Christina Jessup, Calvary Chapel Melbourne, Melbourne, Fla.; Nicole Lotz, Destiny Christian Center, Oklahoma City, Okla.; Jessica Purintun,Victory World Church, Norcross, Ga.
There aren't many of them out there, but they are out there. And one of the coolest things about them? They are all highly relational and encourage others to explore what they do. Meet a few of the women behind the cameras and consoles, in front of the production staff and volunteers, and on the church AV scene.
Debbie Keough, Director of Technical Arts
Coast Hills Church
Aliso Viejo, Calif.
It was as a young musician that Debbie Keough caught the audio bug.
As she tells it, Debbie was in her twenties, playing drums in a band that was traversing a common rite of passage: they were recording an album. One day in the studio, the audio engineer needed some help doing a mixdown, and Debbie stepped up to the plate (or, in this case, the console). “He says, ‘wow, you're really good at this. You wanna come back tomorrow?' So I just kept coming back and hanging out in the studio and got a lot of my audio chops there,” she recalls. Soon, she was getting gigs doing sound for various churches. “It just kept growing from there.”
These days, Debbie is the director of technical arts at Coast Hills Church in Alisa Viejo, Calif. “Originally when you get into it, all you want to do is press buttons because you're just so excited to press buttons,” she admits. But pressing buttons is not what doing church tech is about: “Think of it in a worship context: what is the worship leader's goal? The worship leader is there to draw people into deeper worship with God. If you're a guitar player, or a drummer, you're kind of in this spiritual zone, I would say, [where you are being] artistic, expressive, intriguing––you're creating this texture for the person out in the audience to engage in worship. I think of tech in the exact same way.” The tech basics may be sound reinforcement, and the smooth operation of video, lighting, and media, “but I want to be an extension of our expression of worship. I think of tech as a living, breathing [component] that promotes thought, and draws people deeper into worship. I also think that tech is just as influential as our worship team that's performing the music.”
As the sole staff member of Coast Hills' tech department, Debbie oversees audio, video (live and production), lighting and media, as well as 30-some volunteers (including several women), the majority of which are teenagers (and yes, that means girls, too). While heading up a troupe of (mainly) adolescent volunteers may seem daunting to some, Debbie takes it in stride. No doubt, the skills she applies teaching live sound classes at The Recording Arts Center (TRAC) in San Diego, Calif., come in handy. (She also attended TRAC, as well as the Los Angeles Recording Arts School.) “I don't consider myself a pastor but I do consider myself a teacher,” she says. “And not only am I just teaching basic skills, what I'm looking for is creating relationships with these kids.” As in many churches, Debbie's young volunteers come from all walks of life: “As you spend time with these kids, you find some of them are coming from broken homes, some of them are in families that are in the midst of divorce––they have stressful lives. It's cool to sit down with them and have real conversations.” Through these conversations, she can gain insight into their natural talents, and how to help shape them into something meaningful. “Trying to find their purpose, what their strength is, and encourage them in that, I think has been huge to some of these teenagers. So I definitely think [of my tech department] as a ministry.”
Debbie's approach to working with her volunteers is not something she takes lightly. “God designed you for a purpose and a reason, and what that means to me is you really need to find out what drives you, what motivates you, what makes you go after it 100 percent,” she says. Telling a volunteer who loathes running cameras to be a camera operator just because there happens to be a shortage of man (or woman) power isn't the way to help people down their individual paths. “When you get put in a place where your role doesn't motivate you, I think your worship is severely hindered. Being a leader, I want whomever I'm responsible for to be able to worship. If you are steering somebody somewhere else other than what God designed them to do, you're not helping them get to a greater level of worship.”
While Debbie concedes that church tech is dominated by men, to her this shouldn't be the main focus for women and girls who are either already working in tech, or who are considering it as a career. “Don't be afraid to go after what you feel you've been called to do in ministry,” she says. “I have found that if you're willing to let God lead you somewhere, there are a lot of churches out there that want skilled individuals––and they don't care what package you come in.”
Nicole Lotz, Production Team Leader
Destiny Christian Center
Oklahoma City, Okla.
When some people feel called to do something, they do everything they can to answer that call. Such is the case with Nicole Lotz.
A graduate of the new media program at Central Bible College (now consolidated with Evangel University in Springfield, Mo.), Lotz took an internship in Destiny Christian Center's media department. When her internship was up, she worked a number of jobs in Oklahoma City, eventually landing a position in accounting at Grant Thornton LLP. But while accounting stimulates one part of her brain, Lotz didn't give up her aspirations to work in church production, and she has remained at Destiny Christian as a volunteer, performing everything from administrative tasks to handling the church's social media, running ProPresenter, and training and coordinating the volunteers serving in the tech department.
“I've always liked technology,” Lotz says. “So sitting at ProPresenter and putting together a Sunday, it's like the media part of my brain but it's also the organized part of my brain. As a kid, I was very ADHD and moving around and stuff, so for me, the lights and the cameras and making sure the backgrounds match––all of that is moving. I like the energy, that type of environment, and making sure that everything's changing at the right time and at the right part of the song. All that keeps my mind going and I'm really good at it because I'm organized.”
As a liaison between Destiny Christian's volunteer base and its tech department, Lotz says one of the most important lessons she has learned is to always be prepared––and that means being prepared to be flexible. “It doesn't matter how well I've planned out the Sunday songs or the pastor's notes, if a team leader comes up and says, ‘Song Number One is now going to be Song Number Three, and Song Number Four is not this song, it's this song …' I honor what she feels God has told her to change,” she illustrates. Last-minute changes, she says, are part of production.
Lotz continues to fulfill a number of her volunteer duties at Destiny Christian, but when she spoke with Church Production she was in the process of handing over some of her responsibilities to other volunteers in an effort to take a breath and decide what the next step is. “I really like media, but I feel like with running so much stuff on Sundays, I haven't been able to connect with people––and we're the church, we're supposed to connect with people, we're supposed to talk to people. So it's a time of transition. I've joined a couple more community groups, and I'm getting to know people. Even the people on the media team I knew, but I can have conversations with them now that don't involve more than just their scheduling of the media,” she relays. That said, Lotz's connection to tech remains strong. “The fact that I'm able to be a part of it but still have to hold another job––I value that. I'm involved, but I have to keep another job on the side to be able to do what I like.”
And for Lotz, having the opportunity to work in church tech, even on a part-time, volunteer basis, is a lot better than not doing it at all. “Don't just give in to the corporate world and not be involved at all and sit on the rows on Sunday,” she advises other women who are interested in running technology. “Even if you can't be in leadership on a media team, whenever you go to church, you could always be involved in something.”
Just before going to press, Church Production learned that Lotz will be leaving her accounting job to take a position as customer relations specialist in the new church division at Toucan Productions, an audio, lighting, and staging company based in Oklahoma City. She notes she is pleased to have landed a job for which she went to school. “I believe this is what Ephs 3:20 talks about: ‘now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us,'” she quotes. “I am beyond blessed to have been offered this job.”
Christina Jessup, Senior Production Director
Calvary Chapel Melbourne
Melbourne, Fla.
Christina Jessup's career in church tech is rooted in her desire to tell stories. She recounts that as a kid, she was particularly into old black-and-white films, and storytelling in general. She even made her own movies: “My cousins and I would get together and do little videos back when there were VHS cameras––we always had fun doing that,” she remembers. When the time came to explore what she wanted to do in life, storytelling was a big part of it. “I knew that I didn't want a repetitive career; I wanted something that was challenging, that was creative. And I love storytelling.”
Jessup's career began at a small television production company, where she did everything from make-up, to camera operation, to casting, to set design, and, finally, film production. Halfway through her five-year stint there, Calvary Chapel Melbourne (CCM) established its video ministry. “I started videotaping and producing little videos for the church, because I was the only one at that time that was skilled to do any of that,” she explains. Then one day, while she was still at the production company, CCM called to offer her a full-time position, making her the first technical person on staff at the church.
Back then, approximately 800 people attended CCM, and its video production set-up consisted of a couple of small security cameras. In her 15 years with the church, Jessup has watched it expand to three video campuses that integrate full broadcast systems, and several campuses in Florida prisons. The church welcomes approximately 15,000 attendees on a weekly basis (CCM doesn't officially take a membership count), and Jessup oversees production for all campuses, the church's Lessons for Living radio program, set and art direction, and a team of 15 production staff members, and a host of volunteers.
“I think that we all have challenges––men or women in ministry,” Jessup says. “But being women in leadership, I think we just have to keep our minds focused on why God called us. And that's what I do when I have any issues or anything that comes up. I just remember God put me here. Yes, I worked hard and I was passionate about serving in ministry, but God put me where I am in my position. For any women in technology, God is going to put you there as long as you're following your passion, and as long as you're following what God called you to do.”
These are words that Jessup lives by. During the course of her discussions with Church Production, she was called to make a considerable change: this spring, she will transition out of her role as senior production director to work alongside her husband, Pastor Lew Jessup, in CCM's prison ministry. This doesn't, however, mean that she will cease to encourage women in church tech. “I think it's harder for us in our positions in leadership within the church because there are not a lot of women production leaders, so there's not a lot of mentoring happening,” she says. “There's not a lot of us, and so we have to stick together, and we have to mentor each other, we have to be open, and we have to be praying for one another.”
Jessica Purintun, Senior Audio Visual Tech
Victory World Church
Norcross, Ga.
To women considering a career in church tech, Jessica Purintun offers this advice: “Don't be afraid to fail so much that you stand in your own way and you don't try to do this,” she says. “Work really hard and learn as much as you can in a volunteer role, if it's available to you.” And, when you're given a chance, “[if you] make sure that you're a good steward of the time and the resources and all of the learning opportunities that you're given, I don't know how you can go wrong if you're really diligent and you really work hard.”
Purintun knows of what she speaks, mainly because she's lived it. Just a few years ago, she was preparing to embark on a career as a public school teacher, but as her schooling was coming to a close, she arrived at the realization that she just wasn't that excited about becoming a teacher. Kyle Purintun, her boyfriend at the time (as you can deduce, he's now her husband) challenged her: what was she really passionate about?
“I told him I'd always been passionate about music and production, but I didn't have any experience in production,” Purintun relays. “My dad was a musician, and so I'd always been around rehearsals and things like that, but I didn't have any experience.” (She admits wasn't even sure that audio engineering could be a legitimate career.) Kyle suggested that the couple seek volunteer opportunities at Victory, “and so we started volunteering one weekend at our church, and basically, we never stopped … we have four weekend services and special events, and there are a couple of services during the week for young adults and youth in need, so I had a lot of opportunity to learn.” After a year, Victory's production team offer Purintun a job––a position she's filled for the last three years. Sunday mornings, you can find her at Victory's main campus assisting Technical Director Nathan Williams. She also runs FOH as well as broadcast sound on some weekends, and oversees FOH for the church's young adult services during the week. (Her husband, Kyle, continues to volunteer at the monitor position.)
Purintun says that she strives to create a collaborative work culture through getting to know everyone she deals with. “You have all this pressure, and everyone has an opinion on what you're doing, and you're expected to perform your task with a smile on your face and to give a ‘yes' to every request that comes in and be happy about it, and it gets tough,” she says. “I think it's important to develop relationships with the people you're working with, even when it's hard to do. The band and the singers and the speakers––there's so much going on, but I think being intentional about saying hello to everyone and trying to get to know everyone develops that mutual respect, and people are more understanding if you push back on a request.”
But Purintun says the biggest lesson she has learned on the job so far has to do with confidence. “I really had to put into practice, [where] before each service I asked the Holy Spirit to come alongside me and just pick up where I'm lacking, because I never know what technical difficulty we're going to have, and will I know how to solve it? But I've been so shocked because for the most part, nothing colossal has failed––and it could have!” she jokes. “I think it's just so awesome being in church production and having a relationship with the Lord because I don't have to be afraid. Things can go wrong, yes, but I always have that sense of security––where I'm weak, He's strong. It's proven to me over and over with this job. I think it's actually advanced my relationship with the Lord being in this job, because I've had to rely on Him so much for confidence.”
