Every sound engineer or production director has had a moment when they realize their pastor is frustrated with them on Sunday morning. It is irritating to feel like you are working hard to serve someone, but they still seem annoyed. Why is this? In this article, we want to help you see how to serve your pastor in the least stressful way possible, without frustrating them. But we are going to have some fun with this. So, here are 5 ways to irritate your pastor on Sunday Morning:
Talking About Future Project Upgrades on Sunday Morning
It’s Sunday morning and the pastor is thinking through his/her message, making sure people feel welcomed and verifying everything is running smoothly. So why not bog the pastor down with the technical details of a project that only you understand. Sure, it makes way more sense to take the pastor to lunch or coffee to talk about the needs for a better projector or new subs, but why not ask him about it minutes before he/she must carry the spiritual weight of shepherding the church. The added pressure might make him irritated, but the satisfaction of knowing you got the idea “off your chest” will be worth it. It probably won’t affect the pastor’s heart condition at all.
Giving The Pastor More Information than Needed So Your Work Can Be Appreciated
The worship pastor forgot to alert you about the three additional singers and an additional keyboard player. So, you run around like a crazy person patching in new channels, finding direct boxes that are old and dusty, and borrowing a keyboard stand from the youth room. All this chaos happens before your lead pastor arrived in the room. So, to make sure the pastor feels the chaos of the morning 15 minutes before service starts, give him a full rundown of everything that happened, so the leadership knows you have their back. While the pastor doesn’t need this information, and the time taken to share this 15-minute conversation could have been used to welcome new guests, it’s better this way so that you can get that overwhelmed look from him once he has taken in all of this --- (for him) useless information. He might be distracted, but at least he knows how hard you worked.
Inconsistently Preparing for Service
If you really want to irritate your pastor on Sunday morning, find a different place to leave his microphone every week and then only refresh the batteries half the time you are supposed to. There is nothing more frustrating to a lead pastor than expecting the microphone to be in the same place on the front row, only to find that it’s now on the pulpit or in the booth waiting for him there. The pastor will also cringe once they are in the pulpit and the microphone just stops working, not because of a technical problem, but because the batteries died.
Over Explaining Things
Often pastors simply want to be reassured about systems they have put in place to make Sunday morning a consistent quality. So, they ask questions to reassure themselves the systems are being followed. They may ask questions like, “Is the audio at the same level it's supposed to be?” If you want to see a frustrated pastor, the best thing to do is give the longest answer possible. Instead of saying “yes sir.” or “It might be just a touch louder,” give him an answer like this: “Well two weeks ago we averaged 91 dB (A-weighted) but last week we averaged 92 dB. The reason for this difference was because Bob played drums last week and he plays louder than Larry who played two weeks ago. There was a 1 dB difference on an A-weighted scale, but if we look at C-weighted it's about a 6 dB difference. Today Jerry is playing drums, so it will be closer to the same as Bob on A-weighted scale, but similar to Larry’s playing on a C-weighted scale because both Larry and Jerry have similar kick drum pressure. We could change the compression to get it similar, but then it would be wrong for Bob. What do you think?”
It’s important to know that the pastor will have no idea what any of this means, but after the explanation is given, the pastor won’t feel reassured at all, but really confused. Rest assured that he’ll understand that you’re the smartest person in the room – at least when it pertains to audio.
Panicking When There Is a Technical Issue
Pastors want the service to run smoothly. If there is a technical problem, they want it to be fixed with as little people knowing there was an issue. If you want to really irritate your pastor, wait for something small that needs to be fixed immediately and do everything in your power to make sure everyone in the congregation knows you are on the job. If a microphone battery dies during the service, run through the sanctuary yelling, “I have a new battery right here pastor” as loudly as possible. You can even wave while running if it's a large auditorium. Then once the battery is replaced give him a flamboyant thumbs-up in front of the congregation. This will thoroughly embarrass him and make the battery issue irritate him even further.
While no production director in a church wants to irritate the pastor, it is easy to do so. Their irritation does not mean they don’t care about the tech department or the service you provide. However, it does mean that most of the time technical conversations should be kept to a minimum --- especially right before a service. Deeper explanations should happen mid-week, so the pastor can focus on what matters most on the weekend. Your job matters and the pastor’s job matters, let's make sure what you do supports what they do on Sunday.
