I feel the start of burnout coming on. I’m getting headaches more and more often, I’m tired all the time, and I’m starting to get really pessimistic. I keep telling myself that I just need to get to November, when our cruise is with the Deptula’s, but I’m not sure if I’ll make it or not.
Rut roh.
What’s better? Being humble? Or being right? I struggle with this everyday, and it came to a head last night at rehearsal, where I was doing sound.
First off, mostly for a little background, here’s an issue I have with musicians. (especially volunteer musicians…) Generally, at least where I am now, nobody is on time. Ever. Maybe it was the way I was raised, or maybe it’s just because I’ve had great teachers that instilled a good sense of time and professionalism in me that is hard to shake, but if a call time is 15:30, that means I show up at 1500, get myself set up, grab a coffee or something, and be ready to play the first downbeat at 15:30 on the nose, and since the sound guy is generally there earlier than anyone else, I try to get sound checked before we start.
Because I have that as a big part of my professional life, it’s hard to watch people walk in nonchalantly at 15:40, and then still need the sound guy to run cables and patch in another instrument, or run a line for a click, or fix an input volume, or whatever. I value my time very much, even more so now that I’ve become a father, and rehearsal times and playing or doing sound takes me away from my family, and have a hard time dealing with it being wasted by someone who sees no problem with it.
Those are MY issues, and sometimes it’s hard to not project those expectations on others, which is one of the things that resulted in last night ending up the way it did, which was a yelling match between myself (the sound engineer) and a few select people on stage in regards to something being patched wrong on their Avioms. (Which was completely my fault at first! You gotta own your own mistakes!) The problem was that it escalated due to arrogance, not only on my part. I immediately thought that it was because of my age, mostly because members of this band have known me since I was a small child, and there’s always that little bit of struggle to earn respect as an adult.
Here’s the rub:
“Don’t let anyone think less of you because you are young. Be an example to all believers in what you say, in the way you live, in your love, your faith, and your purity.” 1 Timothy 4:12
Ouch.
We are called as Christians to show humility, even in the face of difficult situations. You may be right, I may be right, but if we allow ourselves to descend into a yelling match about who is right, our witness to anyone around us has just gone to zero. Not to mention the damage we just did to our professional opinions of each other! Hard feelings are one of the best tricks Satan uses to ruin our worship, as you can see around you all the time, in Christians and in non-Christians, in the home and in the workplace. It’s crazy! All it takes is that one harsh thought to kill your ability to worship, and as a member of the worship team (band member or tech!) that will now affect the congregation you are leading in worship. This is a big nono! I’d almost prefer to walk away and not play or run sound if possible when that mood strikes. Unfortunately, that’s not usually a viable option! Instead, asking for prayer from someone is a great idea, which is what I did last night, and then went on to finish out the night.
The best part? Being able to come in this morning and talk with all the people involved last night and reaffirm our mutual respect for each other, and our continued vision of leading people in worship…God is good!
I had an absolute blast tonight…I came to Champaign to visit my family who I haven’t seen since moving back to Illinois as well as see some of my close friends who I’m excited to live close to again, even though my heart still aches at not being around my good CA friends and the ministry I feel so attached to.
I was able to have a fantastic conversation with my Pop about a lot of things regarding our family and where we’re going. That conversation took a very unexpected turn when my Pop and I began talking about my tattoos and he mentioned that he didn’t know about the meanings behind my tattoos even though a lot of the meanings and what they represent have to do with him directly, or our family and our history. I was able, for the first time without feeling shame, talk to my pop about what my tattoos mean and how important they are to me. That in itself was a conversation that would not have happened a year ago. It couldn’t have happened at that time, mostly due to how my relationship with my Pop has bloomed during the last 12 months, mostly since having Kaiyah. It’s a very cool feeling to have my Pop in my corner if I need him. I’m still getting used to it.
After visiting with my family, I was able to catch up with my good buddy Stephen, and we went out to dinner with another good friend of mine, Vic. We had some great conversation over some awesome Mexican food. We continued the night at a couple of downtown bars in Champaign, where we had some more great friends meet up with us and we had a great time laughing and talking the night away.
There was also the most epic game of Uno I’ve ever played with anyone. Ever. Stephen, Kristen and I were locked in a battle of the cards for over an hour till we decided to call it a draw. It. Was. Amazing.
To complete the night, as I sit here writing this, we are listening/watching the Mute Math Armistice DVD…it’s too good for mere words…
I usually come home from rehearsal with my bandmates and have so many ideas floating in my head that it makes me want to sit up to all hours of the night writing, reading and thinking.
Tonight is not one of those nights. I need to sleep.
This topic came up after having a few different conversations with people in the church, as well as my own bandmates regarding feeling somewhat choked creatively in several areas. Musically obviously, but I’m going to focus more on when it comes to general technology, lighting, sound engineering, video, and a host of other things.
So many people who attend churches seem to want the same ol’ thing. No changes, no creative elements and heaven forbid we have lights that move or change color! Now, before I go any further, please understand that statement was very tongue in cheek, but I mean no disrespect to those folks who don’t want change. I can honestly see their side..sometimes…Ok, rarely, but I can at least appreciate where they’re coming from!
Let’s start off with this post, which will be mostly about technology. To begin with, I’m extremely blessed to work within a ministry that values technology very much and encourages its use in our weekly meetings as well as on our website. Yup. I know how lucky I am and how rare this is!
We use a program called ProPresenter for all of our visuals which I am growing to love! This program is not without its flaws, but the amount of things I can do within one program rather than using 2 or 3, which a lot of churches end up doing, make it worth the price of admission, at least for my church. It is not a cheap program by any means, ($399 for a single license or $799 for a site license) which can be a detriment for smaller churches, but I honestly believe it is worth it. Being able to link up to Song Select with your CCLI account and directly search for and download lyrics/chord charts as well as import them into your library is most likely my favorite thing so far.
Over the years as a tech guy, I’ve used several programs for the purpose of lyric/speaker note projection. Some that were specifically designed for church use like Media Shout and ProPresenter, as well as just general presentation software like Powerpoint and Keynote. All of them have their strengths and weaknesses which are mostly dependent on the people who are using them and their ease of use is, generally speaking anyway, directly proportional to the amount of training the operator is willing to take on in regard to the program. Most of them are intuitive enough that you can spend 15 or 20 minutes with the program and gain at least a marginal ability to operate it. Obviously, there are classes for Powerpoint and Keynote that you can take, but none of them are specifically geared towards the worship/church community, at least as far as I have found. Thus the learning and training generally falls on the Tech Director, Worship Pastor, or another volunteer. Sometimes this system is severely flawed, as there is never enough time in the day to specifically spend an hour or two teaching your volunteer staff to efficiently use the software. Most of the time, you are given the basics and that’s it, which can make the volunteer feel strung out and anxious about running the software during a service or event, as well as can set your entire tech team on edge as they are relying on someone who does not really know what they’re doing, especially if something goes wrong.
This leads me to another reason that I like ProPresenter. Right on their website, under the support section is an entire page of tutorial videos! Free of charge, anyone can sit down and learn both the basics of the program as well as some of the more advanced features, all before they even sit down with someone to go over the program! This has been a huge time saver for me in teaching our volunteers. Wow, reading back on that, it sounds like a big ad for ProPresenter! I honestly love this software though, as it makes things so easy!
Anyway, along with this program is the ability to use moving backgrounds for slides, as well as being able to embed video in slides, removing the need to move to another program or use a switching system to show a video. Import it in and away you go. The issue with this that I’ve encountered with some audiences is that they don’t like the moving background. It’s too distracting for them. I can understand that to a degree, but if you’re spending all your time staring at the screen…well, that’s another issue entirely, and one that I will not get into here.
Lighting is another area that generally stirs up some rather large emotions within folks. People want their lighting a certain way, and no matter what you do as an LD, you’re going to tick someone off. Too bright! Too dim! Too many colors! Why did the colors change DURING the song?!? The list goes on and on. The simple fact is that lighting can affect your mood, and how you react to something. Some places will use this to their benefit, and some will not. This doesn’t have to do with age necessarily, as I’ve gotten the same comments from a 60+ year old person, as I have from a mid-20′s person.
The only problem I have with people having these types of issues with lighting is the simple fact that what we do is not just for you. It’s for the general good of the entire congregation/service/event. Sometimes we light for mood, or to accent certain speakers or musicians, or to simply liven things up and make people want to groove a bit. Lighting helps with all of that, and is, unfortunately, usually the least thought of aspect of a service or event. Try talking to a real LD (Lighting Director) and see what they think. Generally speaking, the ones I have dealt with feel under appreciated and generally move on shortly, spending little time at any given church. Which is a darn shame. I’m blessed to work with a couple of guys who are LD’s and have an eye for it, as well as the technical experience to back that eye up. I do not. I will state that up front. I can tell you what I like, and what I don’t, but other than that, I’m pretty useless unless you need me to climb truss and help focus. or help you swap out gels. I can do that, even though it terrifies me to climb truss!
I just want to touch on a couple of other things. First off is video and its place. Video is awesome. If you’re unaware of what it can do to set moods, give announcements, etc, then you are missing out. Video tends to be the easiest form of media to incorporate into your service with the least amount of issues both technically as well as the least amount of complaining from your congregation. You can buy or get videos very cheaply, and if nothing else, use a simple switcher to use them in your service or event. A cheap-o coax switching system can be had at Radio Shack for $10. I kid you not.
At iNVERSION, we use video as not only a communication tool within our services, but we also videotape all of the sermons and post them online on our website, so folks can watch them at any time if they missed a service, or live too far away to attend. We also do a midweek recap/rehash of the material we call Redux. This gives our pastor, Heath, the opportunity to recap what we talked about and expound on an idea he potentially didn’t get a chance to talk about fully on Sunday. We get folks literally from all over the world coming to the website to check it out! Very cool!
Last, but certainly not least is sound. This is the single most common source of complaints within a ministry. Too loud generally, but I’ve actually been told I was mixing too softly as well, but it only happened once, and I’m pretty sure I had a migraine, so that might have something to do with it! Generally speaking though, people are correct. The church is not a place to mix like you’re at a rock show. I generally keep my mixes peaking at about 95 dB, A weighted and rarely get a complaint. Keep in mind that I mix for a young adult ministry generally, so I can get away with that. Even on a Sunday morning service though, I generally peak at 90 dB and rarely have issues. When mixing outside of the church, I’m generally peaking at 105-110 dB, to put things in perspective. The thing to keep in mind is not only the volume of your mix, but sometimes even more importantly is the amount of frequencies you’re boosting and how that may affect the overall perception of your mix.
For example, if you’re mixing very bass heavy, say from ~40 Hz to 250 or 300 Hz, your mix may be perceived as being loud, even though you may be mixing within your limits, people will perceive the mix as being “loud”. Unfortunately, this can also go for both mids and highs, although to a lesser degree. Another thing to keep in mind is that the longer you’re exposed to those sound pressure levels, your ears WILL fatigue. This is most readily seen with musicians and what I like to call, “Monitor Ear”. I’m sure a lot of you have run into this scenario…you mix the bands monitors or ears and they go about their rehearsal, then you take a break to start the service. The musicians then get up to play the opening song, and after finishing, come to you and complain that their monitor mix was “COMPLETELY DIFFERENT! WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY MIX?!?!? ARGH!!” This, my friends, is Monitor Ear. After prolonged exposure to sound, your ears fatigue and will hear certain things differently. You will lose some of the articulation that you can hear when your ears are rested. This is something that’s good to talk to your musicians/worship director about to help them understand that you are not trying to undermine them and their performance, but when you have things that loud, it WILL effect you eventually.
Alright, I’ve gotten a bit off topic, so I’ll wrap this up and write more next time I find some inspiration. Feel free to leave comments. I will do my best to respond when I have the time.