Leading Your Team Well
Original article appeared in Charisma Leader Magazine
Define ‘the Win’ for Your Church’s Tech Team
During one of our church services, I was mixing on the audio console when I heard a noise and saw a flicker of lights. A heartbeat after the flicker, the power went down and the emergency lights kicked on—right in the middle of an amazing worship service. I remember thinking, Well, there goes that service! Then, to my surprise, our worship leader came to the front of the stage and started singing acapella. The rest of the congregation followed his lead, and for the next 10 minutes, we sat in the dark and had one of the most amazing services I’ve ever experienced. At that moment, I realized having a cool and technically awesome service was not the win. Rather, the win was the congregation entering into worship. I decided then that I would change the way I led.
First, I needed to define the win in advance for my team. I needed to set the vision and make sure they understood we were not trying to make everyone look at our cool tech, but we were here to help the church enter into worship. This changed how we looked at the tech, from how loud we ran the audio to how we handled the lighting, video or lyric support. It redefined our approach, taking the emphasis off of being a “perfect” tech team and focusing on leading everyone in worship using our gear. The sound console became an instrument of worship, similar to the way a worship pastor leads with a guitar or a keyboard. Now, we were going to use our tech gear to lead people in worship. This meant if something went wrong, our purpose was not to focus on the mistake but to make sure we didn’t compound it, while doing our best to continue in an atmosphere of worship.
Second, tech team leaders must constantly remind their teams why their role is important by confirming the purpose of their work and continually dripping the vision. Create moments where that can happen: team meetings, group phone calls, group texts or brief thank-you video messages. One great time to do this is during a pre-service meeting. Gather the techs and spend a few minutes on the service agenda. Then take some time to pray and focus on the reason the team is there for the services. Tech leaders must build purpose into the team’s culture and vocabulary. Live and breathe purpose and vision. Of course, there is still work to be done. Cues have to be called and deadlines have to be hit, but if the leader has relational credibility with the team and drips the vision in every meeting, encounter and service, they will not forget the win.
Third and most important, the leader must find a way to announce the win to the team. This is the step often taken for granted. Many churches see an attendance spike during Easter, but is higher attendance the win? Having more people attend services should be natural for that time of the year, so what is the real purpose of the Easter service? If the goal is for people to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, be sure to communicate the results of that goal. But don’t do this just at Easter time. This should happen routinely and often. As a matter of fact, it’s best to have several goals and many wins for a service. Having weekly, quarterly and annual wins is good for the team.
Life is all about goals and wins. Because many of us in the technical world have goals that push us toward a perfectionist mentality, we must be careful our communication of the win doesn’t take the team down the road toward perfectionism. The spiritual goal is really what we are looking to attain, communicate and maintain. It can be easy to confuse the spiritual goal with the physical, like hitting cues, achieving higher attendance or creating “wow” during an event. To avoid this, we must check our motivation in everything and make sure we are working heartily, “as for the Lord and not for men” (Col. 3:23b).
Original article appeared in Charisma Leader Magazine
Article written by David Leuschner
Find out more at audiovideolighting.com or information@digitalgreatcommission.org