Jack Rivera has headed up the sound team as a volunteer at Salem Baptist Church in Apex, North Carolina for 18 years. He was nominated as a Church Production Hero of the Month by the church's Media Designer Andrew Osborne.
He says it’s the school board’s fault. When Jack Rivera moved from Florida to North Carolina in 1997, his new home was walking distance from his youngest kids’ school. But in 2001, a redistricting plan reassigned them to a different school three miles away. Now they had to catch the bus and waiting at the bus stop is where Rivera met a member of Salem Baptist Church in Apex, North Carolina, who encouraged him and his family to visit. The Riveras were looking for a new church at the time, so they did visit and that’s when Rivera learned he was an answer to prayer.
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“I met Jeff Olds, who is our pastor of music and worship and just kind of told him, ‘Hey, you know, if you ever need any help with your sound, I can do that,’” he says. “Well at that point Jeff Olds called me something I've never been called before, which is an answer to a prayer (he laughs).”
“Well, I'd say Jack's just been a tremendous inspiration for me." - Andrew Osborne, Media Designer, Salem Baptist Church
As a kid Jack Rivera tinkered in his father’s electronics repair business. He also learned to play piano, which lead to a keyboard gig with a teenage band, where he learned to run sound. Rivera later honed his skills in sound and stage management with professional musicians and at other churches. By the time he arrived at Salem Baptist he was ready for where God needed him to be.
This was just the beginning of his many years answering church tech prayers for Salem Baptist. He became the church’s sound guy and guided them through a season of growth, during a new building’s AVL installation in 2010. But when the new equipment arrived, Rivera found himself alone at the console. “I had like 18 people that were volunteering. We were on an old analog Allen & Heath board in the chapel and the new board was digital. When the volunteers saw the digital board they went, nah, I don't think so.”
“I do love the editing. I love the mixing. I love training the young guys in the booth and seeing them learn what it means to work in tech. It's been very rewarding for me.” - Jack Rivera, Audio Volunteer, Salem Baptist Church
Rivera says running sound is what he does for fun. “Salem was my respite because doing the audio stuff is the stuff I love. I really enjoy it,” he says.
But Rivera really enjoyed the work. His day job at IBM was demanding and he says the church work was his fun. “Salem was my respite because doing the audio stuff is the stuff I love. I really enjoy it,” he says. “I do love the editing. I love the mixing. I love training the young guys in the booth and seeing them learn what it means to work in tech. It's been very rewarding for me.”
Rivera was nominated as a Church Production Hero of the Month by Salem Baptist’s Media Designer Andrew Osborne. He’s rather new to the church compared to Rivera. He arrived in 2019, just in time for the tech test of the century.
“Well, I'd say Jack's just been a tremendous inspiration for me,” Osborne says. “We really started working closely together when COVID hit and suddenly we had to come up with all virtual services. We didn't have any of the streaming production at that time. We would just cut a podcast by recording from the sound booth on Sunday morning.”
"Jack's just really been a joy and inspiration to work with. And I can't believe the amount of time and expertise he just gives us as a volunteer. It, it is unbelievable.” - Andrew Osborne, Media Designer, Salem Baptist Church, Apex, North Carolina
But they really wanted a video service for the congregation to watch at home. So, Osborne, Rivera and the other volunteers put it together. “We wanted to do a fairly high-quality production,” Osborne says. “So, we were going right into multiple cameras and everything at first prerecorded.”
And video, as Osborne explains, was a huge learning curve. “At that time, I didn't have any real video experience. I was a hobbyist photographer, but I really didn't know video. And so, I had to learn on the fly. I had to learn how to edit. I taught myself how to edit off YouTube, so I dived into Premier and then later DaVinci Resolve. And that was an adventure!”
Scheduling the recordings became increasingly difficult through 2020, and by 2021 it sometimes involved recording services three weeks ahead of time, because they were working with an interim pastor who was in town only four days a week. “So that was kind of what drove us to, coming up with a livestream solution,” Rivera explains.
"I can't believe the amount of time and expertise he just gives us as a volunteer. It, it is unbelievable.” - Andrew Osborne, Media Designer, Salem Baptist Church
“So, we had to work through planning that whole process and getting that implemented,” says Osborne. “And Jack's just really been a joy and inspiration to work with. And I can't believe the amount of time and expertise he just gives us as a volunteer. It, it is unbelievable.”
It took about six months to get the livestream equipment approved, ordered and delivered due to supply chain issues. Finally, they had the gear, but Rivera says he needed help. “I told everyone; you don't want to broadcast a tap of the board output from the house. It's not going to be the same sound. And so, we were going to need two audio guys. We don't have the infrastructure for me to go to an isolated room to do the mix because then I would also have to get the video as well to do it correctly.”
Now that they have the equipment and two of Salem’s youth have stepped up to be trained on audio, Rivera says the livestream is running smoothly. “So, I actually sit in the booth in the worship center to mix in the live stream. I've got a good pair of Sennheiser headphones that keep me pretty isolated. And so, I do the live stream audio mix now, and we have a high school student that I have been training, who is very into it, and has come along very quickly. And he's doing our house sound.”
Like most church tech teams, Rivera and Osborne are always praying for more volunteers who have skills already or are willing to learn them. But volunteers like Jack Rivera are hard to come by. He’s very experienced and has headed up sound operations in four churches over the years, but he’s never been a paid staff member.
Techs like this, who go above and beyond and give so much of their time to get tech done, often short-handed and in times of crisis, are always an answer to prayer and they are what Church Production Heroes are all about.
