Garrett Siljee’s (center) experience in church tech started at a young age when a member of the church's production staff began to mentor him. "They set me up well...," he says. As a result, he 's always looking for opportunities to talk to kids about being a production volunteer.
"Church Production Hero of the Month” is a collaboration between Church Production Magazine and Ross Video. We’re looking to highlight the men and women who consistently exceed expectations for your local church. So tell us—who looks like a church production hero to you? Nominate your hero here.
So many church techs stepped up with heroic efforts to get their churches online during the pandemic. It was a scramble for those who were already streaming—but for the churches that had no infrastructure for the medium, it was like being thrown into the deep end of the pool without knowing how to swim.
Garrett Siljee not only has a heart for Christ, but also for His Church. And when he saw the smaller, less experienced churches struggling during the early days of Covid, he decided to do something about it. Siljee is the multisite production director at Christ Fellowship in Miami, Florida. Christ Fellowship (CF) is a huge broadcasting church with seven campuses in and around Miami and 11 others in Cuba, Guatemala, Colombia, and Costa Rica. “Globally, we aim for the campus to plant where our congregation comes from. It generates the most amount of buy-in locally when your congregation sees their home countries being engaged,” Siljee says.
"We want to see the other local churches in the area do well. When they win, the Kingdom wins. And so during the pandemic, Garrett thought, ‘How do I live this out?’” - Ben Stapley, Christ Fellowship’s Experience Director
But during the pandemic, it was the smaller local Miami churches that needed help. “There were a lot of churches who were kind of caught backpedaling and had to cope with it,” says Ben Stapley, Christ Fellowship’s experience director and Siljee’s boss. “They had no way to get their experiences online. One of our values here at Christ Fellowship is [that] we have a heart for churches. We want to see the other local churches in the area do well. When they win, the Kingdom wins. ‘We win’ is one of our axioms. And so, Garrett thought, ‘Hey man, how do we, how do I live this out?’”
So tell us - who looks like a church production hero to you? Nominate your hero here.
Siljee decided to open up Christ Fellowship’s broadcast campus so other local churches could use their recording facilities free of charge. Siljee had production crews to staff the stage, lights, cameras and everything needed to capture their services. Stapley explains, “He set up a great spreadsheet where people were putting in their names and their times to lock in those positions and get the recordings done. A number of churches came to us and said, ‘Not only do I want to do this for my adult experience, but hey, can I send a youth pastor your way, as well?’”
Volunteers from the seven campuses meet regularly for training with Garrett Siljee (top), multisite production director.
So for several months, Christ Fellowship opened themselves up at a time when everything else was closing down. It was Siljee who made it possible for churches all around Miami to record and broadcast services during the lockdown. And this is just one of many reasons why Stapley nominated Siljee as a Church Production Hero of the Month.
"During Covid, he could have easily said, ‘Nope, I'm not coming in. And my team's not coming in either.’" - Ben Stapley, Christ Fellowship’s Experience Director
“I appreciate his heart for churches to get that done,” Stapley says. “And to be honest, when the pandemic hit, we didn't really understand this virus and its full effect. There was a degree to which we had to say, we're pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone, right? I'm literally not sacrificing my health, but I'm pushing it. And I'm willing to do that—not ignorantly or foolishly—but I'm willing to take this cautious risk because I think the win to equip local churches is worth it. He could have easily said, ‘Nope, I'm not coming in. And my team's not coming in either.’ But he came in and made a wise decision for a calculated risk to say, we need to equip local churches during this season.”
Thirteen years ago, Garrett Siljee was just a kid hanging out in church when someone offered him a job. “I was 15 when they said, ‘Here's this flashy button you can press.’ I wasn't really strong in my faith. It got me. It gave me a chance to not be that awkward kid sitting by himself in the service. So, I was like, sure, this sounds like a win. I can go sit in the back, away from everyone else, and I can make stuff flash,” he says. “I had some great mentors that poured into me, taught me everything they knew.”
“I felt called to ministry. I felt called to production, especially here in Miami, which is a very unchurched city,” - Garrett Siljee Multisite Production Director, Christ Fellowship
Siljee continued serving until he graduated from high school and left to earn an electrical engineering degree. When he graduated college, he says, God spoke to his heart. “I felt called to ministry. I felt called to production, especially here in Miami, which is a very unchurched city,” he says. “CF was my home church and that decision led me right back here. I met my wife here, so we definitely weren’t going anywhere. So, I got the opportunity to keep learning as my predecessors taught me. They then transitioned out and moved on and so I was able to take on their roles. They set me up well, and that allowed me to be able to not only grow in my technical knowledge, but in my leadership aspect, as well.”
Now, as CF Multisite Production Director, Siljee is in charge of making seven Miami campuses worship as one. “We stream live to all of our campuses on a two-minute delay. And not only do we stream the message, we also stream the one worship song beforehand, so all campuses are actually worshipping that same song together,” he says. “So, at the same time that we're singing a lyric at our broadcast campus, all our campuses in unison around Miami are singing that same lyric and giving praise to God in that moment.”
Siljee says it’s a feat that is logistically and visually fascinating. “We usually have an upfront set that all the bands play locally on their own,” he explains. “And then for the song just before the message, all the campuses sync up together, and we stream out the click and the stems, as well as our lead vocalist audibly and visually from our broadcast campus. And so, our lead vocalist at the broadcast campus is leading all our congregations and the local bands are playing at that campus. So, if you're at a satellite campus, you're seeing the lead worship leader from our broadcast campus on the screen, but you're also seeing and hearing your local band fully engaged with worship.”
Stapley says that’s not the only way Siljee has found to virtually combine seven campuses to feel like one. Siljee’s team also creates what they call “Point-to-Point Moments.” Stapley explains, “Garrett and the production crew will take a mobile kit to one of our satellite campuses. And they'll take a moment like the offering moment or a baptism or something in the service and they will beam that to our broadcast campus, and then that will get beamed to the rest of the campuses. But that's something that we do once a month to highlight the fact that we're one church in many locations, and it does take some production ninja skills to execute that.”
The international campuses are more autonomous, with guidance from a global pastor. Their own pastors preach live every weekend and they’ll get video occasionally for big events. But Siljee is the one making sure they have the gear they need. “I've created a standardized package of gear that we launch every global campus with. We configure the set up and then send it out to them with some training that we've done through our global pastors. So, I've taught our global pastor a lot of the basics of how to set up and how to configure,” Siljee says.
Stapley says Siljee also has a heart for the online-only attendees and works hard to make the service translate for those watching at home. And he says it gets especially tricky when it comes to copyrighted material. “We don't want to get flagged by YouTube,” Stapley states. “We don't want to lose our channel and our account beyond that. We want to do what's honest, and we don't want to do something illegal.” Siljee’s team creates a compromise. If the material is, for example, a movie clip, they will take the time to create narrated slides for the online audience. “So, we use still images, and there's some text in the scene,” Stapley explains. “‘Tony [Stark] snaps his fingers and takes down Thanos.’ Okay? Got it. So they understand what the context was and they’re still tethered to that experience, even online.”
But that process takes extra effort, he says, and Siljee’s team makes it happen. “We take our Saturday night recording, and then we use that for the online experience on Sunday morning. So, we're in a beneficial position to have that Saturday night recording and get that in the can,” Stapley says. “The slides are made in advance, and then the editors start working. So, our last service ends 6:30, and the editors work that evening to mesh that all together so it's ready for Sunday morning.”
Because Siljee’s career in church tech began at such a young age, he says they’re always looking for the next generation. They’ll produce videos for the church to hear personal stories from techs who are currently serving and go looking for opportunities to talk to kids about being a production volunteer. “Our directors at each campus go to small groups, they go to our young adults, they go to our students, and they engage with those communities to try to get volunteers to be more than just sitting in a service, but to be able to give back [in a production capacity],” he says.
In addition, to keep the volunteers’ skills sharp, volunteers from all the campuses meet regularly for training. “For example, we'll choose this month to focus on audio. So, we're going to pull all our audio volunteers across all the campuses to our broadcast campus, and we're going to do an in-depth training for audio. And so, we do those centralized trainings every month.”
Siljee has learned a lot in the past 13 years. One of those lessons is how not to automatically say, “No.” “Oftentimes production is the last line of defense,” he says. “So, we’re the last ones that have to put together everything that was planned during the week—and make it work. And so there can be the tendency for production to say, ‘No, I can't do that.’ One of the things that I've learned is that sometimes just gravitating towards that “No” can take away from a powerful moment that could have been.”
Instead, for Siljee, it’s important to build strong relationships between the creative, worship, and production departments by saying, “Yes,” even when it doesn’t seem possible. He says the comradery will make those moments lead to less misery and more miracles.
“I've watched myself say “No” to a gospel moment, or say “No” to a moment that could have had so much more potential, just because I was saying to myself, ‘This was last minute and we could have planned this better.’ It could have been, you're right. It could have been all those things, but by saying, ‘No,’ you take away from whatever it could have been rather than making it happen. And so that collaboration is probably the most important part about anything that I've done here at CF—the collaboration and chemistry that comes from the teams that plan out the weekends.”
Going above and beyond to serve Christ, His Church, the home church, and churches all around him is what makes Garrett Siljee Church Production’s Hero of the Month.
