Ready, Willing and Able
 | Sound Advice
by Brent Handy
Contributing Writer
June 23, 2006
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As most of you know, there is a shortage of capable volunteers for the audio
engineer position. I am sure that I am not the only one that had these
problems. Right? Maybe this story will inspire you to find a way to staff and
fund your ministry. Maybe you will add a great idea or success story that will
inspire others.
As a new Technical Director for a 2,800 member church, I immediately started
scrambling to recruit and train volunteers. I bought pizza. I had training
sessions. Many would come, learn and verbally commit. My people never reached
proficiency, so that they could reproduce. Later I found out that many ditched
my ministry for silly, political reasons. The ones that were faithful, God
bless 'em, were technically challenged.
The church had developed an annual calender of events. From that I developed a
production schedule, listing ALL of my needs, liberally. This included the
weekly service schedule for Wednesday night band rehearsal and service, and
three Sunday morning services. I talked with each staff and committee member, to
realize the membership's talent pool. Hints were dropped to key personnel, so
that they would take ownership of it, and come up with ideas on their own. Once
people took ownership, they usually were more willing to provide funding for the
ministry. We did some incredible productions, but my weekly volunteer staff was
dwindling.
My job description was minister first, TD second. One of my volunteers, Randy,
made too many mistakes with the SongShowPlus-based projection system. I was
told by the pastor to exclude the volunteer from the ministry. I understood
where the pastor was coming from. People expect excellence. But this would
break his spirit. Besides, how do you tell a man with mental health issues that
he could not do what he loves to do most-push the "down" key on the computer.
This guy had a heart for serving Jesus Christ and his church. So, I found a way
to fit him.
We had money allocated for upgrades. I told the church that if we were going to
maintain professional results, then we needed faithful people, or I needed to
automate the audio and/or video systems. I bought a Soundcraft 324 Digital Live
console, with two, eight-channel expansion modules (mic preamps with A/D
convertors), for a total of 32 channels. It took some time, but I boiled the
services down to three presets. I always had the luxury of no last minute
changes and a soundcheck. It nearly always worked without a hitch. I used MIDI
to trigger scene advances on the console from the video somputer. I also had a
RF wirelesss mouse, so that I could walk anywhere within the facility and
advance the video cue/play list. So, how did Randy fit in? I put a Clearcom
headset on him and placed him at the mixing console. I told him to watch the
console. He would verify the recall changes, make additional tweaks for me, cue
and roll tape/CD's, etc. HE WAS FAITHFUL!
Next, I went to the youth and got some of them involved with the art design and
video programming. The youth have the best hearing as well. The average adult
is down quite a few dB from 14kHz on up. The youth today are a great talent
pool. Most youth learn Power Point in grade school, and have some type of video
production experience by junior high. I didn't stop there. I got the rug rats
involved. Parents love to see their children's artwork on the big screens, as a
background for the children's announcements. This got the parents of the youth
involved, which led to their consistant, sometimes uncharacteristic
faithfulness.
Not every has a budget, or has a service format that allows, for digitally automating the audio console. Technology is getting cheaper everyday. The day will come when it makes no sense to have an analog console. In fact, I am working on a virtual console, that will allow a mixerto sit anywhere he/she wants in their auditoriun, and mix wirelessly on a laptop. But until that day comes, we will have to strive to attaract those that are ready, willing and able.
By the way, I left that church two years ago to go one the road with Junior Brown. I called them a few weeks ago. Randy is still there, as faithful as ever.
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Mentally Challenged volunteers
My 22-year old son is mentally challenged but even as a toddler, he loved pushing buttons and flipping switches. 5 years ago our church bought a multimedia projector. I was the one who learned how to run it and trained others on it. After a time, th...more
Submitted by: Vickie Miller
Location: Ottumwa, IA
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