“It’s all Greek to me.”

I hear that phrase often when speaking about the basic concepts of sound in churches.

Being both a sound engineer and a musician, I’ve noticed that there is often a stark contrast between learning to play music and operating a sound system.

When I learned to play my preferred instrument, I spent countless hours alone in my room making horrible racket that would someday become music.

After that racket became music, I went to school for music to further my abilities.

Another path may be the one of a typical pianist, who starts piano lessons at a young age and learn and grow from this foundation.

My path to becoming a sound engineer at a church was also a typical one.

I had some experience with sound systems from setting up my home stereo and playing in a band.

When I started to attend a church regularly, it was a smaller church, with a set of loudspeakers on sticks.

They had moved from a larger building and had their sound system stored in boxes. Nobody knew how to set it back up.

One day I pulled it all out and plugged it all in.

The next week, I and was elected chief sound person. I had been attending that church for about one month! I really had no clue what I was doing but I sure was trying my best.

Luckily for me, I became employed by a sound consulting and contracting firm not too long after and began to learn the basic foundation of sound systems and their operation.

I would be willing to bet (if I were a betting man) that many sound system operators in church started off similar to me. We’re elected to the position because of our interest in sound, not our background and training.

To make things more difficult, we don’t have the opportunity to spend countless hours practicing in our room. Many times our first day of training and our first time running sound starts with a room full of people on a Sunday morning.

Instead of driving our parents nuts with pseudo musical racket, we get to learn in front of a room full of people!

It was with these things in mind that I developed a training course called “Developing Your Sound Ministry”.

This training course was designed to be a foundation to build upon starting with the basic physics of sound all the way through hands-on training.

Of course there are other resources such as books, training videos and training programs that can be found with a quick Google search, in addition to the resources provided here on ProSoundWeb.

As ministers of sound, we have a very important role. We are the link between the ministry and the masses.

Expanding our understanding and expertise in sound is an essential part of enabling the message to penetrate hearts.

(Check out Jeff’s new article on PSW: Isolating Subwoofers In The Church Environment

Jeff Lange began his audio/musical career attending Musicians Institute in Hollywood, where he developed his passion to play guitar and write music. This developed into an audio career where Jeff has carved out nearly 15 years of professional experience working with commercial audio/visual system design, project management, system installation, project estimating and training.

With a desire to preserve an atmosphere that the word and Spirit of God can minister, Jeff has developed a training seminar that incorporates fundamental concepts that equip the “sound person” to become more effective in their role.