We have already covered a lot of different topics in the brief beginnings of Churchnology. The purpose of Churchnology is “Using Technology in Church…Well”, so for this post we aren’t going to talk much about church…or really technology….maybe a little, but really I want to focus on the last word in our tagline…WELL. The creation of this blog comes from two separate angles…first, DC and I both have a heart for using technology in worship services/ and programming events and secondly, we both are professional technologists in our day jobs and are very detail oriented when it comes to the use of technology and we are applying that to churches in this blog. Now, due to the fact we both recognize we are detail oriented (read: picky) to the “professional use” of technology, I feel led to report the following Churchnology axiom : Most people using technology in church, wait for it, are NOT PROFESSIONALS.

There used to be several over the counter medicine ads where a well known soap opera actor would be dressed as their character and be pushing this pill or that rub and had the tag line…”I’m not a Doctor, but I play one on TV…” That tends to be the same problem we have in the church…the person running the sound board might be a plumber, or the person loading the songs into the chosen presentation software might be a used car salesman….or worse might be gasp! the Pastor… These people are professionals but they are not professional media ministers or sound technicians or even presentation developers. In our need to make things perfect we need to focus on the people that make things happen just as much if not more than the actual technology being used. They are NOT PROFESSIONALS, so as DC has stated in previous posts this is where its really important to take Baby Steps….

Some suggestions-

Schedule training sessions-If you are including something new in to the tech mix train your people how to use it weeks in advance and have multiple people trained , just in case.

If you have enough people that are part of your media ministry team cross train if possible, show your computer people how to run the basics of your sound board and vise versa.

Make a detailed list that’s posted of “in case of failure” what can be omitted “on the fly”. An example- if the tape recorder fails mid service, let it fail but don’t let the house sound suffer. If there is a miscommunication on the song order on the slides stop the presentation go to black and resolve the issue with the congregation never knowing there was ever a problem…

I’ve been applying a little saying to my work for the last 10 or so years…Be A Duck!!!! ( no for you who know me does this have ANYTHING to do with a trio of movies about a kid hockey team!!!) To most people a duck is one of the most peaceful creatures floating on top of a lake or river…but drop the camera below water and you see the true story….on top peaceful floating, underneath paddling like crazy….that’s how technology should work…to everybody on top peaceful everything going off on cue and with no problems….below the water everything is moving 1000 mph and if it breaks you adapt and keep moving, quality never suffering….like a duck. It’s a well known fact both DC and I go into any project with not only a Plan A, and Plan B but also a Plan Y and Plan Z.

I say all that to say this…we strive to make technology work in church and work WELL…but some of that is reliant on training in most cases volunteers to do something well they don’t normally need to know how to do….and that will bring another post soon about training your volunteers to do both sound, video, web and other parts of integrating technology into church we haven’t even talked about yet.

Heads High, Stand Tall, Fly Straight