that has helped the preparation of our team was the “Comments” feature in Google Drive. My co-leader and I were able to read through each other’s materials and mark it up without ever touching the original text. The comments feature is more than what you find within Microsoft Word because not only is it available in real-time just like the live type feature, the comments are similar to an Instant Message Window for a specified text. This made it simple to go back and read what our though processes were as we were preparing.

After everything was done it was just as easy to share with my entire team. I was able to set my team to “Read Only” so that the files were not accidentally deleted but when they needed to edit and add to the files it was just one click away for me to grant them writing permissions. With my entire team being able to access Google Drive both online and offline it ensured that we were all looking at the same document and not an older version. We were and still are all up to date with each other!

If you are part of a team and don’t use Google Drive in some way you may be missing out. There are other technologies out there similar to Google Drive but in my opinion they don’t match up just yet (not saying they won’t one day).

So how can you get started using Google Drive in your ministry? Simply go on your web browser to drive.google.com and get started. They do a quick run through of everything for you. Once you get started meet with your team and figure out where your communication skills may be lacking or where they could simply improve. Google Drive provides Document, Spreadsheet, and Presentation support that all function in similar ways to the Microsoft Office Suite.

If you are used to sharing documents on a network drive you can download the Google Drive app for PC/Mac and simply drag those files into the Google Drive folder location and share it with your members on your team. I prefer this method because instead of limiting a document being open only on one computer at a time, you can all open it, edit it, and chat with each other either in video or text as you collaborate as a team.

Just like with all other technologies in ministry we must remember it is a tool and not a method. If the technology fails our execution of ministry should not be hindered. Yes, Google Drive provides an

incredible way for a team to collaborate on files and many other things, but that should not be the only communication your team experiences.

Behind the Scenes Technology should be the same way. If Google Drive suddenly cannot be accessed my team still knows what is going on and what we have to do. If the sound system at the church we are ministering to gets hit with a demon (okay, typically it’s user error or cheap technology), we still have to go on. If the projector fails we still are able to make the points from the sermon.

Google Drive is one of many “Behind the Scenes Technologies” that can be used in ministry and/or teamwork. What are some technologies that you use to help you prepare?

Each time that I’ve come across problems such as this, the Lord has always provided someone to help me, challenge me or guide me.  It doesn’t mean I’ve averted failure; nor does it mean that I made good decisions every time.  But , it does mean I’ve learned and changed how I do things because of people who the Lord has placed in my path.  It comes from people who are older then me and sometimes from people who are younger then me.

In the next month, I want to highlight a few people who I have had the pleasure to get to know over the past few years and some I have had the privilege to do ministry along side of them.

Two of these guys are church technical ministry gurus.  Bill Swaringim and Kevin Poole have been huge influences in my life over the past two years for church tech but also for leadership in technical ministry.  Their voices carry experience and wisdom.  Bill is the leader of CTL (Church Technical Leaders) which has networked church technical directors across the nation.  His website and faithfulness was one of the reasons I figured out that being a church tech director was something I could actually do and pursue as a career and had a life-altering effect on my life.  Kevin is the tech director of Mobbery Baptist Church in Longview, TX but has been a TD at First Baptist Church of Dallas as well as the audio director for Liberty University.  He’s attention to detail, intricate planning and technical orchestration is amazing and there is much to be learned in the church world today from his insight.

The other two guys are up and coming leaders who I meet while I was on tour as an audio engineer with Valley Forge Christian College in Chosen and Pneuma.  David Brock was a youth leader who that I connected with and wound up touring with a year later and is now a Children’s Pastor integrating tech into other areas of ministry.  Pete Wituszynski was a camper in my cabin as a youth leader who is now on his way to becoming an electrical engineer and has become a solid production tech.  He’s an ultra-nerd when it comes to gear functionality and workflow and is doing an in-depth product comparison on two new consoles that are rocking the market right now.

I’ve done alot of writing…and you all have done alot of reading!  I just wanted to take some time to kind of sit back and stop talking and allow some of these stellar tech guys to talk for me.  They’ll be posted on Mondays this month and potentially next month depending on the response so make sure you’ve subscribed to the blog and you’re getting updates.  I’m also asking people to tweet these articles if you enjoy them or if you’ve learned something from it.  I want to amplify the voices of these guys because of their knowledge and faithfulness.

Thanks for your support!

1.  Connect with your team during the week

It doesn’t matter how you do it, just that you do it.  Connect with them in small groups (whether it’s one you lead or just participate in that happens to include some of your team members), comment on select, daily things on social media to let them know that you care about their every day life, or keep your team updated on what’s being changed, improved or share small status updates on projects that effect them directly via email or social media.  It helps cultivate relationship between team members and leaders as well as allows them to feel a sense of ownership in the ministry they work to support on Sunday mornings.

2.  Be Cheerful

At least smile!  Sometimes, it’s difficult to be that way on Sunday mornings simply because of stress of making sure everything is ready to roll and because of other conflict or problems that arise.  Don’t expect your team to be happy, cheerful, and easy to work with if you, as the ministry leader, are not.  As the leader, your team will mirror your attitude and outlook, so make it a good one!

3.  Know your gear

The gear you use and run production with is your tool for making it happen.  While your tech gear will not LEAD YOU INTO worship, it certainly will keep you from ENTERING INTO worship.  To overcome this is to have things set up and prepared beforehand to reduce problems.  This will help you with last minute changes and service flow modifications because you’re already pretty close to where you need to be already.  But, when there are serious problems or failures, knowing exactly how your systems, setup, design and gear works is critical in troubleshooting problems and getting fast results.  Production errors tend to get way more notice then anything else over the course of a church service.  That understanding will help you get out of sticky situations quicker!  I wrote about when one nightmare came true for Sunday| Magazine a little while back.  Check it out here.

4.  Don’t be afraid to call shots

You’re the tech director, it’s your job.  So many times, I talk to people who are afraid to make a judgement call because they are afraid that they’re going to make the wrong call.  Then, instead of actually making a decision, they don’t do anything thinking that it will just work itself out.  If you’re really directing and coordinating this thing, do something and say something.  Weigh the pro’s and con’s taking the time frame into consideration and make the call being as intentional as possible.  If you make the wrong decision, evaluate your performance and learn from your mistakes.  Then, change how you make decisions for next time.  If you’ve done something well or made a tough call that ended well, then take what you’ve learned from that and see if it can be applied to anything else you may be struggling with.

5.  Circle back afterwards

Bring your team together if possible after you execute a service together and talk about what went well, what didn’t go so great and could be better, and what was a total failure.  Allow them to give input from their perspective and from the specific roles that they served in.  Weigh their input and take it into consideration as your prepare for the following week.  You don’t have to use everything, but you may still hear something or realize something that you missed that can help you create a better experience for next time.

What other tips and ideas do you employ at your church?  What other tips can we all learn from?  What things have you learned to avoid?

On Sunday, one of our volunteers was struggling to figure out why the console wasn’t passing audio to the mains.  The channel was registering that signal was passing through the channel, but he was perplexed as to why he couldn’t hear it.  Many of you, are thinking, “well, was it routed correctly?”  It wasn’t routed correctly and it was easy for me to see because I knew the process well.  It was a good moment for teaching troubleshooting and procedure in a real world situation where results were immediately apparent once I explained it.

It’s easy for experienced technical directors and production techs to glaze over the small steps or get frustrated when less experienced people don’t do exactly what we want.  But, if we haven’t clearly defined what we want, we are doing them a disservice and we’ve failed as a leader in what we’re doing.  Sure, there’s a certain level of experience that we need for specific events and that’s fine.  But, we also need to make sure that we’re training new people from whatever level they are on, even if that means from the ground up, and raising up new people to fill the roles of a growing ministry.

Here’s my plan of attack moving forward:

1. Define The Goal

When new people want to get involved, we need to have defined goals and steps laid out.  I need to verbalize and set the standards for what is important and what we want the end product to look like.  This should be applied to shows, services, presentations and organization.

2. Define the Steps, Technique and Jargon

As I mentioned earlier, not everyone understands how to get to the goal I shooting for.  Some may understand the process and technique but might not understand how to communicate it and some may be able to communicate well and show an understanding but get terrible results.  The key is to make sure that I know how approach people from both angles.  Personally, I can get the necessary results, but struggle more with explaining to others how to get there.  I need to learn to unlearn some of the advanced techniques and terminology and get back to the very definitions of what I’m doing and the steps of the processes I’m employing.  That doesn’t mean I’m supposed to overwhelm someone and deluge them with everything I know and expect them to run a large format show right away simply because I explained everything, but it does mean that everything can be broken down into smaller, easier and more palatable words, phrases and definitions so that people can grasp what I’m talking about and thereby learn and grow.

3. Define Commitment

This should be a given and I believe it will develop from getting the other two right.  If I organize my goals and explain why those goals are important and how important the volunteers who take those conceptual goals and make them a reality, it will help develop a deeper commitment and “buy-in” into what we’re doing in our specific area of ministry.

This is definitely a discussion-based article that I’m looking for feedback (ha…audio guy joke) on.  Comments are certainly welcomed here.  Let’s here thoughts and critiques…I’m learning along with the rest of you and I’m all ears!

Crazy right?

Or do we do that in church ministry as well?  As technical directors working using technology as a tool every day, have we blurred the lines between the people who are serving and the tools they are operating?  We all have pressure on us to do the very best we are capable of doing.  Sometimes, that pressure comes even more from ourselves then the leadership above us!

It’s easy to become frustrated when something fails regardless of whether it’s a gear failure or human error.  But, what do we do with that?  It’s extremely easy to take it out on the volunteer who is running the gear even if it’s not really their fault.

I think a lot of times our first reaction is to just want to do it ourselves because we have the experience and the confidence to get it done.  But, that’s not what its really about.  Being possessive and controlling is never a good quality to have in a team situation.  It’s our job as technical directors and production leaders to instruct, guide, teach and challenge our teams.  If we’re not approaching it in that way, then we’re not leading our team right.

What can you do to lead and instruct your team better?  Have you blurred the lines between technology and the people who operate it?  What can you do to make the distinction between the two clearer?

Our volunteer base is just as susceptible to this as we are.  However, as a technical director, we’re held to a higher standard because of our leadership position.  We set the example to those we lead.  If we as tech directors are slacking and not paying attention, it’s even worse because we’re responsible for what happens.

It is easy to slack off due to tiredness and quickly lose focus on what we’re doing.  When you’re tired, you miss things and I know that when I’m tired, I’m cranky.  I get frustrated more easily then I normally would.

The tech director position tends to attract people who have type A personalities, people who only need to be told something once, and people who are perfectionists.

Unfortunately, when we work with volunteers, we need to find a way to curb that a little so it doesn’t get out of control because many times our volunteers might not be type A or even if they are, we need to remember that most times our volunteers aren’t professional audio/lighting/video techs.  They are still learning and it’s our job to direct them and lead them in a way that allows them to shine in the role and opportunity we’ve trusted them with.

Sometimes, I get frustrated when I teach the same thing or instruct a volunteer with how to do something over and over again.  Sometimes, I feel like I’m always telling them to remember to un-mute the groups or VCA’s in order to get the system to pass audio or that our media is always stored in the same folder on our projection computer and that you need to delete last week’s media before you add this weeks media, or that you need to double-check all the lighting scenes before you fire them during a service.  But, it’s what you have to do in order to be effective.  They can’t read your mind and they’re humans who do this gig usually once a week at the most.  Patiently and graciously remind them what they need to do and what you require of them.

Over communicating is key because it improves your team dynamic in alot of different ways.  One way is that it keeps everyone on the same page.  Continually reminding volunteers of the direction and purpose of what they’re doing and the techniques they need to use in order to make them effective.  Then, make sure you affirm your team and build them up when they rock it and make it happen on a Sunday.  And, when they get discouraged on the Sundays that aren’t so good, you can remind them how good it felt on the Sundays that they performed exceptionally.

Are you communicating effectively with your tech teams and volunteers?  Or are you getting frustrated because you told them before and they should remember?

If you’ve been reading my blog, you’ve heard me talk about Sunday| Magazine.  It’s an awesome resource for not only techs, designers and creatives in the church but for worship teams, leadership and other leaders that pour themselves into creating a great experience each Sunday at church.  The man behind it all is Jonathan Malm who has become pretty well known in the church tech and stage design circles as a result of the great websites he runs.

I was privileged to write once again for the second issue of Sunday| Magazine.  In this issue, it focuses on curating rather then creating.  I could go into how amazing I think that concept is but I don’t want to take the fun away.  Go to www.sundaymag.tv to subscribe and read it.

My article is on “Getting a Consistant Mix from Different Techs“.  Check it out and let me know what you think!  I always love to get feedback and hear what people’s rections and impressions are.