I love our worship team at Sunridge Church! This rare behind the scenes footage shows how much fun we really have each week! These are servants who put in hours and dedicate much so that hundreds can worship. The funniest thing is the last words on the on the tape…don’t miss that.

Today I closed my Hotmail account. It felt quite liberating, actually.

I do all my e-stuff through Google, it’s just easier for how my brain is wired to navigate and it’s only going to get better when Google Wave comes later this year. But the reason I closed my hotmail account was because I don’t do much with it. Do I use it? Yeah, but do I get value out of it? Erm, no. So the question becomes, why keep it around? And “just because” isn’t a good enough reason anymore. Information without application is just noise.

I want to throw out a challenge to you guys to find something to stop doing something in your area of ministry that is not adding real value. If it’s just taking up time, taking up space, taking up budget or other resources, and you don’t think it’s helping you guys do ministry, get rid of it.

Really, do you see yourself in this video if you run sound, lights, lead worship, etc.?

HT: Mistakemaker.com

During the worship set I noticed a gentleman with his fingers in his ears and I knew from reading his body language. He didn’t like the volume level. I know that volume issues are very big in some churches. So I thought I’d write a post on how to deal with people who come to you or comments come through the grape-vine on how to deal with complaints in regards to mixes and volume issues.

1. Clarify the Goal - You need to know who you are trying to reach as a church. Is it a particular demographic, or just non-christians in general? If you aren’t crystal clear on this point you NEED to sit down with your senior pastor for about 15 minutes and have him articulate who he would like the worship (and sound) try and reach. Trust me, he will appreciate you taking initiative to try and do a better job.

2. The Devil Is In The Details - I have found with experience that it is very difficult to have the average congregant articulate clearly what they didn’t like about the mix. Getting them to tell you what exactly they don’t like is very difficult sometimes, so…

3. Feel Free To Ask Your Own Questions - When you are talking with someone and they are telling you what they don’t like, ask them questions to dig deeper. Find out where they sit. Acoustics of the room are a huge issue, if you’re sitting in front of the subwoofers and don’t like low frequencies, I can’t really help you except to find you a better seat for next week. If they think the overall volume is loud, have them sit towards the back of the room. The Inverse-Square Law states that for every time the distance of a sound source is doubled the volume is halved, so it’s going to be quieter in the back of the room than in the front.

4. Treat Everyone Respectfully - There are about a dozen scriptures that state how we should treat each other with kindness and love. NEVER forget that. You should reiterate the clarified goal of who the church is trying to reach. However, just because the person who is complaining is outside your target audience, does not give you the right to simply blow them off. You can do something better…

5. Turn a Problem Into a Solution - The best thing you can do is empower people towards a solution. If a group of people come to you in regards to a specific issue, try and find a way to have them help you solve that problem. Example: some people don’t like a particular area of the room because it suffers from poor acoustic qualities. So, tell them that you would like them to help donate acoustical treatment to help that particular section of the room. There are so many churches that have large tech needs and have had their tech budgets slashed to zero because of the economy. I should know, I’m in one of those churches. But if you’re clever, you can figure out how to artificially generate budget for your ministry needs. The stage bleed is annoying? Ok, maybe you can help us by donating some in-ear monitoring systems for the musicians. Our youth hasn’t had any of their equipment replaced since 2000. Most of the room is held together with gaffers tape and they need A, B, C, and D. Can you and your friends help…

Are you following me, are you seeing the pattern?

You can turn your biggest complainers into your biggest helpers by refocusing their vision to helping others find Jesus, instead of their own comfort zone at church.

[Go read Jeremy’s blog Church Audio and Sound for more articles like this one]

Have you seen the new ASIMO; that little miracle-powered self-aware robot by Honda that has arms, legs, eyes…? It can smile, wave, walk up and down stairs and recognize over 6 million objects (including the Toyota Prius). If you walk holding its little hand it will do so without crushing all the little bones in yours because of how clever it is. It will match your speed and even changes in direction. Honda is very tight-lipped about its ASIMO project but after 2 decades, 40 machines, and Lord knows how many millions (or billion) dollars spent, they are finally bringing mankind closer to the day when Terminators and the Borg will kill us all and take our place of dominance on Earth. Hollywood’s got the picture though. How many movies can you count that feature a set of cybernetic versions of wasps working systematically trying to enslave or subdue the human race? The number is quite a few.

Ants are scavengers, taking their food from dying things. Bees create honey and help pollinate flowers. What do wasps do? So far as I can tell, nothing. Nature has a habit of disposing of useless creatures like the dodo bird that couldn’t fly and was too slow to outrun predators. Then there are the dinosaurs, which we all know got too big for their own good. And yet the wasp is still with us. Why? They have no relevance to the food chain. They cannot make any honey, and they aren’t fluffy. Wasps can smell out a bowl of sugar from five miles away. How do they do that when sugar does not smell?

They also organize flight paths between food sources and their nest. But how, unless they’re been trained in air traffic control? Wasps are also vindictive. Many creatures will attack when threatened or hungry, but a wasp will attack you if annoyed slightly. And unlike a bee, which tears out its entrails while plunging its stinger into you, a wasp can sting you again and again.

Annoyingly however, wasps also live amongst us in church. They are both on your staff and a part of your volunteer core. As a ministry leader you no-doubt have people that are useless to you. They don’t usually volunteer. And if they do they are very picky, the first to whine, inherently late and flaky, and they do it without a sense of passion. Every church has freeloaders and naysayers, but what do you do with them? The church stopped officially sanctioning executions in the 17th century, so put away those asbestos salad toppings.

Working with these people is akin to a ship trying to sail while dragging its anchor. Anchors are for keeping you constant and unmoved regardless of the weather, but that’s not what the church should be culturally and dynamically. It should always be adapting to reach people. Growing churches are ones that never let down their anchor, they’re always looking to grow and move, always looking to capture the slightest wisp of breeze. In short, growing churches don’t have anchors, because they are heavy to carry.

To make matters worse, the prescription is worse than the diagnosis: Get rid of your wasps. Wasp staff members will only be an incumbency providing little cost to benefit ratio for the church organization. Wasp volunteers will only keep your ministry from effectively reaching to the community. You are better off without them. You’ll find another staff member and more volunteers, and your morale will be higher without them. Do you have people who are hurting you and keeping you from moving forward while at the same time eating your honey? Get rid of them. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a wasp that needs the proverbial can of RAID.

As a member of the typical worship team, singers often rely on the gear presented to them by the situation. I have served in church plants in school cafeterias and in new worship houses that seat over 2,000. Either way, the issue of gear for any musician is important. One thing I have learned: If something sounds cheap, it probably is.

I own a fairly decent guitar that cost me about $600. It sounds pretty decent. But, when I played a friend’s $3,000 Taylor I loathed picking up my own guitar again. Most instrumentalists invest in good gear to present their best. A typical electric guitarist might easily spend up to $10,000 for his gear: amp, pedals, guitars. A pro trumpet can cost about $3,000.

How about those of us who sing? Do we invest in gear, too? I think we should. Here is a list of gear I would recommend for each singer on my team. Now, vocal mics can be shared and wireless in-ear receivers and transmitters can as well. You do want to have your own ear buds, however:

• Shure UR2/KSM9 wireless system. I have demoed this microphone and think it is amazing. I would love four to five of these for our regular Sunday worship. They cost with microphone, and receiver a whopping $1,800 a piece. My audio expert, Jeremy, tells me the double magnets mean it can cancel a lot of feedback and that they sound great.
• Sennheiser EW 300 IEM G2 is a cost-effective choice for monitoring in-ear. Being able to monitor anywhere on the stage is one plus, and the fact of removing large monitor speakers and their cabling cleans up the stage look, too! This unit, which actually has one earbud with it will cost you about $950. (If you are in a school cafeteria, having this might SAVE the mix.)
• Shure SCL5 are dual driver earbuds. You can pay a bit more to get custom molds to your ear from your audiologist (maybe about $150 more in cost). Imagine hearing the full range of music, minus very low subs and being able to have the volume be to your liking! You could stand right near the drummer or a guitar amp and have no problem with the volume. This is one way to save your ears, too. The price for this baby is around $400.

The total cost if only four vocalists purchase there own and nothing is shared would be $3,150. That is about what an average instrumentalist would buy on your team no matter what they play. If you have 8 singers share the mics and cost, each person would have to cough up about $1,500. And, perhaps even a bit less.

If I were to prioritize, I would first get the in-ear monitors times four and add the vocal mics later. Also, there are options for earbuds as low as $100 that can work great, too. So, as a plan “B” it would cost about $575 per person on a  vocal team of 8 people to do this.

I am interested to know what other worship leaders, audio guys, vocalists and instrumentalists think about singers and gear. Let’s discuss.

If you are a drummer like my friend Nate in this picture, you know that there are pitfalls to your instrument. Every church lady cringes when she walks in the room. Some times, you have to get there earlier and stay later than the rest of the worship band, and a sheet music might even be put in front of you. However, the most insulting thing (besides playing electronic kits) is when you are put in a glass cage.

The audio guys want control of slapping snares on the back wall and the worship pastor wants to be sure he has a job the next week. You are in a bind. The glass kills your ears, since you get reverberation instantly to your ears—unless you can pay for in-ear monitors which have their own issues.

So, the questions is for all involved: Does your church use a drum shield for your kit? Elaborate, please.

This morning was also a little bit of a ministry leadership failure for me. We have a FOH guy and a monitor guy for Sunday mornings. I was scheduled on monitors with one of the volunteers on FOH (Front of House). Thursday night rehearsal and Mr. FOH didn’t show up. So I just ran monitors, and then went back and set a few basic levels and the gain structure. This morning I got to the church, and 6:30 rolled around and Mr. FOH didn’t show. At 7, when Sunday morning run-thru started he still wasn’t there. So I made sure the musicians and vocalists had what they needed in levels and I ran the house.

Continue reading this article on Church Audio Blog

Thing is, though, worship leading is mostly a black and white job. You (presumably) schedule the musicians, pick the song selection, the song order, manage conflicts and the run the rehearsal, which is the same thing, really.

What does the sound guy do? Well, ehm… he makes things sound good. And if you were to categorize his job description in that manner, yes, you could say, “bah” to him being a worship leader.

On balance then because what the sound guy has to do is get in everyone’s mind and play a psychological game of chess. Think of it this way, why is it that Lord I Lift Your Name On High has become a musical oxbow lake? Why is it no longer at the top of the Top 30 Christian music charts? It’s because that song doesn’t move people anymore. In the same way, sound mixers, the way I was trained and the way I train people, is to mix according to audience reaction. You have to mix in a way that leads people away from the point where the merely listen to music as a consumer and say, “the band sounded good today” or, “the band didn’t sound good today.” And leading them away from that you have to take them to a point where they are able to simply worship.

The sound guy is the make-or-break guy in the entire process. Psychologically, people will tolerate bad video over bad audio. You could have Chris Tomlin as a guest worship leader, but if you don’t have someone who knows how to lead the audience in the subtle art of sonics, he’ll just sound like some middle-aged worship leader that has Dwayne for a middle name. Sure it’ll have all the earmarks of, “ooh that’s Chris Tomlin.” But it won’t move people to worship anything more than the Chris Tomlin Experience.

“If all you do is focus on the tools of ministry (ensuring technical excellence, making sure people don’t think it’s too loud, repairing broken equipment) rather than why the ministry is there in the first place, you become like Martha in Luke 10. What is required is not the servant mentality but a leadership mentality.”

One of the worship leaders I have known was a man named Aaron. He wasn’t very talented, didn’t have a great voice, and let’s face it his musical styling was… different. But what he understood was that in order to be effective he needed someone who knew how to make him sound better than his talent level. He gave me the freedom and authority to do whatever I wanted, not as the sound guy, but he rather informally made me a worship leader. He worked with me to help lead people in worship and he was very successful for it.

You don’t have to have amazing musicians, though you should get good ones, or amazing songs although Lord I Lift Your Name On High is very dated. What you need is a really good sound mixer and to give him the technical and creative authority as a behind-the-scenes worship leader to maximize the effectiveness of your worship time.