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May 2012

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Getting Organized: Developing Processes That Result in High Production Quality and Team Consistency

Processes are essentially a formalized way of doing things. They help church technical teams rest assured that technology is used in ways that are both consistent with their values and supportive of the mission.

by Rob Connelly

It was Monday morning, the day after a last-minute video would not play in our worship service. I began thinking: what could we do to prevent this from happening again? The truth is that our church, not unlike many smaller churches, had never developed any intentional practices or processes regarding the use of technology. As our church has grown from a church plant to having around 700 members, we have incorporated many new technologies along the way. For the most part, our use of these technologies accurately reflects our purpose and culture as a church. However, the embarrassing incident of the uncooperative video helped me to see a fundamental flaw in our use of technology: we lacked established ways of doing things consistent with our purpose and values.

Developing Processes

Processes are essentially a formalized way of doing things. They help us to assure that the way in which technology is used is both consistent with our values and supportive of our mission. It is extremely helpful to have these processes thought out, formalized, and integrated into training because it is difficult, if not impossible, to think through values and purpose well without them in place prior to moments of service, stress and necessarily quick decisions. Worship services are the time for executing already decided principles not for thinking through those principles.

Developing good processes takes some time and usually some trial and error. Before you can do this well, a good understanding of the church's mission (what the church sees as its purpose), vision (how the church sets out to accomplish this purpose), and values (ideas and qualities that characterize the church - community for example) is required because the processes must come out of these things.

One example from our church's continuing journey, relates to the volume (sound pressure level or SPL) at which we mix our Sunday services. A value at our church has always been that the church is together worshipping God corporately on Sundays, not merely communing with God, but with a sense that we are together as the church. This translates into a desire for the congregation to hear one another singing. In a fairly modern musical worship context, this requires some serious volume control at every level. In the past however, there was no target volume or reliable meter to measure volume. So as a result of this value, which we believe relates to both our vision and mission, we put a process in place. We set a target for volume, got a nice meter, and have a series of "things we do" that help us achieve our target SPL such as measuring stage volume (sometimes down to the individual guitar amps).

Implementing Change

When things have been done a certain way (or have been without structure) for a long time, it can be difficult to implement change. Your church's mission, vision, and values will not be facilitated by needlessly antagonizing God's servants - so be sure you think through what changes need to be made and make them in a measured and loving way.

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Rob Connelly currently serves at North Wake Church in Wake Forest, NC as director of technology and communication. He is the owner of Connelly Audio, providing technology, ministry and systems consulting to churches. Rob is also a student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He and his wife Ashley have two young sons.