Nick Burt is Executive Director of Communications at The Church at Rock Creek. He oversees a volunteer production team of about 50 people.
For Nick Burt, making Sunday happen is not about pushing every production boundary. It is about knowing the room, caring for the people behind the gear, and using technology with enough restraint that the message stays at the center.
Burt, now Executive Director of Communications at The Church at Rock Creek in Little Rock, Arkansas, began serving in church production when he was 13 years old. The church’s minimum age to serve was 16, but he talked his way in by promising he would do everything correctly.
The need was simple: someone had to run camera for the whole service.
“It was a little church, about a hundred people, and nobody wanted to stare at the little camera screen for an hour and follow all the action,” Burt says.
For Nick Burt, Executive Director of Communications at The Church at Rock Creek, building a strong production team begins withinvesting in people.
From there, he began touching other pieces of the production workflow. The church was using a Canon GL2 camera, presentation software and a DVD recorder. When the sermon ended, the team would stop the recorder and burn DVDs for people to pick up on their way out.
FOR NICK BURT,PRODUCTION LEADERSHIP MEANS TRANSLATING VISION INTO SOMETHING VOLUNTEERS AND STAFF CAN ACTUALLY EXECUTE.
It was not glamorous, but it was formative. Burt was learning early that production ministry was not about the gear itself. It was about helping people see, hear and stay connected to what was happening in the room.
As a teenager, Burt also felt a pull toward ministry. It did not look like preaching, and it did not look like leading worship. Technology interested him, but he did not yet know church production could become a career. That changed when he found a college program in Arkansas that combined church production and mass communication.
After college, Burt started part time at Rock Creek as a video director, running the video side of Sunday services. At the same time, he worked as a news photographer at the Little Rock CBS affiliate and later served as communications director at the Arkansas Baptist State Convention. For years, he carried both tracks: communications during the week and church production on Sundays.
About five years ago, he moved full time to Rock Creek.
Today, Burt’s role is broader than what many people might picture when they hear “production.” As Executive Director of Communications, he leads the teams responsible for Rock Creek’s web presence, social media, video production, weekend services and volunteer development.
In many ways, Burt’s role sits between worlds.
He sits in meetings with senior leadership to understand the vision. He talks through budget, logistics, risks and practical limitations. Then he turns to the production team to figure out how the idea can actually happen. After that, he works with the communications side to decide how the church will promote it, support it and extend it beyond the room.
THE WORK DOES NOT END WHEN THE SERVICE DOES. SUNDAY MOMENTS QUICKLY BECOME SOCIAL CONTENT, STORIES, AND CONNECTION POINTS THROUGHOUT THE WEEK.
“I have found myself in the last couple years managing a lot more, and making a lot less,” Burt says. “I’m not actually making the things. I’m not making the videos. I’m not making the sets. I’m not getting my hands in ProPresenter. I just am mostly project managing.”
That may not sound as exciting as running a camera or building a show file, but for Burt, it has become one of the most rewarding parts of the work. He loves seeing a project come together and knowing he helped translate vision into execution.
“I had to be the glue that kind of pulled that project together,” he says, “and empower the people around me to do what they’re best at doing.
”That bridge role matters because Rock Creek is not trying to become something it is not.The church is large by Arkansas standards, with about 2,000 people attending in person on Sundays. Its congregation is diverse in age and ethnicity, and its worship style reflects that variety. Services may include contemporary worship music, traditional hymns, or gospel-style songs. The people on stage, Burt says, look like the people in the seats.
Production is part of the experience, but it does not drive the experience.
“We’re not the Tonight Show,” Burt says, repeating something a former professor and Rock Creek video director once instilled in the team. “We’re a Sunday morning church service.
”That does not mean Rock Creek ignores excellence. The church uses technology intentionally and continues to adapt as tools and expectations change. But Burt says the congregation helps guide the pace and tone of production. If the team pushes too far and people begin responding negatively, they pay attention.
They still use lighting. They still program looks. They still produce larger moments, especially at Christmas, where the service may feel more like a produced concert. But on a normal Sunday, they are careful not to let production become the point.
“We try to make sure that the message is at the core of it,” Burt says.That same philosophy shapes the way he leads volunteers.
Rock Creek has about 50 production volunteers, and Burt is intentional about caring for them as people, not just filling positions. He tries to keep track of what is happening in their lives, checking in when someone has surgery or is walking through something difficult. He admits he does not catch everything, but he works at it.
On Sundays, he also tries to lead with calm.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever been overly critical in a bad way to a volunteer,” he says. “They’re giving of their time. They’re coming to serve.
”That does not mean mistakes go uncorrected. If something is wrong or distracting, Burt will address it. But he is careful not to lose perspective. Volunteers are not disposable labor. They are part of the ministry.
Each Sunday, after rehearsal and before the service, the team gathers for a short meeting. Burt uses that time not only to walk through what just happened, but to remind volunteers why their work matters.
He sometimes describes the tech team as the salt and pepper of the meal. They are not the steak and potatoes. They are not the main thing. But if they are missing, something is off. If there is too much of them, that is a problem too.
The goal is balance.
“There’s somebody probably going to walk in the front doors of Rock Creek for the first time,” Burt tells the team. “It’s our job to do exactly what we’re supposed to do and to not be a distraction.
”That idea runs through the way Rock Creek trains volunteers. The church has not had to actively recruit production volunteers in a while. In fact, Burt says the team has been past capacity, which is a good problem. Many new volunteers come through word of mouth, often because they see someone in a Rock Creek Tech shirt and say, “I want to do what you do.”
Once someone expresses interest, Burt explains the expectations. Volunteers typically serve no more than two Sundays a month, and he often encourages once a month or once every three weeks. A Sunday call time starts at 7:30 a.m. and runs until noon, covering rehearsal and two services. Burt knows burnout is real, and he tries to build a schedule that recognizes that.New volunteers begin by watching. They wear intercom, sit in the production room, watch the multiview and listen to the director. They see graphics, directing, switching, shading and camera operation. After that, Burt talks with them about what interested them and where the team has needs.
The next step is shadowing a seasoned volunteer. The experienced operator runs the position while the new volunteer watches. Then they flip, with the new volunteer operating while the seasoned volunteer stays nearby. By the third time, the new volunteer is usually running the position, with Burt checking in and monitoring.
Beyond Sunday morning, Burt’s communications role has changed significantly. Rock Creek wants to take the church experience beyond one hour on Sunday. Sometimes that means Bible teaching. Sometimes it means funny or relational content. Often, it means pulling moments from Sunday and turning them into social media content almost immediately.
The shift has affected even how they shoot. Burt says they now shoot almost everything vertically for social media. Traditional horizontal video is mostly reserved for content shown in the Sunday service.
The reason is simple: Rock Creek’s digital audience is much larger than the room. Burt says the church has about 2,000 people in seats on Sundays, but 10,000 to 12,000 on Facebook and several thousand more on Instagram. Some of those audiences overlap, but many people connected through social media are not in the room on Sunday morning.
That makes communications and production inseparable.For Burt, making Sunday happen means more than executing a service. It means understanding the congregation, supporting the volunteers, translating leadership vision, extending ministry throughout the week and knowing when production should step forward or get out of the way.
At Rock Creek, success is not measured by whether the room feels like a television show. It is measured by whether people can see, hear and respond to the message without distraction — and whether the team serving behind the scenes knows their work matters.
That is the kind of production Burt is trying to build: excellent, restrained, people-aware and deeply connected to the life of the church.Or, as he might put it, enough salt and pepper to serve the meal well.
