Have you ever found yourself hiding behind the computer, or living behind the protection of the soundboard? How often do tech directors and their teams find themselves in this scenario?
In order to run tech ministries well and effectively we need to allow the simple truth and the foundation of our faith to permeate our work. This truth demands that we don’t hide behind the computer, but that we step out.
What is this truth? It’s the truth that runs throughout the entire Bible, the truth that Jesus proclaimed with His life. Love.
In our tech ministries and in our lives, we need to follow His lead.
As tech team members, our churches’ services depend on the skills we provide. But we must also provide the most important skill, and that is love, for both our teams and every single person who steps through the doors of our churches.
Jesus clearly tells us that love is the most important thing. In a conversation about the greatest commandments, He says that the greatest of all is to love God, and the second is to love others (Matthew 22:35-37).
In fact, every commandment and law in the Bible relates back to this. There is no commandment but love. And every commandment is subject to love.
As Christians, we are called to become like Jesus. In every interaction, He demonstrated love. He healed, He forgave, He answered respectfully, and He did not put others down. In our tech ministries and in our lives, we need to follow His lead.
But how do we do this? How do we love on top of our already high responsibilities? How do we love the challenging people we have to serve with?
God has put the people who are in your tech ministry where they are for a reason. And since they are there, you are called to love them.
I have learned in the past year that love is really a very simple three-step process. I was at a leadership event, and three days in a row, seemingly unintentionally the morning devotional was about love. It all was spoken in such a way that God really touched my heart with it and showed me the way to love.
The first thing we have to acknowledge is that God is love. His name is love. All that He is—is love. Nothing else we can use to define God will ever come close to defining His character better than the characteristics of love.
1 John 4:8 says, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
The speaker at the leadership event used 1 Corinthians 13 as an example of God’s love. She shared that not only does this verse beautifully describe love, but it also describes God. In verses, 4-5 Paul writes that love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.
God is patient and kind. God is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. God does not demand His own way. God is not irritable, God keeps no record of being wronged.
How we can praise Him for this!
The second thing I learned through those devotionals was that God loves us. He loves unconditionally, and His love never changes. His love is higher than the mountains, deeper than the seas. He loves us even past the moon and back. We can never lose His love, and we can never escape it. He loves us so much that even the deepest of human love pales in comparison to His great and steadfast love.
This leads to the final component of love: people. Since God is love, He fills us with love, and loves us so much that His love for us flows out to others. He doesn’t expect us to pull from our own supplies of strength. His strength is all we need. This may be the most important piece, especially in the context of our tech ministries.
As Alistair Begg, senior pastor of Parkside Church in the east suburbs of Cleveland, says, “It is impossible to serve God without serving one another.” The purpose of our churches and the mission at the core of our ministry is to serve God and to bring people closer to Him. Loving God and loving people go hand in hand, which I believe is why Jesus emphasizes this so strongly.
God has put the people who are in your tech ministry where they are for a reason. And since they are there, you are called to love them. Love them for who they are, not just for the roles they play on a Sunday morning, or what skills they give to your team. Love them because they are created by God, in the image of God, and because Jesus loves them.
If we are to emulate Jesus, we must love the people He loves, which is everyone. We must strive to love with humility and love even though things can get stressful. We must love the people who are challenging, and be patient with those who are still learning the ropes. We must love gladly, knowing that our kindness may not always be returned.
When you show love to your team they can become so much more than a group of people who do certain tasks together; your team can become a family or a small group, and that community can be the starting place for transformations and deeper relationships.
When love is our main goal, even if we forget to press play on a video, forget to turn the cameras on, or have to run a service with a minimal team, every week we can know our jobs were done well because we showed Christ’s love to our teams.
When you show love to your team they can become so much more than a group of people who do certain tasks together; your team can become a family or a small group, and that community can be the starting place for transformations and deeper relationships.
The final thing is that our love should not be confined to the tech room or the soundboard. No! We must love from behind the board, love from inside of the tech room, and let that love spread out into the rest of the church. We must love by meeting new people and showing them around, even if that means stepping back from our work for a moment. We must pray for people both inside and outside of our teams and our churches.
Loving people is not just a job for the pastor, welcome, and prayer teams. It’s a job for every member of the body of Christ.