February 11th, 2008
Team Leadership
Posted by Church Video Ideas under Church Media, Church video, Churches, Consulting, Continuing Education, Ideas, Leadership, Media ministry, Random ThoughtsA while back I wrote about forming my Tech Arts Leadership Team. I can not stress enough how crucial this team is to my ministry. I work extremely hard and am very strategic about making sure nothing relies on me alone. If I miss a Sunday, my team doesn’t miss a beat - everything will still go on like normal. Obviously, I love being there most weeks and love encouraging my team and seeing them in action, but I try to lead in such a way that all the volunteers take ownership.
Yesterday was an exception, as I had to run lights due to my previous post on “firing a volunteer”. I ran lights because that person was scheduled to run lights. The rest of the month is covered on lighting, so I’ll go back to being a cheerleader for my team. Every now and then I’ll video direct, but that is the exception rather than the rule.
In this crazy last couple of months leading up to the move into the new worship center, I relied heavily on my Tech Arts Leadership Team. I met with them about a month ago and shared the weight of pressure and responsibility with them. They dove in and rallied around me better than I could have ever dreamed. Each person is over a specific area of ministry. They each headed up their area and led out in organizing and overseeing training for their teams. Besides being the first team to serve on our first Sunday (last week), they each committed to stay on the remainder of the month to sit beside each person in their area as they serve for the first time on the new equipment.
Besides learning new equipment in a new room, we’ve had to grow overnight and assimilate new people onto our team. We went from 2 video cameras to 3, 1 stage manager to 3 and added the video engineer/shader position since our first Sunday in the new building - that’s 4 extra people needed each week to make Sunday happen. Thankfully, people are coming up to me and asking how to get plugged in last week and yesterday. Picture that! Yesterday everyone who served last week was sitting beside those that served this week. It was a beautiful sight and I was grateful to God.
Obviously, there is a lot of excitement and momentum with a new building and new equipment, but I also think it helps to have more of the team visible to the congregation. In our old worship center only Front of House audio was visible to the people. The lighting, graphics, and video team were hidden upstairs in the “tech booth”. Now there is a large Front of House booth in the middle of the worship center where lighting, our Service Director, Producer and Front of House audio team (A1 and A2) are. We also have 3 camera men up on platforms (a left, middle and right camera) that are seen in the house. FYI - Our graphics operator, video director and video shader are in a video control room, which is in a building behind the worship center. They have an “eye in the sky” camera that they look at on a big plasma monitor, so they can see what’s going on on the stage (note the control room picture in my next to last post).
Another thing I did was to order new tech team polo shirts. We did a whole new branding campaign when we moved into the new worship center, which changed our church’s logo. I waited until the first Sunday in the new building to utilize our new, black tech team polos, which feature our church’s new logo. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: You wouldn’t believe what people will do for a free shirt. 
Our team looks sharp and people have taken notice. Below is what the logo looks like on the shirt:
Some have asked, so I’ll list these two groups out for you:
- The Technical Arts Leadership Team consists of: Myself, a person over audio, a person over lighting, 2 people over video (one over live video and one over video production), a systems person, a person over graphics and social events, a person over volunteers/assimilation and Service Directors and a person over stage managers. NOTE: Each team member plays a role in assimilation, as I match them up with newcomers to shadow and learn from. them
- What it takes to make Sunday happen: 4 audio engineers (A1 and A2 at FOH, a monitor engineer and a broadcast/recording engineer), 3 camera operators, a camera shader, Video Director, graphics operator, lighting operator, a Service Director (who executes and calls cues) and a Producer (who takes in the overall experience and offers artistic suggestions for creativity and different looks/feels each week). I simply float around and spend sometime in the video control room, some time at the FOH booth and sometime in the audience just taking it all in.
What does it take to make Sunday happen at your church?
February 11th, 2008 at 8:27 am
Eh…not much.
Being a MUCH smaller church than Bent Tree, our tech team is much smaller. This is different than what I was used to at a prior church that I volunteered at, but it’s all good.
Generally, we have just two of us. One for media - lyrics, sermon presentation, other media, etc. Then one for audio. This person is also responsible for recording the audio which is later converted to MP3 for web publication.
We occasionally bring in additional volunteers for larger productions such as Easter or Christmas. Then, these individuals work as extra lighting, stage management, prop, audio personnel.
February 11th, 2008 at 9:26 am
We have a small medium sized church (worship just under 500 per week in four services) and it only takes one person to run everything… audio, video, PPT, lights, everything. We have a group of 3 volunteers along with myself to pull this off.
Matthew
February 11th, 2008 at 10:32 am
At Crossroads Church (www.mycrossroads.org), we utilize a PA engineer, a presentation op, a lighting op, 3 camera ops, a video director (who does his own shading), a video tape op (who also writes down time codes for Scripture references to speed up the editing process, and also puts away the cameras after the third service), a TV audio engineer (tracking and mixing), plus a couple of stage hands for transitioning between worship & teaching times. My full-time editor does the post-video for the sermons, and I do the post-audio for songs. You can check them both out on our site. Songs are on the NORTH page, sermons are on the WEST page.
Greg, like you, my weekends don’t involve much hands-on stuff, unless I’m filling in. I do, however, play bass every other weekend.
On a side note, I got to lead out on the first worship song this past weekend. I used to lead worship for a campus ministry group in college, but I don’t get to do it a lot anymore. It was a kick!
February 11th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Greg, I absorb posts that you write like this. I see my role and my team as a mini version of what you do. I took the lead in my ministry last summer with the challenge of taking it to the next level. The leadership was non existent, 2 services, a handful of people doing their jobs in their own way, on their own. I have slowly gotten control of things and brought people on board into specific roles, such as lighting, video etc. The 4 roles I have are sound, lighting, presentation and video and 2 services.
My big gaps are a sound guy for alternating sunday’s in one service and video in both. I’m working on getting us up to 2 cameras, right now I have no camera operators in first service and 2 camera operators in second with only one camera. Lighting is almost defined and documented so I can step away from that, then i’ll get control of video. I do sound every other week in one service but ultimately, I will be generally hands off, putting out fires and like you say, being a cheerleader for my team.
I am amazed at how God has blessed this ministry, bringing new people to serve. I still have a little resistance from the old school, the “we’ve never done it that way before” crowd. I don’t think anything we have tried since I have been involved has backfired yet and we have only just begun!
February 11th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
With our setup I am usually the Producer. We have a Technical Director who is our video switcher AND is in communication with our camera people (2). Then we have one person running our graphics and a light person. For sound we have 3: FOH board, monitor board, and recording board.
It works pretty good, but I’m just now getting around to structuring the team better since I’ve only been at this church since August 07. I’m actually working towards developing a Tech Arts Leadership Team, so it’s interesting to see you were blogging about it. Thanks!
February 11th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Cool. I’d love to hear from others, too. We’re all at different seasons in our ministry. There’s no right or wrong answer. I just like to share what we do, hear what others do and encourage us all to keep growing and going. No one should be a “lone ranger”. No matter what size you are, you should be seeking to recruit, train and build a team.
February 11th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Amen to that, Greg. I’m only one chair deep in my TV Audio position, and he’s leaving me this fall to finish college in another city. I’m in recruitment mode right now for that position. Fortunately, this gives me enough time to have both him and me train the newbie!
February 13th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Greg, You truly have a wonderful story to tell. God is using you and your team in many ways to advance his Kingdom. My question is about the positions of your staff. I would just like to know general responsibilities of each position. I am on a 3 man team and we are currently training 3 more. We are a small rural church, probably 250-300 in worship, with all volunteer staff. Most of us (all) have no formal training in the areas we are currently serving just really enjoy multimedia. Do you have a Degree for your knowledge? If so, what is the Degree? I am interested in some formal training and this would greatly encourage me. Also could you give some definitions for some of your staffs positions?
February 14th, 2008 at 12:23 am
Hi, Greg! I just stumbled onto your site and forum. I am glad to see that other churches have the same challenges that I face and have faced over the past several years. Audio production has always been a hobby to me. After I met my wife and rededicated my life to the Lord, I found that no matter what church we joined I always ended up part of the tech crew (usually one or two people and an ill-trained Pastor and Music Minister). When we came to First Baptist Church in Mexia, Texas, there was an A/V Committee largely in charge of the sound on Sunday morning and funerals. Most of the audio, video and technology trouble shooting and enhancement came at the hands of our Music Minister, who would be the first to tell you that he is a musician not an engineer or production manager. Usually our Sunday mornings were run by one person controlling sound, lighting (we have been blessed with good array of theater lighting), and radio broadcast. Shortly after we joined the Church, we renovated our sanctuary.
Part of this renovation included reorganizing all of the mic connections on the stage, choir loft, and wireless mics. We traded in our 16-channel Mackie for a Soundcraft (48-channel). We added a video screen and media presentation hardware/software. I was very involved in the renovation including some of the planning and installation. We finally needed to add to our A/V committee as someone needed to operate the presentation and the sound/light positions.
A couple of years later our local radio station changed hands and dumped the local church broadcasts (including ours). There are many people in our area that rely on the radio broadcast and were very upset by its loss. The quickest and most immediate response was to work with our local cable company and go into the television ministry. What a blessing this has been! We are now in our second year of video broadcast and reach an estimated 700 households every Sunday - not bad for a rural market. Our A/V Committee has been renamed the Technologies Ministry of FBC and now boasts 9 servents of the Lord dedicated to making everyone’s worship service special. We have a ministry leader (committee chair) but all swap roles to some extent. I have the greatest overall knowledge, so I am in charge of training and usually take the role of “fireman” on Sunday’s. Now a typical Sunday Service has an audio/lighting operator, presentation operator, television broadcast operator, production manager, and quality control manager.
Now we are considering beginning our own radio station, thanks to the new LPFM legislation and the growing need to reach the rural areas around Mexia that can not get cable. Pray for us and our ministry! Keep up the encouraging work that you all do.
February 14th, 2008 at 12:58 am
Hey, Bill - great to hear from you! I’m in Dallas. Where is Mexia?
February 14th, 2008 at 1:03 am
Hey, Will. To answer your question: my degree is in Church Music. I was a worship pastor for 11 years. I always had a leaning towards and interest in the technology-side of things. As you know, in most churches the worship leader is also over media - when you can’t hire somebody for that - that’s how I got started in it.
In 2000 I started teaching at workshops and conferences across the country. The last 5 years I’ve been writing for a number of magazines, websites, blogs and newsletters on using media in worship.
I am working with several schools on developing a “Media Ministry” degree. I’m also a part of the faculty for an online worship degree program which I’ll blog more about later.
I do speak at colleges and seminaries around the country from time to time. Here locally, I teach “Intro to Praise and Worship” at Dallas Theological Seminary.
I’m working on some projects (books, curriculum and a DVD training series/conference in a box-type project with Highway Video) to further equip tech ministers and leaders.
February 14th, 2008 at 7:22 am
Mexia is about 90-miles south of Big D down higway 45. We would love to have you come by and visit. I can’t say we have the same size issues that you share with Prestonwood, but scale everything down a bit, and you find that the two largest churches in Mexia are across the street from each other (FBC and FUMC). If you have time our 24th annual Easter Pageant will run March 14th through March 16th. The telling of the story of Christ and the promise of Salvation is always exciting to tell and is a tremendous offering to our community (and around the world) from some very talented people from all of our area churches. From a technical standpoint, this is where “we” really get to shine - worship enhancement at its best! We may not be the size of some of the larger churches, but we have been blessed with some tremendous talent.
If any and all of you would like to come, please respond and I will make to sure to be handy to great you and show you around.
February 14th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Please hear my heart: I hope everyone reading my posts knows it’s not about size. The team I listed (on what it takes to make Sunday happen) is all volunteers. No matter how large you are, you still find, recruit, train and equip volunteers - that never changes.
I’m not a guy in a large church that can’t relate. In my 12 years of ministry, I have served a country church of 70 people that had 3 last names in the whole church (part-time my first 2 years in college), a traditional church with choir in robes and piano and organ (my last 2 years in college), a blended church of 400 (for 4 years after college), a contemporary church in Chapel Hill, NC with 200-300 people - most of which were college students, I took some time off after that and helped a church plant that met in a hotel and did the setup and tear down-thing every week, after that I served a church of about 1000 in Washington DC.
Over the years, I’ve consulted and worked with churches from church plants, traditional churches, contemporary churches, cutting-edge churches, multi-site churches, churches of all size all the way up to Prestonwood and Saddleback. Large, small, old, new - I’ve seen and experienced it all. I write from that perspective. I’m now at a great church that happens to be around 5000 in size. I blog about what I’m doing there in my ministry, but the principles I write about apply to all sizes and types of churches. I hope that comes through.
February 15th, 2008 at 12:15 am
Well…..
I Pastor a church of abot 120, but we do have as well as myself a full time associate (worship and he runs a awesome kids outreach program) and we have just put on a 2 day a week kids pastor.
But…I do most of the tech stuff at church, although I have four guys who volunteer to run the desk on sundays. But I put all the media together,
I am the ultimate scrounger, if it is free on the net somewhere, I have it
Having a very limited budget forces you to be creative, which is not to say having a 5000 strong church does not have its challenges, obviously it does.
One thing, this site used to link to a lot of media resources that were freely available. I would love to see that a bit more, but understand your change of focus.
February 15th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Greg, I love how you have volunteer leaders over each area. I’m working towards that on my team.
To do a Sunday we have a Video Director/Producer (myself), Video Engineer (shading, playback, audio for video), 1-2 graphics operators for lyrics, scriptures, lower 3rds, series content, etc. 3 camera operators, 1 lighting, 1 FOH and 1 stage/asst. audio.
If you wouldn’t mind, can you post more about the job descriptions/expectations you have for the volunteer leaders.
Thanks, great blog btw.
February 18th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Let’s see.
I make the announcements video. I run the video. (Simple projection before the service, not a big deal). I play piano. I run sound.
It’s a really simple church, nothing like the gom some of you guys get to play with every week.
March 11th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
[…] FYI - There has been some great discussion and comments on the frequency post, as well as the team leadership post. Go back and check them out. As far as the “Firing a Volunteer” post, I’ve been thinking about the whole refining of a team (this applies to any team at your church, not just the tech team). […]