Photo courtesy of Saddleback Church, Lake Forest, Calif.
I started leading church production at my dad’s small church on the corner of a dirt road, a swamp, and a hay field over twenty years ago. We had a sound system from the 70s, a camcorder, and a big Tascam tape recorder.
Now I’m working with three campuses and an online following every weekend with lots of little events, conferences, and concerts to boot. It all has to run smoothly, and we do a pretty good job. Here are four things I’ve learned in twenty-some years of church production to smooth out every event or service you lead.
1. Make a checklist
Oddly enough, my first career choice was to be a missionary pilot. I spent three semesters at a well-known flight school in that world, and while I clearly did not finish that path, I learned the importance of checklists.
Aviation and live production have a surprising amount in common; obviously, if you mess up your live production you’re not going to fall from the sky and risk your life, but both things feature a lot of moving parts, and it doesn’t take much for things to get out of hand. One of the best ways to make sure everything is good to go is by writing it all down and going line by line through a checklist before services each Sunday.
Sit down for ten minutes and walk through what needs to be turned on, what needs to be warmed up (guitar amps, hazers, etc), and what needs to be ready to go for people to walk on stage and start making music. List it all out in a nice bullet list in a chronological order. Here’s an example of my checklist for Sundays:
… every time I don’t use the checklist, I forget something like turning on the lobby TVs or our main projectors.
Now, over time, you’ll get the hang of the list and you might not need it as much, but sometimes I think that, and almost every time I don’t use the checklist, I forget something like turning on the lobby TVs or our main projectors. It’s a simple discipline that makes a big difference and saves lots of little headaches.
2. Prepare well ahead of time
All of our campuses meet in the worship office every Tuesday to walk through service flows together. It takes about fifteen minutes, and we decide who’s leading what part of the service, clarify who’s leading songs, talk about extra service elements like baptisms or communion, and walk through what’s on the announcement video or any other media we’re playing that week. Things often change between that meeting and Sunday, but we always have a plan that we can change.
Special events especially need prep well in advance. If you’re hosting a conference or just anything out of your normal rotation of services, you’ll want two or three meetings to make sure production staffing needs and media needs are clarified, the event flow is ironed out, and everyone’s expectations are set.
These don’t have to be long meetings, but they have to happen. A little goes a long way here.
3. Take Time to Vet People
This can be tough for smaller teams—trust me; I’ve been there. But you don’t want the wrong people on your team. They’ll create more problems than the single problem they solve by being a body on camera or whatever.
We use the Three C’s here at LifeMission: Character, Competency, and Chemistry. The first two are obvious—is this person a good person? Did they pass their background check? Are they kind? Do they possess a degree of technical aptitude? But the last one, Chemistry, is just as important. How do they fit with the team? Can they just hang out and be friends with us? Can they have fun?
You have to spend hours and hours with your team; make sure that time is enjoyable.
Things often change between our Tuesday meeting and Sunday, but we always have a plan that we can change.
4. Make Complicated Things Uncomplicated
Church production tech has grown by leaps and bounds, even in just the last five years. What I’ve noticed though is that while some of our flagship software and hardware like ProPresenter, Dante, our video cameras and switcher, and our audio consoles have become more capable, they’ve all deepened in complexity.
For instance, ProPresenter can send media to a seemingly endless number of screens, and you can assign layers with different themes to specific screens, which can then be changed by creating different looks. That’s all great, but your volunteers don’t really need to know how to do that. They need to know how to navigate the main screen slide by slide, how to add songs to a playlist, and maybe do some quick editing on slides on the fly.
To take the workload off of our weekend video directors and ProPresenter operators, we’ve even created automations between ProPresenter, our Blackmagic Design 1 M/E switcher, and an Elgato Stream Deck controlled by Bitfocus Companion so that volunteers don’t have to worry about coordinating transitions throughout the service flow. The ProPresenter operator just clicks a slide that’s loaded up with macros, RossTalk commands, and go-to-next timers that automate look changes, switcher transitions, and even sequential slide selections.
We’ve tried to boil down complicated switcher and ProPresenter moves to just one button that our volunteer operators have to click. Volunteers come to serve and have fun, not necessarily learn the ins and outs of complicated software and hardware.
As always, we’re here to help you. If you have specific issues you’re running into with your production flow and need some advice, reach out! We love production leaders and want to help in any way we can.
