Comments on: Tech Arts Leadership Team

By: Jim Walton

Jim Walton — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 23:04:46 +0000

I’m too small or too young, teamwise, for a leadership team, I am barely getting my actual team together. But you have prompted me to think beyond this and be planning for the future.

At the moment, I am training long time members and longtime tech volunteers in a new way of doing things. I’m breaking the free for all mentality and building a team to actually focus on ministry and using tech effectively.

Thanks for once again pushing me to think big!

By: Roger

Roger — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 06:00:39 +0000

I’d like to develop a regular leadership team meeting.. Right now we don’t meet regularly.

What does your meeting consist of? Can you give us a run down.

Thanks for sharing!

By: Richard Gaspard

Richard Gaspard — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 00:54:23 +0000

Basically, my leadership team is my staff. We do all of the creative planning for our videos (story lines, scripting, etc.). They all know how I would do something, and I feel that they represent me well in my absence. I do have a few other guys I bounce ideas off of. They’re both on my camera crew, but they’re both 21 years old. I’m always looking to harness THAT energy!

Greg, you seem to have a more hierarchical system than we do. I’m going to try to find ways to implement a system like yours, to be able to replicate myself.

By: Greg Atkinson

Greg Atkinson — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 22:23:01 +0000

I think either I wasn’t clear or some of you are misinterpreting my post. I’m not talking about my tech or media team - that is MUCH larger. I’m talking about a hand-picked group of 9 people that make up our Tech Arts Leadership Team.

This isn’t my week to week team of volunteers, this is a special group of key leaders over each area. Does that make sense?

FYI - these are all volunteers (except my Video Intern and my Audio Coordinator), so it doesn’t matter what size church you are. Any size church could hand-pick a team of volunteer leaders. I’d like to hear about those of you that are doing this.

By: Richard Gaspard

Richard Gaspard — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 16:21:26 +0000

Crossroads Church (www.mycrossroads.org) runs about 2300 in weekly attendance, although roughly 3500 people consider it their home church. My position is that of Media Director, and unlike a lot of my colleagues out there, I report directly to the Lead Pastor, not the Worship Pastor.

Our Media Department consists of myself, plus I have three full-time employees: Editor, Graphic Artist, and Admin. Asst./Production Manager. We also have three contracted PA engineers, and about seven or so camera operators who rotate. My editor directs on the weekends. We use three cameras (but we’re about to go to five), and I have a videotape operator, plus a TV audio guy. We shoot live to tape, but multitrack our special music for TV/web. I do all of the post-audio production.

For weekend services, we produce countdowns, video announcments, newcomers welcome videos, sermon openers, and sermon support pieces.

We also produce “Crossroads,” which is our weekly TV broadcast, and it features our special songs and the pastor’s messages. About 15% of all of our newcomers have seen the broadcast (we track it via our newcomer’s sign-in card in our bulletin).

I am also in charge of the Presentation Ministry, which has about ten or so people who rotate in. We use ProPresenter, feeding dual projector screens.

We also operate Crossroads Creative (www.crossroads-creative.com), which produces pieces for sale to congregations ala Beamer, BlueFish TV, etc. I write/direct about 95% of our content (I’ve even been in a few things). We’re actually starting to list them on WorshipHouseMedia.com and SermonSpice.com. Every piece we sell has been used in our own congregation first. You could say that we’re our own test market!

By: Guy Hall

Guy Hall — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:34:28 +0000

We’ve been in our new facility almost a year and a half and this is one area I wish I had planned for better. I have a great team of volunteers with one staff person (me) and during installation and commissioning we had a lot of training time but it took a year of using it to feel really comfortable running the services. We have many other events that usually I cover, but at the expense of my time off. So I’m going to share the opportunities with other team members and have been showing them how to setup a PA in the gym and do other things around the place.

I’m planning regular training sessions for next year so we can dig deeper & expand our capabilities, plus the Worship Leader & I are moving to a new team structure next year with Mentors (overseeing relationship and spiritual needs) and Equippers (overseeing training and performance issues).

January will be busy for you but very worth all the extra time and effort. The payoff in the quality & impact of the services will be very fulfilling.

By: Greg Simmons

Greg Simmons — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 13:33:48 +0000

I don’t envy the task ahead of you, but I know you’re excited about the prospects of new tools!!

As for our “Tech Arts Team”, well….considering we’re a small church, we are a team of two. We’ve done everything from installing new equipment (where no cabling existed - video feeds), to website management, to video production, to the basic worship needs every week.

I like your idea about meeting or at least emailing on a regular basis. I need to take that lead.

There is one good part though, we meet with the pastor, music pastor, drama leader, etc on a regular basis to focus the weekly messages and ministry messages.