Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you can stay up all night on Saturday and get it done right. You can’t. You might think you can but trust me it will show. You’re just as much an integral part of the team as the pastor or worship leader. Run through the entire service with the pastor and the worship leader. Build a service order run sheet in detail.
The more information you put down the better off your team will be. My mantra is “No Surprises on Sundays.” Complete and thorough communication between the pastor, worship leader and technical leader is vital. As technical lead, know who’s going to be doing what on stage during the message, any guest speakers, any videos or special music, etc.
There’s an old saying among project managers that states: “Plan the work, work the plan.” It’s apropos for our situation at church. If you don’t plan the work you can’t work the plan. If you plan the work but don’t follow the plan it won’t work right. A plan is a step-by-step guide to achieve the goal. If you don’t have one you’ll very likely never achieve the goal.
Organization
Here’s where the rubber start hitting the road. This is where the vision casting and planning start to take physical shape, and is where my matra really starts to come into play: “Everything we do for the Sunday service we do to always impact someone and open the door to their heart for God to speak into them, no matter if it’s the first time they’ve stepped into church or the thousandth time.”
It doesn’t matter what vision is being cast or what you plan for, this should be what everything you do in preparation for the Sunday service should be 100 percent focused on.
Pin it up in every room and area that is used for planning and implementing the worship service. Repeat it as part of the pre-meeting prayers.
A great definition for the word organize: to form as or into a whole, consisting of interdependent or coordinated parts, to put (oneself) in a state of mental competence to perform a task.
Sounds like the church doesn’t it? How do we organize what we’ve come up with so far? Well we have the vision of what we wish to communicate to the congregation. We’ve planned out the service order. Now we put that plan into operational sequencing.
Look at the service order with the pastor, worship leader, and technical leader. Each of you has an area of expertise that is dependent on one another. As team leaders it is important to bring in other members of the team to get them on board and committed to the vision. Organize each element into logical teams.
If you need to set up the sanctuary to have a certain look and feel, then bring in the folks that are going to be doing the work. Bring them in early so they get vested and take ownership.
If the worship music needs to have a certain look with the lyric presentation, bring in the video techs and have them start finding appropriate backgrounds and transition times. Nothing ruins the mood of worship music faster than having a fast transition between slides for a slow, soulful song.