Getting Started as a New Tech Director

What does it look like to transition into a new tech ministry role at a church and hit the ground running?

This post is going to cover just that.

Stepping into any position of ministry has its challenges. So what does it look like to do this well?

Meet Luke Jackson

All the knowledge and wisdom from this post is from Luke Jackson, the new production manager at Storyline Fellowship Church in Arvada, Colorado. Not only is Luke on staff at Storyline Fellowship, but he is also on staff at Churchfront as Client Success Manager. Luke also advises students in coaching calls and is deeply passionate about churches finding success in their worship ministries. 

As Luke begins his first days at Storyline Fellowship, he thought it would be helpful to share his experience and how he’s handling his mindset as he begins the work of stewarding this role. What follows, then, is derived from his thoughts, and you can hear Luke and see his church for yourself by viewing the Youtube video above. 

Let Luke and the Churchfront Team coach you!

If this content is helpful for your worship ministry, get this: our team will actually help you by providing a free strategy session call. We'll spend time walking through the steps you need to take in order to get the results you’re looking for in your ministry, and if you join Worship Ministry School, you will have total access to Luke and others on the Churchfront team. Don’t waste more time or resources trying to figure things out on your own. Let us fortify you and your church. We would love to talk with you. 

1. Have a Vision for the Long Haul

When first stepping into a new tech ministry role, it will quickly become clear how much there is to do. Maybe some equipment needs upgrading or maintenance. Maybe things are an organizational nightmare. Maybe the volunteer situation is rough. Rather than getting swept up into all the little tasks that need to happen, step back and take in the big picture. 

Rather than thinking about the sound, lights, or the live stream as individual mountains to climb, have a big-picture vision for how these pieces work together to create an environment for the church to engage in worship services. This is true whether a church’s services are in-person or online. 

Stepping back and seeing the big-picture vision that incorporates all these pieces and the roles they play provides better clarity for the actual steps one needs to take to accomplish specific tasks. This first step may sound simple, but those who get so excited and just start doing things without a plan, vision, and a big-picture perspective will suffer and remain in the weeds. 

2. Get Organized 

Getting organized means having a grip on all the physical and digital spaces.

First, let's talk about physical spaces.

Most churches have front-of-house spaces that need to be organized, channel strips to be labeled correctly, sound boards to be routed properly, broadcast stations to be managed, and more. All of these physical spaces can begin to feel daunting and can cause some sense of mental claustrophobia if left unorganized. 

So, one of the best ways to begin in a new tech leadership role is to clean those areas up, get rid of any unrelated items or clutter laying around, and organize things. 

The goal is to have things in an area where they will be visible and their function will be clearly understood at all times. Where are all the  microphones kept? Where are all the lavs kept? Where are the cables that are used every Sunday? Everyone should be able to find everything quickly and efficiently. 

Second, let’s talk about digital spaces. 

When working with technology, it is crucial to access digital content in an efficient manner. This means keeping these digital spaces tidy is of utmost importance, especially when inheriting a ministry others have previously controlled. It’s common for a volunteer to oversee these spaces, and because volunteers don’t have the bandwidth staff has, these inherited spaces often don’t lend themselves to the most effective workflow. 

So spend time in the ProPresenter libraries, in the scene files in the sound board, and lighting scenes. Take time to make sure templates are clear, graphics are easily located. Taking time to organize these details can feel tedious and potentially meaningless, but organizing these tools makes the job easy and effective week to week. It prevents the team from getting bogged down in the details. 

3. Ask for Feedback and Determine What Is and Is Not Important.

Here is a tip when beginning a new ministry position: ask for feedback on what is important to the team and what is not. Ask this of the leadership, and ask this of the volunteers or other staff. 

Feedback proves you are willing to listen and exhibits humility that you are willing to learn from and include others in your quest to better your ministry. Maybe the improving the broadcast mix is a greater priority to the leadership than you realized. Maybe the mix has historically sounded flat, and staff members made that obvious. These are helpful areas that can be focused on quickly that otherwise may not have gained attention. 

Not only will doing this help with blind spots, but it can also grow relational and leadership capital with a new team and leaders. Thinking about making a big change quickly but received feedback that pushed against that change? Maybe it’s good to pump the brakes for a while before making that big change. 

Ask questions about what the leaders want prioritized. Ask about expected timelines. These questions can help make the plate-spinning seem more doable. 

4. Make a Plan and Stick to It.

Sticking to a plan can be hard sometimes. And obviously, things happen in ministry, and plans have to be adjusted. But having a plan in place of any kind helps provide a reference point. It can act as a waypoint that doesn’t move even though everything else is moving around you. Again, just hacking away at tasks without a plan will prove very inefficient. It’s not good stewardship. 

Take all the action steps above and make a plan. Note what structures are in place, what equipment is in the inventory, what needs to be organized, what is working well, and what is not working well. Next, assess the calendar year, assess what needs to happen, and prioritize. Documenting these things provide clarity when things get busy and urgent tasks take up bandwidth. This helps provide a big-picture vision as you move through your ministry. 

Making a plan and sticking to it also provides a reference point to see where the ministry came from. It provides a metric for growth. 

Need help making that plan? Don’t know where to start? This is what Churchfront, and specifically, Worship Ministry School, is all about. In Worship Ministry School, we spend time clarifying these types of plans, and we help you prioritize, so that you're able to be efficient with your time, be effective in your ministry, and achieve proven results by referencing a proven plan. Reach out to us. 

Wrapping Up

We hope these tips are helpful in jump-starting (or refreshing) your ministry. Always reach out to the Churchfront team if you desire more guidance and help. We are here to cheer your church on for the Glory of God. 

6 ways to invest your time wisely

If you are in ministry, you are serving in one of these capacities:

1. volunteering

2. part-time

3. full-time

4. super full-time

Regardless of which of these you are, you likely don’t have someone holding your hand and keeping you accountable to a schedule. So how do you decide what is the best use of your time in your role?

No matter how much time we pour into our ministry, the time we have on this earth is given to us by God and we should steward it well.

The man who invited me into both my first role as a worship leader and my first full-time role into ministry shared with me a lot about this subject of time management. There’s a diagram he shared with me that’s a part of the Google Toolkit we are sharing with you later on that really helped me get a tangible grasp on the big picture of time management.

1. INVEST IN PLANNING

This time investment has shown to have the greatest return for me.

I spend a few minutes at the beginning of each day to look at my schedule for that day. Afterwards, I take care of any emergency emails or small daily tasks (like updating my hours, cleaning my office, etc.)

On my first day of the work week, I’ll spend more like 20-30 minutes planning my entire week. If I know that I’m scheduling or have a big project to do, I’ll make sure to put that in my calendar.

Each year, I encourage you to spend a day with your team looking at the entire year. Consider school events, big church events, and community events. Take note of when you’ll have to start planning for these events, and put a date on your calendar as a reminder to start planning for these things. Easter and Christmas seem to creep up on people every year - but they happen each year at the same time.

If you struggle with taking care of your responsibilities or easily let other less important projects take over, consider sharing your calendar with your boss, co-worker, or spouse to keep you accountable to your schedule.

CALENDARING TIP: Figure out how long tasks actually take you. When you need to make room for something else, don't just shorten another task to make room for other things - you'll need that entire hour or whatever it is.

2. INVEST IN YOURSELF

This one is difficult. You don’t want to come across as selfish, and if you’re in ministry you probably have a heart for serving - this is great, but it’s hard to invest in yourself because you probably want to spend all your time serving others.

Investing in yourself will result in being able to serve others better.

The better you know how to play your instrument, use ProPresenter, or understand scripture, the better you’ll be able to serve others with these new or sharpened skills.

Here are few quotes from ministry leaders that have poured into me have been great reminders;

“Leaders are readers”

“Leaders learn about themselves”

“Growth comes from self-awareness”

Growing yourself will take up time in your schedule, but is certainly worth it. Just a few examples of ways to invest in yourself are;

• Joining worship leader facebook groups

• Taking another worship leader in your area out for coffee/lunch

• Attending conferences

3. INVEST IN VOLUNTEERS

The church is a volunteer run organization. If this isn’t the case at your church, you probably want to look into that.

Volunteers need to be well-resourced, well-informed, feel important, and have fun.

You will not be on this earth or in your role forever; one of your goals should be to help the next person in your role be successful. This means investing in potential leaders, and giving responsibility to those who have shown an interest and the ability to do so successfully.

Create and sustain relationships with your volunteers. You don’t have to be their best friend, but you do need to be worthy of their trust and be someone they can count on, and they will want to be someone you can count on.

If you’re an introvert, you aren’t cut from these responsibilities - but when you need your alone time, you can still invest in volunteers by resourcing them well; make sure your song arrangements are what you’d like them to be, songs are transposed to the key you’ll be playing in so they can play along, and provide playthrough videos for specific or difficult parts.

4. STANDARD FILE CREATION

This takes a lot of prep work, but week to week will be a big time-saver. Here are just a few examples of things that can fall under this category;

• ProPresenter arrangements

• Soundboard scenes

• Keys rigs

• Ableton sessions

Whatever it is, if you have a system down and you can quickly duplicate or automate your work each week you will have much more time each week.

You don’t have to be a master of all these things - there are so many resources available with the internet. Here are a few resources I’ve found helpful;

• Churchfront Ableton toolkit

• That Worship Sound Worship Essential mainstage package

• Alex Strabala’s Helix presets

I have tweaked all of these to fit my needs, but having 90% of the work done by people who put endless hours into their products and know their craft is definitely a time-saver.

Another benefit to this is that when your system is nearly automatable and well documented, it can easily be handed to a responsible volunteer.

5. SAYING NO

One of the obvious but profound things I’ve been taught is this:

“saying yes to one thing means saying no to something else”

MIND BLOWN - You mean we don’t have endless amounts of time? I somehow thought that the more I said yes to, the better of a job I was doing by getting “a lot done”. But I let urgent things become the most important things, and therefore wasn’t making traction on my goals, or accomplishing my mission.

Another thing I’ve struggled with is being able to say “this doesn’t have to be perfect”.

If you are spending hours tweaking a backtrack, keyboard sound, or graphic while musicians or tech people are struggling with things, then you need to take a step back and prioritize.

6. GOOD EQUIPMENT

I once thought that I could save money by dealing with free or cheaper products. Here’s an example;

I was using a PDF chart viewer on my iPad. I still had to print charts for everyone else on the team, and every time I made a change to the chart I had to update OnSong and update the printed charts. When I switched to PCO Music Stand, it was a monetary investment - but at $2.50 a week, it’s a bigger return on the investment (if you’re on staff and make more than $2.50/hr)

If a soundboard, lighting board, computer, etc is constantly needing repair, then it is both costing money and time. This is another time to step back and think if the repair time is worth the money being saved. We are often put in position to steward God’s money. This is a big responsibility, not to be taken lightly - and while there are definitely products that are too luxurious for our needs, there are also insufficient products that money shouldn’t be spent on in the first place.

I hope these tips help you save time and increase your ministry effectiveness. Because I care about you, your time, and your ministry, I’ve put together this Organization Toolkit available through Churchfront. It includes;

• hours tracking sheet

• preaching calendar sheet

• song planning sheet

• budgeting sheet