We church folk are a rather forgiving bunch. But audio can be an unforgiving assignment. From the moment worship begins, the hottest seat in the auditorium is behind the mixing console.
Let's face it, if one tenor in a 40-voice choir hits a sour note, only the other tenors will notice—maybe. If the drummer drags the tempo, the worship leader may grumble, yet the rest of us will be clueless. However, when feedback howls, or the sermon can't be understood, or the guitar pierces eardrums, everybody knows who's to blame. Heads swivel to FOH mix, and the hapless engineer likely will be reminded of it afterwards.
That's why anybody with solid audio credentials is highly valued in any church, regardless of size or worship style. And if there's one person who knows audio best, there's a tendency to expect that one person to do it all—or as much as humanly possible. Pressure can come from the worship team, pastors, and various committee members. Worst of all, it can be self-inflicted by an audio top-dog who stubbornly refuses to let go of the faders.
So, how do you balance the push for perfection with full participation by all your audio team? How do you make worship the best it can be and yet still give less experienced members of the team an opportunity to grow in ministry? To address the issue, CPM had me assemble a panel representing a range of churches. Steve Groves is head of audio at Northland, A Church Distributed, a three-campus congregation outside Orlando with typical weekly attendance of roughly 8,000 in multiple services. Marc Owens is technical coordinator at Hillvue Heights Church in Bowling Green, Ky., where about 4,500 attend weekly. Doug Collingsworth is technical director at First Baptist Church (FBC) in Decatur, Ala., a mid-sized congregation of around 1,200. Groves and Owens are both full time staff, while Collingsworth commutes to Nashville, Tenn., for an audio-related management job during the week. When appropriate, I'll add my own insights from my perspective as a veteran mixer-turned-writer/consultant who feels revered as the volunteer audio guru at a relatively modest Methodist church in Ashland, Ore.
Team Recruiting
If you want to share your burden with a broad-based audio team, the first step—and usually the hardest—is finding the right recruits.
Collingsworth leads a volunteer team of four (one just lost to high school graduation) ranging in age from 18 to mid-60s. “Nobody had any prior experience in audio,” he says. “All were trained on-site, and we cross-train them in video and lighting as well. The biggest requirement is a willingness to learn. If they are teachable, they will have no trouble jumping in.”
Owens currently has five volunteers backing him on audio at Hillvue Heights. “I'm blessed with the people I have now, though three or four times that number has come and gone quickly. Only one had previous experience, and at a much smaller church. But right off he was very good at blending vocals. That was 12 years ago, and now he's quite good.”
Another long-time team member at Hillvue is an IT technician who also plays piano. “He's been with us for 10 years,” Owens adds. “Now I can go on vacation and I don't have to worry about a thing.
In smaller churches like the one where the author works, you have to deal with the technology intimidation factor, particularly with older potential volunteers. Even though I assure them that they will not deal with 80% of the controls on the mixing board, they back away saying, “I'll stick to ushering, thank you.”
Groves' situation at Northland is markedly different, because he heads a full-time paid staff of six. “Doing five services a week at three locations, it's difficult to get volunteers to go into a critical situation where we are counting on them,” he observes. “Our church is very high stakes. You can't be hoping the audio guy will show up, and not miss a cue. It all has to be a sure thing.”
An Audio Personality?
Do certain ages or personality types make better potential recruits?
“I look for somebody who pays attention to detail and who can be trained to be aware of everything that's going on around them,” offers Collingsworth. “What I avoid is somebody who has an ‘I know what's best because I've done this before' kind of attitude. I want to keep that out of the mixing chair.”
Although Northland's regular staff is “all pro,” the church does offer summer internships to students, who are selected only with phone interviews. Groves says, “I can put interns at FOH during rehearsals, and I can tell pretty quickly by the way they stand and what they do whether they have the temperament for mixing. For example, you can get somebody who is very flamboyant and talkative, and his mix might be okay, but it won't be as nuanced as a guy who hardly says anything.”
Owens rues the fact that younger potential recruits seem to lack the dedication required. “My youngest team member is mid-30s. The younger kids have come and gone, or they just stay in the junior high room where we can be much more forgiving.”
Owens looks for volunteers who can multi-task and who know how to listen. “I tell them to close their eyes and forget about the faders and the meters and the RTA [real time analyzer]. If it's not bothering you, it's okay. Just because it shows a peak at 1k doesn't mean you have a bad mix, necessarily.”
Letting Go of the Faders
If you're audio top-dog and not mixing that particular Sunday, what do you do? How do you relate to the volunteer in the hot seat?
“In the more traditional services, I encourage them to follow my lead, which is basically being a balance engineer,” acknowledges Collingsworth. “But in the more contemporary services, I tell them that you are the artist and to paint the picture [that] you see fit.”
Owens will react differently depending on the mixer of the day and the situation. “My guys know that if I hear something really wrong, I'll go upstairs, reach in and grab a knob. Or I'll send a text, or give hand signals. Or just let it be. Nobody is going to mix it exactly the way I would. There can be a thousand different mixes, and they all can be good.”
In the author's small church, with newer and minimally technical volunteers, I expect problems on a regular basis. I sit just far enough from the mixing booth to not be overly intimidating, but close enough so that I can intervene when problems reach a point where they are seriously distracting from worship. And that point is sometimes a tough judgment call.
More than Mixing
Owens points out the peculiar nature of mixing in churches where the worship team on stage is also mostly, if not all, volunteers. “The FOH mixer is also a producer, in a sense. You're not doing just an audio balance, but also a talent balance, because some singers are better than others, and you have to take that into account in your mix. And you have to learn you can't fix things by just pouring on more reverb. You have to learn restraint.”
Mastering all the technical and artistic subtleties takes time, and still some never fully manage it. So the audio team leader has to find the right tasks and levels of responsibility for each team member.
“Everybody on the team can mix the standard services, and for the more complicated ones I have two volunteers who can do maybe 90% of what I can do,” states Collingsworth. “The others can run the fader to the proper level and hit the mute.”
Owens finds that his volunteers gravitate to where they feel comfortable. “I have two guys on monitors who have never asked to do FOH,” he reports. “One of them could do a good job, but he's so great on monitors. He knows how to communicate, and how to keep people happy at minimum levels, which is a real gift.”
Even among his professional staff, Groves finds that some just don't like the pressure of working monitors or backing him at FOH in the main campus auditorium. “It's understandable,” he says, “so we let them go to a satellite site, or let them do mixdown in the studio.”
Locked Out?
In this era of digital consoles, when it's possible to lock out functions with passwords, neither Groves nor Collingsworth has chosen to do so. “Anybody who is allowed to run a console has full access to it,” says Groves. “But they are locked out when nobody is there.”
“Our Digico SD-8 console is wide open,” says Collingsworth. “However, the Galileo system processors for our Meyer Sound PA are locked down. Only I have the passwords for those.”
At the all-analog church where this writer works, the line of demarcation is clear. “Here are the faders and the mute buttons,” I tell my volunteers. “Everything above those, nobody touches but me.” So far, it's working.
Managing Tensions
Inevitably, at some point, tensions will develop between the worship team and the audio team, particularly when a newbie is at the helm.
“That's a tricky situation,” confesses Collingsworth. “But if the worship leader is upset because something went wrong, I would say that we are teaching them, that they are learning to serve the kingdom. We are all human, we all make mistakes, and I could have made the same mistake. The most important thing is that volunteer is serving on a regular basis.”
Such moments of tension rarely occur at Northland, says Groves, but they are dealt with swiftly when they happen. “Our worship leader has a strong and forthright personality,” he says. “He makes it clear that there can be no animosity between the person holding the microphone and the person controlling it. If there's animosity for any reason, that is dealt with immediately and decisively.”
Owens tries to apply flexibility when frictions develop. “If Keith [worship pastor] hears something out of line, say a problem with monitors, we'll be open about it. Sometimes we'll shift schedules around, if somebody doesn't seem to be working well with that team. Or we'll shift them from the praise band service to a choir service, where they might feel more at ease. The main thing is to let them know they're still included.”
They Didn't Fit
And what's the plan when an audio volunteer just isn't working out? How do you “fire” a volunteer?
“That's come up a few times,” says Collingsworth, “but unless it's an extreme situation, I will allow them to come to that conclusion themselves, with a bit of guidance. From there, I'll try to find another place for them to serve that's more appropriate, perhaps video switching or camera operator.”
Owens has found the situation rectifies itself quickly. “They seem to know it. They may come in the second week for set-up and say, ‘Well, you know I can't be here next week.' They realize they've gotten into more than they've bargained for.”
At this writer's smaller church, it's an agonizing situation because even minimally qualified volunteers are scarce. You know that if a struggling sound operator is “reassigned,” that's one more Sunday you'll likely be mixing yourself.
Perfection in Perspective
In the end, it's always important to remember that the power of worship doesn't depend on technical perfection. As long as it's not overtly distracting, the Spirit is free to move.
“You don't have to be the world's greatest singer to be on the praise team, and you don't have to be the world's greatest mixer to do front-of-house,” insists Owens. “I know our pastors would rather have volunteers in place and me not mixing. They want to see as many people as possible become part of something bigger than just themselves.”
And when it all does work out, the blessing of an eager and competent volunteer not only eases your load, but it can change a life as well. “The volunteer we just lost to high school graduation came on our team as a high school freshman with no experience,” recalls Collingsworth. “Now he's earned a scholarship to study technical theatre at the University of Alabama. So we're not just serving the church, we're also giving benefits to their lives. That's why I like to get them while they're young.”
