The view from the booth looks different from the pulpit. Judah Thomas, pictured with his wife, Carey, has experienced both as a former tech director and now as the lead pastor of Connecticut-based multisite Thrive Church.
Before I became the lead pastor of a church, I spent many years working in church production. I understood all of the pressure that comes along with a Sunday morning. I knew what it was like to try to troubleshoot a problem while everyone was waiting for me to fix it. I understood how much work had to go into something that no one noticed unless it went wrong.
I also understood the frustration of a pastor wanting something changed at the last minute. Why didn't he give me more notice? Why didn't the budget get approved for equipment that we clearly needed? Why did he seem to think that adding one more element to a service wasn't a big deal?
Then I became the pastor.
Suddenly I am in the other chair. I wasn't just thinking about the sound, video, and lighting and the details of the weekend service. Now I was also thinking about staffing, giving, counseling, buildings, volunteers, kids' ministry, the sermon, and a hundred other problems that no one else noticed.
Good communication starts with explaining the ministry problem, not the technical problem.
Becoming a lead pastor didn't make the production any less important to me. In fact, I now see its importance more than ever. But it also showed me that some of the assumptions that I made as a tech director were wrong.
I thought that the production of the service was the most important thing. When you work in production, Sunday morning can seem like the center of the universe. Everything builds toward that moment. You prepare and program and troubleshoot and hope that everything works when the countdown hits zero.
But now I see that while the weekend service is critical, it is only a part of everything that is happening in a church.
While the tech team is working to solve a video issue, the pastor may be helping a couple whose marriage is falling apart. He may also be trying to hire a kids' ministry director, repair a leaking roof, or deal with a difficult church member.
None of that means that the video system doesn't matter, just that it exists inside a larger church mission. Sometimes the tech problem that seems so important may not even be the most critical thing that the church is facing. That perspective can help us to communicate better.
Instead of simply saying “we have to replace this,” I could have demonstrated the ministry problem that it was creating, what the options are, and why I think a particular solution is the best.
See, pastors don't always need more technical detail; they just need to be made aware of how it is impacting the overall ministry of the church.
Production teams see problems pastors may miss. Pastors see problems production teams may never know exist.
As a pastor, I still notice the production problems. I notice the bad lighting. I hear the feedback. I see the camera shots that change too late. I see the lyrics that are out of sync with the music. That part of my brain will never shut off.
But now I also see the person walking through the doors barely holding their life together. They don't know what console we use. They don't know how many DMX universes we are running. They probably won't even notice the transitions we spent time rehearsing.
They are just wondering if God sees them.
Our job is to use technology to help answer that question without it becoming the answer itself.
Production matters. Preparation matters. Excellence matters. But they matter because people matter.
I used to think that the pastor needed to see the service from the booth. I wasn't entirely wrong. I just didn't realize that I also needed to see the booth from the pulpit.
