One of the things that we did was a midweek rehearsal, and that was just sort of on the schedule. Now we approach that differently because a lot of times it was a bit of a waste of time, and it was a waste of everybody’ s time. We’ re trying to make the demand of serving on a weekend as low as possible for the team.
We spent a lot of time redoing our systems and really getting things dialed in and then encouraging the team,“ Hey, if you show up prepared, that’ s 95 %, we’ ll make sure we show up prepared and we’ re totally ready for you for monitors, for all that stuff, you’ ll be dialed.” It makes it low stress and high joy.
We run through the music on Saturday, we do one Saturday night service, three Sunday mornings, and the first service Sunday morning is more of an acoustic vibe, but we pretty much prep it all on Saturday. So that was nice, to take that time requirement off the team instead of just doing an obligatory rehearsal. And so yeah, just some shifts, and I think if you put your mind to it and you say,“ here’ s what we want to do with this amount of time”, you can do a lot of cool things. So, we use those Wednesday nights now for occasional team gatherings and where we do a lot more connection stuff and kind of hanging out and having fun.
The way I described it in terms of recasting technical vision for the tech crew was doing 52 weeks a year, should not redline the team. There’ s no need for that with, I mean, I’ m trying to think of a church scenario where you would be redlining every week when you’ re in the same building with basically the same thing going on week after week. Sadly, people find a way to do it all the time, but I’ m like, if you design it well it should be fun. I’ ve described it before saying, if you’ re mixing front of house, there’ s no reason you can’ t be sipping a cup of coffee and occasionally touching a fader. It shouldn’ t be a mad rush of stuff.
[ WM ] That’ s good. I like that. I take it your teams are all on in-ear monitors and you’ ve got the sound team ready to go. Do you meet with them production wise or are they pretty much on their own for that? Do you interact with them, what songs you’ re going to do? Slides needs etc., they all get prepped ahead of time?
[ Linc ] We use Planning Center, so in there, everybody has what they need. As far as our team meetings, our rehearsal times are highly interactive. Talk-back mics are critical. I’ ve seen so many scenarios where people who need to communicate with each other don’ t have talk-back mics and I just think, I would never try to communicate with someone and expect it to be fruitful if they couldn’ t hear me and I couldn’ t hear them( laughs). We’ re very much a one team mentality. So, you have people on the team that the congregation see, and you have people on the team that they don’ t see … but they see and hear what they do. Everybody’ s serving in a critical role. So, it’ s just one big team.
[ WM ] How big is the church?
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