Thursday, October 28, 2010
Worship Wisdom: Finding The People While Learning & Growing
Choosing and training the Church sound team.I am often ask variants on this single question. What characteristics do you look for in a potential member for your sound team?
Should you look for a frustrated musician? A rocket scientist? A computer geek? A telephone lineman?
Maybe, or maybe not. Attitude is usually more important that pre-existing aptitude.
In this article, we’ll first examine how to identify the proper individuals to serve in your technical support ministry. We’ll also show you how to train them to achieve technical excellence.
A Servant’s Heart
After serving on the production staff at churches for nearly ten years, I’m here to testify you that you never want to choose a person based solely on their technical knowledge.
Instead, look for someone with a willing heart first. Then ask about their technical knowledge.
Why not look for technical knowledge first? While both are important, technical stuff is easy to teach over time.
Finding someone with a servant’s heart can be more difficult. It’s part of their core personality.
It also illustrates their relationship with God and predicts their ultimate utility within your tech support staff.
Serving in a church ministry requires a boatload of grace and more patience than many people have left at the end of a busy week. In some churches, it means working with difficult people every weekend.
The worship team and tech support team depend on each other’s gifts to be at full muster at the downbeat of the service. The process is much like preparing a weekly meal for all your worshipers.
The worship team and tech support team need to be in unity before, during and after the service. Being on the same page, spiritually, is the key ingredient to this recipe.
Staying F.A.T.
One principle I’ve relied on over the years is that anyone involved in tech support ministry needs to be F.A.T. faithful, available, and teachable, in that order. Once they’ve joined the tech support team, these people must also be faithful to be there when they’ve promised to be there.
Most of our lives are too busy. Many people over-schedule our arrivals and departures to the nanosecond. But as a wise friend of mine once suggested, the only way we can be somewhere on time is to arrive there early.
The volunteer should also make themselves as available as is practical. To say they’re committed to the success of the ministry, but then to only make themselves available for one monthly service doesn’t work well in most situations.
Only operating a console one time a month isn’t often enough to become proficient at it. Would you climb on that airplane next weekend if you knew that the pilot only flies once a month? Granted, I’ve never heard of anyone dying from a bad mix, but you get my point.
There is another side of this issue, however. I’ve seen some volunteers make themselves too available, to the point that their relationship with their family starts to suffer. If you get your priorities out of line, your work in that ministry will.
Profiles & Personalities
These days, it’s common to find people who work in, on, or around computers, volunteering to serve in the tech support ministry.
Musicians who love all things electronic are another fertile source of tech support volunteers.
My friend, Blair McNair, worked on missiles while he was in the Navy.
At some point he started volunteering in the sound team at his local church.
Years later he became the Technical Director for Benny Hinn at Orlando Christian Center, and today designs sound systems for a living.
Most volunteers do something else for living. Your church may be blessed with a seasoned audio pro as the volunteer head of the sound team, but that’s not the norm.
This is why any successful volunteers must be clearly, consistently teachable.
This means to say that in the likely event that a particular volunteer doesn’t make his/her living in pro audio, they need to make a committee effort to learn the craft so they can reliably deliver technical excellence in every worship service.
I’m unconvinced that there is any one type of personality to look for. That’s because I don’t think we need assume that every sound team volunteer must be able to drive the FOH mixing desk.
The individual who typically seeks involvement in a tech support ministry has a detail-oriented personality. These folks make lists for everything.
I have a detail-oriented personality. Knowing that the guitarist is going to take a solo on the third chorus isn’t enough. I want to know what kind of sound he’s going to use, and how loud he will play. I want to know if he’s going to start out soft and build to a loud ending.
I must know if he’s going to use his own effects, or if I should plan on adding some echo effects on my own. Notice that I’m the audio guy, so I really don’t care what he’s wearing that day that’s for the lighting guy or the programming director to think about.
Musical Background
This is one debate that has gone on for years and years. Should the person who will be driving the FOH mixing desk be a trained musician?
It’s easy for me to say yes, because I made my living as a player for twelve years, and I have a Bachelor of Music degree.
Clearly, someone who has experience as a player or a singer can be respected and accepted more readily by the players in the worship band simply because of the common bond and similar background.
But I do know of very capable mixers who have no formal music background, just a love of the music. I think this decision has to be a very individual one.
But I think we can agree that not everyone should be behind a console. Some can put together a great mix without even breaking a sweat. For others, it’s just not their gifting.
If the interest is there, however, the art of mixing can be learned. It’s not something they’ll grasp overnight, but time and practice and listening analytically are great teachers.
I’ve trained literally thousands of church music pastors, sound team volunteers and technical staff in my workshops. Of all of those people, I can only think of two individuals who just never seemed to get it.
Being a part of the church tech support team isn’t for everyone, but the majority of those who seem naturally drawn to the ministry seem capable of learning and managing the task.
Gifting & Getting The Job Done
Mixing sound is just one of the tasks that the sound ministry is charged with.
You could also find people who are thrilled to do a good job of running the tape duplicators after each service.
Others might enjoy fixing broken mic cables.
Still others might be happy setting up the stage every Saturday night.
Perhaps there’s a self-employed someone who could carve out some time to set the stage or run essential weekday errands.
Someone with a theatrical background might enjoy serving as a stage manager, a runner, or in some other role.
If your pastor has a daily or weekly radio program, someone must learn to use your nonlinear editing software to edit those programs.
If you identify all the tasks that need to be accomplished during a week, and then spread them out over a handful of people, you should find that the job can get done with excellence and without anyone getting overly stressed.
In a large church, you’ll find a trained individual at every post. The FOH desk, monitor desk, lighting desk, in the TV control room, at the video projection desk, all require trained technicians. Still, in the majority of churches, one person may serve all of those roles simultaneously.
The best idea is to cross-train everyone who becomes part of the tech support ministry. The lighting guy should at least be able to get sound out of the system, and the audio guy should at least be able to get the stage lights up and running if needed. (Editor’s note: Which one do you suspect will do a better job?)
People need a weekend off. People get sick. Cars break down in transit. Your staff needs to be prepared to help out as needed, in season and out of season.
Why Train The Team?
We must recognize that there’s a great disparity between the tech support team and the worship team in most churches.
Think about it. Every worship team member, who sings or plays, has inevitably studied music at sometime in his or her life.
Even if they are self-taught, they’ve invested their time and managed to learn how to play.
North American culture has given us easy access to musical training.
Most public schools have some form of music program.
I began to play music when I was in elementary school, played in various music groups all the way through college, and made my living playing in bands until I was thirty years old.
It was only after I got my music degree that I quit playing music for a living.
Even if we didn’t pursue music as our lifelong ambition, our studies helped us in numerous ways.
In contrast, the tools or programs to learn how to run sound, or the stage lights, or work with video hasn’t had the same kind of easy access, at least not until very recently.
After all, in school, I played a saxophone. I didn’t need a sound system. Maybe you played in the brass section, and they really didn’t need a sound system either.
So, is it fair to compare the talents of a stage full of trained musicians and singers with that of a beginning audio student? No, this is an unfair comparison or expectation.
In real life however, that is what many churches do every week. Predictably and unfortunately, some get frustrated and lose their cool in the process.
Training your crew also helps to strengthen their bond as friends and teammates. It can even enhance their self-esteem as individuals, giving them more confidence.
Where To Find Training
Churches all across the world are crying out for trained sound technicians. Strangely, only a very small percentage of these churches are willing to pay for that training. That’s one very clear reason you rarely see such training opportunities.
If you’re a eager student of audio, reasonably certain that you have your facts straight, and you believe you are ready to start training others, then do what all the rest of us who have trained others in audio have done.
Put together an outline to clearly and logically organize the materials and dig into the resource materials to gather your supporting information. Then gather up your courage and go for it.
I choose to organize the material according to signal flow. That’s an intentional approach. Understanding signal flow logic is key.
When I’m teaching someone to connect an amplifier, for example, and I see them connect the speaker cable first to the speaker, and then to the amp, I have them disconnect both ends and do it over again.
Obviously, this makes no difference to the signal itself and, because it’s an AC signal, it constantly reverses directions. In general, as you already know, audio signal flows directionally from the amplifier to the speaker.
One day, years after they’ve stopped calling me nasty names, they’re going to run into an exciting moment when five minutes before the downbeat of their Christmas Cantata, with 2,000 people out in the audience, their sound system stops working.
Suddenly, the success of the event falls squarely on their shoulders and rests in any audio team’s to troubleshoot and resolve the problem in a timely manner.
If the concept of signal flow logic is firmly ingrained into their thinking, they’ll be able to rest in their knowledge and resolve the problem quickly and efficiently.
Once, I had the great pleasure of visiting with Bill Johnson, Chief Audio Engineer for Kenneth Copeland Ministries.
As we were touring the facilities at Eagle Mountain Church, he shared with me that they require their tech support volunteers to attend a training session once a month.
Through a simple test, the audio team is divided into beginning, intermediate, and advanced groups.
The classes are taught by technical support staff. That is so cool.
Ultimately, it helps bring the entire crew onto the same page, and because it keeps everyone growing in their knowledge, so they can do an ever better job of supporting the technical needs of the worship services.
Source Knowledge
The Internet is overflowing with information about audio. Some of it is even correct. If you’ve been in audio for some time and you’re reasonably confident in your knowledge, then go ahead and explore.
Just be alert for the occasional piece of audio mythology. If you’re a beginning student, I encourage you to stick to the main information highway.
We strive to make our own ChurchSoundcheck.com a mythology free zone. Obviously, ProSoundWeb.com focuses on performance audio technology and works hard to ensure accuracy.
Believe it or not, you can trust comments that you may read posted on web sites by the major manufacturers. For example, you’ll find accurate, reliable information on sites by Rane, Crown, EAW, QSC, Allen & Heath, dbx, and others.
Online courses are available from the Sound Institute, and Syn-Aud-Con will begin offering online seminars later this year.
Wake Up & Smell The Silicone
Finally, I’d like to leave you with a wakeup call. Have you stopped growing in your technical knowledge? Have you stayed on top of the DSP revolution in regard to digital consoles, or are you letting digital know-how pass you by?
Even worse, are you a know-it-all? Are you the type of individual who figures that they know all there is to know about audio, or lighting, or video?
Let me suggest to you that one day, in the not too distant future, you’re going to find yourself left in the digital dust of some young kid who just figured out how cool audio is, who has never even touched an analog audio console and been raised on digital.
There’s so much new stuff in play these days. It is impossible to stay on top of every technological change, in every equipment category, but that’s no reason to roll over and ignore the digital revolution.
It’s cool to learn from the past, to apply micing techniques learned from the masters, for example. It’s not cool to have been mixing at your church for the past thirty years and to walk up to a new console one day only to discover that you can’t even locate the ON switch.
If you’re not achieving the level of technical excellence that you aspire to each week, maybe it’s not the gear. A simple lack of knowledge could be standing between your audio education goals and the reality you live with.
Fortunately,, technical stuff can be taught and technical savvy learned, but you must work at it. Likewise, your volunteers and tech support staff must work at it.
Stay on task. Read. Study, study, study. Attend trade shows, workshops and seminars. Subscribe to trade magazines. Buy technical books. Read and study some more. After that, go teach someone else.
Curt Taipale heads up Church Soundcheck, a thriving community dedicated to helping technical worship personnel, and he also provides expert systems design and consulting services with Taipale Media Systems.
More articles by Curt Taipale on PSW:
Tune Up: Getting The Most From Your Church Sound System
Getting To The Essense Of Effects In Your Church System
Maximizing Your Church Sound Mixing Console With A Logical Approach
Staying Focused - A Path To Excellence In Operating Your Church Sound System
Choosing The Right Console For Your Church Sound System
The Powerful Affect Of Digital Effects In Your System
Who Defines “Good” Sound At Your Church?
Install Your Own Church Sound System? Here Are Some Cautionary Tales
Humor Files: Unintended Amendments To The Laws Of Physics