This is sort of a loose continuation of My Freedom to Experiment where I talked about how at Coast Hills we are encouraged to think outside the box and new ways to tackle old problems.

One of the great things about working at Coast Hills is that the leadership of the church sets us up to succeed. We put a lot of time and effort and sweat and hard work into what we do.

It also helps that we’ve got some pretty nice equipment!

But even if the equipment develops quirks or faults, we’re aware of it and work around it. Anything that needs to be fixed is pulled and we either fix it in house, or send it off to be serviced.

Rarely does anything not work during a service. If something that is a part of the service is out of the ordinary, we test it during the week to make sure it’s going to work as planned. We’ll also test it prior to the service on Saturday afternoon. Which brings me to…

Check everything!

Before the band even arrives, we line check.
Before the service starts we test any videos we have.
Before the pastor gets his mic, we check it.
Before we use a new custom cable, we test it.

The key is this: we don’t assume anything about our equipment. Just because it worked last weekend doesn’t mean that it will work this weekend. We’re dealing with electronics! Sometimes they just stop working.

Plan everything!

Now I realize you can’t absolutely plan everything. But the more you know about how your service is going to flow, the less surprises there are going to be. Now I don’t want to get into a debate about rigidity vs. the moving of the Holy Spirit. This isn’t about that. This is mostly about knowing how your service is going to go from start to finish.

Every Wednesday we have a production meeting in which all of the Worship Arts staff will sit down and plan out the order of service for the upcoming weekend. We talk about the song choices as well as what verbal announcements there will be. Besides talking about the next weekend, we debrief that last one. We evaluate how it went and make changes as necessary.

God has put a calling on each one of our lives to do this and because of that we’re going to do the very best that we can to use the gifts and talents that He’s blessed us with for His glory.

The more prepared you are, the more flexible you can be when things start to deviate from the run sheet.

And when things do deviate from the run sheet, watch your attitude! This isn’t about us. It’s about leading the congregation in worship of our Lord and savior. How can we as tech people, lead when we’re giving a bad example with our horrible attitudes? The answer? We can’t! Just suck it up, plow through the weekend, and talk about it next week.

We’re not here for us.
We’re here for Him.
We’re here to help lead them in worship.

-i