Most of us are in full tilt mode about Christmas. Either you started set construction weeks ago or you are just loading in rental lighting for your living Christmas tree program. Regardless of the size of your Christmas service, it’s crunch time in the world of church technical arts.
Late nights, last minute changes, sleep depravation. And all the while normal life is still happening: my kid’s Christmas concerts, weekend services, budget planning. Can you feel the tension building?
From a technical standpoint, it is fairly simple to start blaming the people who are coming up with the creative ideas, that they don’t understand what they are asking or that they don’t care about what you need. It is equally simple for content creators to feel like technical artists aren’t willing to work hard enough on their ideas.
Here are a couple things to cling to as we enter into the home stretch of Christmas:
We are all focused on the same goal
We all want to create a service that draws people closer to Christ, that helps people connect with God in a new way, that creates an environment where attendees can hear and experience God’s word. If we all didn’t want this, we’d figure out something to spend our time doing. That said, we tend to come at this goal from very different angles. This is good and necessary.
How can I see that new request or late change in light of this truth? How does it change my response?
Extend grace
Because the content creators and the technical artists are focused on the same goal from very different perspectives, there is a high likelihood that we don’t really understand what the other side is dealing with. How many late nights has the script writer put in? How many more times will I have to re-render this clip? Is there enough time to finish off the set before the first service?
When the heat is on, it is easy to only focus on my urgent issues and disregard what others are dealing with. Whatever role you play, for it all to work, you have to care deeply about your own concerns. However, this shouldn’t exclude having empathy and grace for those around you.
How can I fight for what I need and at the same time extend love and grace to the team members around me?
I was having a conversation with a fellow technical artist last night and we were wondering where the line is between fighting for what you need and giving someone more time to work something out. Are we making the service better or are we just being stupid?
Until an event is over, I don’t think you can know if you’ve crossed the line into stupid.
In the meantime, I’m going to try and remember that we all focused on the same goal from different perspectives and that I need to extend grace whenever I can.
