All of us who serve technically, have a desire to make a difference. In some way, we have personally experienced the goodness of God and want to help others know Him and experience the same. For the past 10 years, being driven by this desire has led me to ask some pretty tough questions about the role technology has to play in this process. I used to believe that if I only had the new "Epic Commander 8200" (or insert some other fictitious name representing a piece of impressive gear we might all desire to have in our arsenal) then I would be able to help people experience the good, kind, loving God that I have come to know. I would attend large conferences, done excellently, and thought, "This! This is what we need!"
The attitude of my heart was good in that I wanted, like all of us, to make a difference. Instead, what I was greeted with was a dissatisfaction in realizing that we couldn't achieve that desire through the gear or the system. It was just a tool. A vehicle. The thing God has been teaching me over the last decade is that it has less to do with the gear and technology than I was hoping. It didn't matter as much as I thought how good a mix was, how aligned a delayed speaker cabinet was, or how pretty a stage design was...none of those things carried the power to make a difference in someone knowing and understanding the goodness of God. In other words, I've not yet meet someone who came into our auditorium, saw a neat looking stage design, accentuated with beams of colored light through billows of haze and been convicted of their need for a grace-filled, merciful and loving savior. These things alone didn't have the ability to do that.
Through this process, we've learned that all technology is just a tool to help communicate the goodness of Jesus to large groups of people and that in that message alone exists the power or ability to help someone experience the goodness of God. I think this written out for us in Scripture when Paul wrote that the message of Jesus Christ is the "power of God for salvation to everyone who believes."
Our focus shifted. We no longer had as much to do with the desire to make a difference as we thought. We were, in fact, more dependent upon God to do that than we thought. Enter prayer: the heavy lifting and the answer. Prayer has become such a huge role in what we do weekly. We have realized that we need God to do what the technology can't do. So we pray and acknowledge our need and our desire and ask Him to move like that, because we can't.
Ok, that's all well and good, but what does it practically look like?
Prayer
At Blue Ridge, we do this three times per day. As staff, we usually attend one of those times each day to pray for the upcoming weekend in addition to events happening that day.
Before Services
The first thing we do when everyone arrives (worship and tech teams) for setup is stop and pray. This is usually led by the person leading that morning from stage. We all stop and pray together for one another, for the teaching pastor and for the technical details (As our lead pastor, Woody Torrence often says lightheartedly, "I'm convinced that when Satan was kick out of Heaven, God cast him into electronics"). Then we do a run through. After that we all stop again, come together in our separate teams and pray together. We want to keep the focus on the Gospel and pray for the worship leaders, the band, the vocals, the teaching pastor, and any other elements that may make up the service. We pray that God would use those things to communicate His message and truth and that in that message people would be draw to Him.
The technology exists to support the communication of the Gospel of Jesus to large groups of people. Therefore, the technology always takes the backseat to the power of the Gospel. To put it another way, as technicians, we do not hold the power that is able to reach down into the depths of someone's heart and soul and cause them to become aware of their need for Jesus, their need for repentance, or even cause them to worship their Savior. So we pray before we serve because we are utterly dependent upon God to move in this way, for we cannot.
