Camp Hill, Pennsylvania – The latest T3 Technical Training Tour was held at Christian Life Assembly on November 4-6. Combining technical training with team building and ministry skills, T3 strives to encourage and equip technical ministry staff and volunteers for effective service in communicating the gospel.
Amy Austin-Taggart was one of the 130 attendees at Camp Hill. A full-time volunteer at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Allison Park, Pennsylvania, Taggart leads the church’s technical ministry team. Founded in 1969, St. Paul’s has grown to 1,200 members. Having a traditional background, they have realized the power in adopting technology, and are transitioning to add contemporary production elements to their church services. Their first contemporary service was on Christmas Eve of 2001. Taggart serves as the primary coordinator between the worship staff and the technical team volunteers, collecting the information the tech team needs to implement each service and communicating it to the tech team.
Like many serving in the technical ministries, Taggart does not have a technical production background. “I’m not a ‘tech-head’. It’s not like I sit down in front of a computer and am completely at ease. I sometimes look at my computer in an absolutely terrified manner! So, I came [to T3] with the expectation that if I learned anything, I would be happy.”
Without a “tech” background, Taggart had the perception that technical production tasks such as graphic design were beyond her abilities – that only a “professional” could create impressive graphics and make things happen. As their technical ministry currently lacks gifted graphics volunteers, she (by default) serves in the multi-media area of the ministry, and thus chose to focus on T3’s video and graphics classes taught by Anthony D. Coppedge. One of the topics presented is how to analyze and reproduce commercial art using Photoshop. “The amazing thing was that I sat in the visual design classes and realized I can do this stuff. I went back to the hotel with my laptop, [experimented with what was taught] and thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I can do this.’ It was such an empowering experience.”
Taggart sent Church Production Magazine (provider of T3) an e-mail upon arriving home that exemplifies her experience.
We were driving home and, while standing in line at a fast food restaurant, we were looking at an employment ad with the tag line, “Everyone is someone at Wendy’s”. The tech director looked at it and said, “That is a great tag line – we could change it to fit our tech team name.” I held onto the flyer while we were in line, and after a few minutes I was able to say to him, “I know how they did this.” I looked at it, and took it apart piece-bypiece. It was just a grey background with some noise added. A plain black box was added, and this text is called.... Within a few minutes I had broken every part down and was able to name it. I then did something I never would have done before – I told him I could reproduce it. He was shocked. It’s not that I can’t create things – I write services, create scripts, and come up with structural and set ideas all the time. However, up until now, most of our visual stuff has been created by other people. About two hours later, I got home, sat down at my computer, and by midnight I had an identical picture; just the message changed to fit our ministry. The next morning I took the picture to church, and we put it up at the end of our pre-worship reel. I was actually in tears. |
As with all T3s, technical skills are only a part of the offerings. Ministry concepts and team-building are also emphasized. Taggart adds, “For both [the church’s Technical Director] and I, when we came back, we had changed the way we were looking at tech ministry at our church. The idea that our ministry is as integral and important as any of the other ministries at the church made us realize that we need to respect ourselves so that others would respect us. [The sessions on] building a really strong team and giving them a team identity was something that had both of us saying ‘This is what’s going to change.’ The most amazing thing is that a week after T3 we had a ministry fair, and we actually doubled the size of our tech team just by our changing our attitude about it.”
Dates and locations for upcoming T3 tours are currently in the planning stages – watch www.churchproduction.com for the latest schedule.
Jim Kumorek is the Managing Editor of Church Production Magazine. He can be reached at jkumorek@churchproduction.com.
