Pat Prendergast: When it comes to monitors, do you turn down the house mix till they’re happy with what they hear?

Curt: Pat, do you mean until the worship team is happy?

Pat Prendergast: Yes.

Curt: Obviously the monitor mix and the house mix are interrelated. The best monitor mix on the planet will fall apart if the house system comes up and masks it. So I tend to work back and forth That is to say, I work on the monitors alone first, and then I bring up the house just to see what the impact is.

Curt (continued): But I'm not embarrassed to pull the house mix down, or solo vocal mics or whatever, during a soundcheck/rehearsal. It's just as much of a soundcheck and rehearsal for me as it is for the worship team.

RobWard: Curt: I just found out tonight that our portachurch - which was going to be moving into our new building in the fall - will now be moving in mid- to late-summer next year. My team is already burned out and was planning on surviving until the fall. How do motivate them to hold on for another 10-11 months?

Curt: Great food?

RobWard: Good Answer.

Curt: Is there a possibility of getting more recruits? A way to spread out the load? I assume you have a well-organized, systematic approach to the weekly setup, and that you have things like multipin connectors to make things easy to setup. What about rotating jobs so they're not always doing the same thing?

Mike Van Tubergen: I'm still surprised, at times, how much mixing separates me from worship. I'm watching for cues, listening for details, watching for who's doing what on stage. Along these lines, a prospective tech should be someone who can stay focused, not easily distracted.

Curt: Focus is critical. Without getting too noble, it's a sacrifice of our time with Him so that others can enter into worship. With that comes the responsibility that we find times to worship ourselves. Churches with one tech guy are churches asking for a problem. The pyramid is built upside down, and it won't work over years.

Mike Van Tubergen: When I get the chance to worship without mixing, it's a wonderful thing :). It's kind of like " AHH, that's what church is all about".

Curt: Remember, God's priorities for our life are Him, spouse, family, job, ministry ... As important as it is, ministry is way down even His list for what we should focus on.