There are many things which shouldn’t happen during a worship service, yet still do. However, unless we’re cognizant of them sometimes it’s hard to prevent them.

So, I decided to create a list of those things that just shouldn’t happen in a worship service.

Some of these may seem so silly, so expected, so taken for granted that they’re almost not worth saying.

But you’d be surprised how many times I’ve seen these mistakes made in other churches, and even by my own volunteers.

• Don’t miss microphone cues. We can’t afford to not have a mic turned on when it needs to be on. But if you come to one of my workshops, you’ll hear me talk about keeping the number of open mics to a minimum.

That is to say, if the choir’s not singing, don’t have their mics open. If the pastor’s not talking, don’t have his mic on. And so on.

But we also need to stay focused so that the pastor doesn’t have to say stuff to the congregation like “Is this thing on?” What an embarrassment.

• Turn off the mics before they hit the stand. It’s purely unprofessional to let a singer put a mic in the clip on a stand without having first muted that channel. If you don’t, the congregation is going to hear a loud thump over the system, or at least over the monitors.

Hopefully the channel mutes on your console also mute the monitor mixes. That way all you have to do is mute each vocal mic channel, and they’ll be muted both in the house and in the monitors simultaneously.

• Mute the guitar channels. Don’t you just hate the loud “buzzzzz-t” that goes with a guitar cable being plugged in or unplugged with the channel open!

If we can equate the word professional with excellence, then it’s unprofessional to not mute those channels in time to save the congregation from that moment.

It’s a two-way street though. The sound guys aren’t mind readers, nor have they been assimilated to become one with the automation of the console.

With all that to say, the guitar and bass player in your worship team should give you a moment to mute their channels before unplugging. It’s just common courtesy, a recognition that we’re a team, that the tech support guys and the musicians arc equal members of the worship team.

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