Running a Worship Production Team

A well run production team clearly understands its importance to the church's mission and to the quality of the worship experience. However, the team should also understand that it functions mostly in the background - good production rarely leads to a lot of recognition, whereas bad production always leads to notoriety. A well run team finds satisfaction and joy in serving the church behind the scenes.

Here are some things to keep in mind as you form and run your team:

• Find the right people. Worship production requires a significant amount of both creativity and technical skill. Unfortunately, production teams often have too much of one or the other. The ideal team member has both creative and technical skill, but a teachable person with neither can still become a great contributor. Conversely, production team leaders may assume that a person with significant technical or creative skill will be an instantly good contributor to the team, only to find out that their overconfidence disrupts the operation.
  

• View recruitment and training as ongoing processes. Not surprisingly, recruitment is one of the most important activities in running a production team. The reality is that even the best run teams are subject to regular burnout and turnover. Couple this with a steep learning curve and you can see the need for ongoing training. Even people with previous experience in other churches will require significant time to learn a new technical configuration and process. Having trainees on the roster on an ongoing basis will ensure that the production quality stay relatively consistent.
  

• Start simple and add complexity incrementally. Start with 3 positions: Audio Technician (live & broadcast mix), Visual/Projection Technician (visual media and lighting), and Service Producer (direction and broadcast production). Each of these roles should operate at separate workstations to streamline troubleshooting in the event of a production issue. Depending on the desired complexity of your operation, a dedicated lighting technician, dedicated broadcast director, and camera operators can be added over time.
  

• Size the team appropriately. The size of a church's worship production team generally depends on two factors: the number of worship services and the complexity of the technology portfolio. A church with 3 services, 8 band members, a lighting console, and 6 cameras will clearly need more staffing than one with a single service, 2 cameras, and a small band. Avoid scheduling the same person for two roles simultaneously, as this makes troubleshooting of production issue extremely difficult. Try to schedule each team member to serve approximately once a month for one service. Reducing the frequency each member is required to serve will reduce turnover and increase team stability over time.
  

• Connect the tech to the spiritual. In the hustle and bustle of fader flips, feedback eliminations, camera switches, and slide modifications, it's easy to lose sight of the deeply spiritual significance of worship production. Your team is helping people to engage in the most important activity in human history: the worship of God. Remind them of this on a regular basis and encourage them to find joy in serving God in their role.
  

May your efforts please our God - Father, Son, and Spirit.