As church AV technicians, celebrating Christ's birth can sometimes be more painful than Mary's contribution. From set changes, programming lighting, creating mic cues, rewriting mic cues, recreating mic cues again, to “just adding one more video”—our jobs can be very tiresome. It is easy for our frustration to make us forget why we are juggling three different jobs at once. We must begin to realize that there is more at stake than missing a mic cue, curtain call, or pressing the button on the smoke machine. Our job is not just to make a good Christmas production, but to create opportunities for people to have a life-changing experience.
I was the front-of-house engineer for a large church in Birmingham, Ala., for a little over four years. While I was there, they performed a Broadway-style play every Christmas. It was a fantastic production, but very exhausting for me. I often found myself frustrated with everyone after each performance.
After the second year of the play, this guy started coming to the church and we became pretty good friends. A couple of months later I asked him why he started attending our church. His reply startled me. He said, “Well, I gave my life to Christ at your Christmas production this past year.” He went on to tell me that the way the production looked and sounded captured him. After hearing this, I realized the reason I allowed myself to get frustrated was because I wasn't focusing on why we were doing the production.
I know what readers are thinking now, “We know, we know, we know ... we hear this all the time. But how can I do my job with excellence and focus on God all at once?” We make this sound much harder than it actually is.
From that moment on, I decided that every time I got frustrated to stop and remember the impact our production had on my friend. That mindset shift changed my world as a volunteer. We can all make excuses for not doing this. However, if you give this a shot it will not only change your experience, it will change your performance.
Our performance is dependent on our mood. If we are stressed out as technical operators or engineers, then we will not be as focused. However, when we decide that we are going to put our focus on lifting up Christ—and allow all the other stresses to go away—we will be calmer and more focused than ever before. Then we will really be able to function in a manner that glorifies the miraculous birth of Christ.
