Behind The Mixer

Learn Church Audio Artistry | Church Sound

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Remember Y2K? The greatest anti-climactic disaster of the last century? A few days after 2000 started, the pundits started wondering what the big deal was since everything (for the most part) worked and the world didn’t disappear into a nuclear meltdown.

(If you weren’t in the IT field during that time you’d never know the tremendous amount of behind-the-scenes work needed to get to reach the goal of things not descending into chaos.)

During my 25 years in my IT career, with the last 10 being in IT management, I never failed to be amazed at the utter lack of technical knowledge or curiosity about how complex systems were to develop and maintain. While the IT department had to learn to speak business, business people never felt the need to learn to speak technical.

In the same vein, those of us in the technical ministry have to understand the pastoral or business ministries, but very rarely does the pastoral or business ministries ever have the curiosity or desire to understand the effort that goes into making a service a technically stress-free environment.

At the same time, it’s easy to feel taken for granted and under-appreciated. Our role is and always will be, to operate in the shadows. If we do our job the way we’re supposed to, no one will ever know that we’re there.

Sometimes, you are assigned other duties that have nothing to do with your gifting or your tech ministry. Sometimes you get feeling so taken for granted and un-appreciated for your contribution to the service you start getting disgruntled and feeling burnt out.

What do you do?

What can you do?

I’ve been there.

As a matter of fact, I was just there and I got out.

My full-time position is being the business and technology manager for our district. On one hand, I handle the business end of the district. On the other hand, I function as a traveling Technical Director to all of our 40 churches. I assist them with all aspects of technology as well as train tech teams and, sometimes, function as the mediator between warring worship and tech teams.

My part-time paid position is the “technical director” at my church. I work a full 40-60 hours at the district and another bunch of hours for Saturday and Sunday morning services. I haven’t had a day off for over a year-and-a-half with the exception of 2 weeks of vacation.

I’ve vastly improved the tech ministry at the church since I started. Pretty much redid most of the equipment, rebuilt the tech team, advanced the production values. Even though I was part-time, I probably put in an equivalent amount of time on a volunteer basis.

During the last 6 months, I also had an additional job of functioning as the design/build project manager for our summer camp’s new center. I designed, developed and implemented a complete audio/video/presentation/lighting system with a $150,000 budget. It’s been a true highlight of my career and garnered rave reviews from everyone at the camp.

I do good work. I take pride in being in the excellence-is-expected zone. For the size church I’m at, I’m really overqualified but my family likes the church and it’s been fun and besides, it was nice of them to bring me on part-time when they knew that I needed some extra cash due to unexpected medical expenses.

But, I started to feel that I was being taken for granted. At first it was the pastor asking me to help his wife in the greeting/hospitality ministry every once in a while if she was sick. Then it became more and more until it got to the point where I wasn’t in the tech booth anymore but standing playing greeter/hospitality coordinator.

I don’t mind helping out. I’ll chip in whenever and wherever I’m needed. But, this was taking me far away from my gifting and my ministry. I decided to talk to the pastor who listened and did nothing. His rationale is because nothing is going wrong with the technical side of the service there’s no need for me to be in the booth watching over the team.

He doesn’t, and doesn’t want to, understand that the only way technology stays in check is because people like me pay attention to the little things and have thought through multiple emergency scenarios so that things don’t go wrong (at least as far as the congregation knows).

So I prayed on it for about a month. Everything led me to realize that I could either stay and keep on getting frustrated, mad, and burnt-out or I could bite the bullet and resign. I chose to resign.

I also chose to back away from the tech ministry for about 3 months to give myself time to get my head and heart straightened out. For the first time in over a year we didn’t go to church this weekend. It felt great to not leave the church.

We’re still members and we’re still planning on attending. The parting was amicable and the pastor thanked me for all the excellent work I had done in the technical ministry. Wish he had a clue about the work that was involved and why I needed to stay in the booth to maintain that level while I still worked there.

So now, I’m trusting in God to show me the way. Does He want me to stay here or does He have another church that needs someone like me and appreciates the effort required to maintain a state of excellence in the technical ministry? I don’t know, but I know that I did the right thing and left instead of staying and getting more bitter.

How about you? Have you felt taken for granted and/or under-appreciated? What did you do?

 

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  1. Chris,

    First I wanted to let you know that for the past three years you have been my lifeline. I have relied on your technical writings and also enjoyed the personal articles such as dealing with the worship team, pastor and the membership. I can appreciate your latest post on leaving.

    The sound tech at my previous church was leaving in two weeks and they asked me to take over. I had zero experience in sound at that point. They had an analog 32 channel mixer, external EQ, compressors and effects to deal with. Basically the departing tech (who was the guitar player) told me to just adjust the pastors volume, everything else is set up. Well……I did a lot of reading, u-tube and found your site. I also went to one semester of audio engineering at the local community college. I became proficient but never had a break. No one came forward to assist me. There was a big production that they let me know about the day before, a night where I could not be there due to my real job. They plugged in so many lighting effects that it blew circuits and the sound went down. Even after that they only had distain for the sound guy. I finally decided to leave and go to another church (other things were going on as well and I was not the only one that left).

    The pastor called me about three months later and asked me to help them. They had removed all of the eqipment and wiring from the stage and wanted me to come over and hook it back up. Well I went over and short of the long was I was again alone and it took me 10 hours to rewire the stage, check it out. Fortunately that experience confirmed my previous decision. The pastor dropped in to say hello to everyone putting things back in place. Most everyone left after two hours and not once did I get offered a drink or food. It was so easy to unplug and remove the equipment. Now that they wanted the amps placed in a new position and had made a pedestal for the drum kit new wires need to be run under the stage. You know, that is a lot of work, especially when you are alone.

    I thank God for my patience and my work experinece as an airline mechanic. Another job that is in the background but fairly important to the operation.

    God Bless You Chris. You also have a great gift of effective communication! The amateur techs like me rely on the easy to understand information delivered with Christian values.

    P.S. My wife loves to have a service with me by her side on occasion and is very understanding of the work I do.

    Best Regards,

    Paul

    Reply

    • Paul, thanks a lot for being open about everything you went through. I should highlight it was Brian who wrote this piece. I have the “author” name at the top but I might start adding it at the bottom as you’re not the first person to think it was me.

      Reply

    • This isn’t a very timely post but I just saw this entry –

      From a recovering chronic volunteer – there’s one word that you need to add to your lexicon when it comes to church volunteer work:

      “No”

      For the sake of marriage, family, sanity and time, I have learned that it is crucial to set boundaries when it comes to spending time doing good things. Too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing. In this case, the church required professional services and yet they sought someone to do it for nothing. They used your time and your talent, took you away from your family and expected you to bail them out because they foolishly took apart a system they knew nothing about. Please tell me this didn’t happen on a Saturday morning, although I suspect it probably did. In the wake of many, many hours spent in volunteer church work, my wife would have been infuriated had my church asked me to do something like this under these circumstances (and they would not have) but she would have been about 5 times as infuriated with me had I agreed to do it.

      It may seem like taking the high road and going the extra mile to do something nice for them but really, this only enables bad behavior to continue unchecked. Consider this: How easy would it have been for them to give you a call and say, “Hey, we’re looking at doing some rework of the audio system, would you mind giving us a hand?”? And I mean BEFORE they started yanking plugs. It either never occurred to them that someone with the necessary skill and knowledge would be needed to put everything back together or they simply assumed that you would jump in if they got in over their heads. This bunch is either totally clueless or they are in the habit of garnering freebies from anyone with technical skill.

      FWIW, I also work in the aviation field as an avionics support tech.

      Blessings,

      Jim K.

      Reply

  2. I have to tell you that I can relate to your situation. I’m retired now but my situation was with a US corporation. I was the Senior Applications Programmer for our small but mighty IT department which supported a very large Unix network. The company was looking to save money and so they eliminated the Unix Systems Administrator job and passed the responsibilities for that position on to me. I automated several tasks, created some auto-alert systems and created some reports I could review daily to monitor the computer systems and still get my work done as an applications programmer. The longest outage we had ever had was measured in hours. And as my skill at admin increased our outages became fewer and fewer in number and severity. Well, a couple of years down the line and the management decided that since things were going so well without having a full time system admin they could now eliminate my senior programming position and keep the junior programmer to have their programming needs fulfilled. I figured this was God’s way of telling me it was time to move on. They gave me an excellent separation package so I had no room to complain. But sure enough, about 10 months later I got a call for help from my old company. Their computer system, which controlled the manufacturing operation for all of their plants on the North American continent had been down for 4 days. The junior programmer was doing the best that they could but nothing was working. They had called in some consulting help but still no luck. I really would have liked to help them but by that time my proficiency with their system was severely degraded. I asked what the junior programmer was doing to fix the problem and found out he had been taking the best steps to fix the problem. He was just taking a long time to get there. I told them I couldn’t help any further than that. I heard that they did get their system up and running a few days after they had called me with the help of more expensive consultants working with their programmer. It cost them a small fortune.

    I guess I share this story for the benefit of leaders who have no idea nor do they care what it takes to keep technology running smoothly. If they do not become familiar with not only what but why their staff are doing what they are doing then, one day, they and the companies they run are going to be burned.

    Praying for much success for you in the future Brian.

    I just wanted to add that thanks to Chris and you guys at Behind The Mixer the worship experience of our congregation has significantly improved. I was a video tech who inherited the sound board with no knowledge of sound systems technology. Your books and blogs brought me up to speed very quickly and I appreciate the knowledge and expertise you guys share with us. It has made a big difference at our church.

    Reply

  3. Hi Chris, first of all I enjoy your posts, they seem to be directed toward me very often, God works in many ways. Everyone in our AV team is volunteers, but it is my responsibility to make sure things are kept up, software updates, repairing breakdowns, troubleshooting when things go wrong, etc. I too have been asked to do other things as well, but have gotten to the point where I say no, there are many in our church who do nothing, ask them. My wife is in worship, she also is going to teach Sunday School once a month, I do AV as well as play drums from time to time, and miss very few Sundays, usually only when we are ill or on holidays. Yet, we are still expected to help with meals, set up for events, etc. when so many only show up for church. I had to explain to my Elders a couple of years ago that I put in about 10-15 hours a week for the AV team, they just didn’t see me as I am there in the evenings, or perhaps doing it remotely from home, or making repairs as we do not have any budget for new stuff. For example I need another Graphics card on our projection computer and had to find an old computer with a good card in it, so even I am not a computer tech, I have to be one. I guess what I am saying, it is ok to say NO and to let them know what all you do and what they do not see. I always make it a point to let them know when things like a computer problem during church, that they did not see, happens and what we had to do in order to keep things going. Keep up the good work and have a well deserved break.

    Reply

  4. I was full time volunteer anything todo with any tech stuff I was doing it from audio to video, I got bitter I was there more then the payed people. I would alway be the only unpaid person in a room full of paid worship leaders and stayed long after they left trying to make a 1970 something probably older analog board sound better, Trying to figure out where all these wires went to because, there was over 30 or more years worth or wire just on top of each other where somebody has came in added a piece of equipment & then somebody else on top of that and so on over the years without uninstalling anything. But it was more of they wouldn’t listen to me about the soundboard and we needed a new one that I could for sure take the hum out the super old house monitors and make em sound good but Naw they didn’t ask or tell me to I seen them, went with the worship leaders idea and got some new floor monitors that we didn’t even need and installed them when I wasn’t there, and with unnecessary Eq rack to em, It was kinda funny in my own bitter feed up way that now we got a crappy system that’s a tiny bit louder, anywho I couldn’t take it no more because everything was a joke when I was trying to be serious and wanna rehearsal and get stuff right but people don’t listen to me I’m a very keep to myself person don’t like conflict so I got walked on and when it was show time and stuff went wrong all eyes was on me and fingers my way during service, Well to sum it up I quite and stop going to church a week later they bought a BRAND NEW DIGITAL BOARD Behringer x32, and everybody says it sounds so much better now no hum in the system and all these fancy effects but they don’t have no one that understands or knows how to run it, And the person that’s doing it now just plays angry Bs on there phone, so I get asked all the time cause this is what I do is audio production, But I don’t know what to do because I don’t think I ever be appreciated and on top of that I didn’t have a paying job and still don’t because reasons. Trying to build a business without money so idk if I could go thru the same stress on top of what I’m doing idk if God wants me there or not. That’s my little story thanks for reading

    Reply

    • “But I don’t know what to do because I don’t think I ever be appreciated”

      You charge them. Free work and advice is given the same consideration it costs – none. Establish that audio production is a real profession with real specialized (read expensive) skills. They will either pay you, pay someone else, or get another sucker/servant to do the work.

      Reply

  5. I was a part of a church that I grew up in, I learned a lot of what I know about tech there. For years I was what was considered un-paid staff. I was promised paid positions numerous times only to have them rescinded. I kept serving faithfully. This church is a satellite church with multiple locations that received the same message. They lean so heavily on their AVL for everything but were never willing to put any money into. I’m not talking about spending a million dollars, I’m talking about repairs, preventative maintenance, and replacing equipment that was broken. And when things would break or not work properly they would come down on us hard and not understand the why of the equipment not working. Our jobs became increasingly difficult as we were putting band-aids on everything just trying to keep things running. I had numerous talks with the pastor and nothing ever changed, so after about 8 years of working 40-60 hours a week for them un-paid, I stepped down and left the church. I still have friends that work for the church that I would do anything for and I don’t mind coming in and helping out when they need it. But when I have, I have been treated with contempt from the upper ups in the staff, they took me leaving as a personal insult to them. After 8 years of serving and still being willing to come and help when they need it, they are treating it as if it’s me against the church, like it’s a competition and because I left I chose another teams side so they are now against me. This isn’t everyone at the Church, the tech director is one of my best friends I’ve known for years and the worship pastors and many of the other mid level staff still appreciate and understand what I did and do to help. But the top of the totem pole has treated me like a traitor. I’m still trying to process and work through this and fix my heart as I have become very angry and bitter towards it.

    Now while I’m working through the healing process I am playing church tech for hire and helping out a few local church’s in the area that are in need and appreciate the tech ministry and know it’s worth something and are willing to pay for it.

    Reply

  6. Hang in there. The Lord knows those who are His and they know His voice. I am in the finishing stages of an approximate 3 year project of completely reworking the churches sound system. Like you I went thru the rigors of Y2K, which was a piece of cake compared to this sound project. I have never felt so alone as I did last Sunday when we did the first time live service. Even though the system was thoroughly checked Saturday, all kinds of glitches appeared Sunday morning. Even my wife (the music director) chastised me. Kind of reminded me of the guy blowing his horn at the driver ahead of him who’s car stalled and wouldn’t restart. With the Lord’s help I got it to operate satisfactorily. Then came the complaints. You would have thought that I was the guy that mis-designed, mis-manufactured, mis-shipped, mis-installed and mis-operated the whole thing. Then I thought about the children of Israel leaving Egypt and coming to Marah. Exodus 15:25 says ” – there He tested them.” So what’s the big deal? It was just a test – No need to get excited!

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  7. I’ve been very blessed in that my church loves me and my team. I believe it’s because I’ve only been doing this for a little over a year. I’m sure when I get to your point, the higher level of quality will be expected. The A/V Booth was a mess until I took over and reorganized the equipment. I made room for three people and wrote an Operating Manual. This last weekend, We spent 10 hours in the church for regular church service and a memorial service. My team didn’t have to be there for the memorial, but they chose to stay and help. Because of their support, the memorial went perfectly. Mostly because of the lessons I’ve passed on to my team after learning from your posts. Thank you! You ARE appreciated in our church.

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  8. O’ I’ve been there… Fortunately I am at a church where the associate worship leader is really graceful and the lead pastor has a great sense of humor. I have nerve damage that prohibits me from playing instruments but I can operate a sound board better than the tech director. One day during worship I made the mistake of miss placing my finger to stabilize my shaky hand and muted the house. The band is using in ear monitors and played without knowing the house was silent. After service the lead pastor came over giggling and asked what happened. No condemnation just giggles as I explained my mistake. He grabbed me and smiled with grace from everyone else.

    Hang in there my friend. God and his servants do have a sense of humor.

    Reply