Based on my last 2 posts about what we do and how we do it, let’s say you and your team and doing amazing work, and you are treating each other the way Christ commands us. Is that all there is? If I do those two things, God will bless everything we do?  Not necessarily. I would say there is one more component to what it means to do production in the local church.

After we’ve done our very best, and we’ve exhibited the fruit of the spirit to each other, we need to let God do his work.

For whatever reason, God has chosen for us to be a part of his plan to redeem the world; that people would encounter Christ through our involvement in the world. By using our gifts and talents for his purposes, we are bringing heaven to earth.

If I were God and I was infinite, I don’t think I would save the world using finite people. We are all flawed and imperfect, so why would God want to introduce risk into the equation?

5 For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.

7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.

2 Cor 4:5-7

OK, so God wants to use us, but he also wants to make it very clear that he deserves the credit for what happens. All our work and all our love for each other isn’t what brings people to Christ, but it is the Holy Spirit. At the end of the day, God doesn’t need us to accomplish his purposes. Yet he wants to involve us, and then he wants there to be no question that He is the one who is moving.

After we nail every transition, and love each other to death, it is still God who is working in the lives of people.

The beautiful part is that even when we don’t nail every transition, and when our love for each other is less than it could be, it is still God who is working in the lives of people.

Following Christ as a technical artist can be challenging.

Care deeply about technical excellence, but don’t worry about it.

Live out the fruit of the spirit, but if you don’t, God is still working.

If God can work when things aren’t working, imagine how much more effective we could be for His purposes when things are working well?

58 Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

1 Cor 15:58

 

 

 Some rights reserved by corey.wagehoft

In my last post, I talked about how we being excellent in each tiny detail adds up to overall excellence. You can’t have a great event without taking care of all the small things. If you look around at many live events or events on TV, you’ll notice that these things happen all the time. There are tons of amazing technical artists taking care of the smallest details so that the event happens without us even noticing how production is playing its part. At the least, we should be striving for this kind of excellence in production.

But I don’t think that’s enough. For those of us doing production work in the local church, or even in my recent case, being a part of a German/American production crew to pull off the Germany Leadership Conference, there has to be more to it than just nailing all the production details. So what separates our production from any other?

For those of us doing production in the local church, we have the opportunity to use our art to advance a pretty amazing purpose: spreading the gospel message of Christ. However, this is only an external difference between doing production in church or being a part of a production at the auto show. But this still doesn’t begin to define what it means to practice the technical arts as a Christ follower.

Excellence in production is pursued everywhere, so that can’t be the answer. Whether you are turning a mic on for a pastor or a spokesperson for the car company, that doesn’t define the difference either.

Jesus summed it up pretty well in John 13:34-35:

     34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

While we are taking care of every little detail, while we are striving for excellence, how are we treating each other? While we are striving for excellence, how are we interacting with each other?

Jesus said we wouldn’t be different because we just happened to be doing production in a church. He said we’d be different because people would see how we love each other as we are doing production.

When things get intense during rehearsal, how are you responding to those around you? When mistakes happen, how do you handle yourself with volunteers? When someone asks for something last minute, what is your knee-jerk reaction?

While the task of production is important, if we aren’t nailing the details, loving each other isn’t going to be the answer for doing great production in your church. But if you are killing the production parts, but steam rolling over people, you’re totally missing what it means to follow Christ as a technical artist. You must be doing both.

[I’ve included some more pictures of the Germany Leadership Conference from the perspective of the people involved.]

Lately, I have a noticed a difference in thinking between senior leaders and tech people. Senior leaders don’t really notice technology issues until they are issues, and they want them fixed immediately. Tech people on the other hand are always trying to plan for the issues, but really can’t do all the work of figuring things out until they have the green light.

Sooner or later this issue can set the two groups onto a collision course. Once we have the go ahead, we want to start teasing out every detail to make the very best choices for budget and capacity, all of which takes time. From leadership’s standpoint, once they say “go”, they are ready for it to happen.

So how do we handle this potential conflict? What is the balance between right now and the time required to plan every little detail?

A good starting point is to talk about what the goal is for the particular project. Is time of the essence? Is money tight? These two questions will help define which end of the spectrum your brain needs to think about this project.

FAST

If speed is the most important factor, money will probably not be spent in the most frugal fashion. When you are running fast, you end up making choices that are more expensive than if you had time to do the research necessary to figure out the best solution. If time matters the most, be ready to feel like you are throwing money around.

COST

If your budget is tight and therefore by default the most important value, you will most likely spend more time trying to figure out how to accomplish the goals and spend the least amount as possible.

At both extremes, there comes a time when you need to just get the work done. At a certain point, you just have to dive in and get it done. Otherwise we could research something to death looking for the cheapest or most precise answer. Or with speed being the highest value, get all caught up making sure we are doing the exact right thing and then not making any decisions.

Working in production as long as I have, I probably fall on the side of wanting to research as long as possible, to save the most amount of money as possible and come up with the perfect solution. As a result, it can sometimes feel to my leaders like I’m not getting anything done.

I love how Seth Godin talks about “shipping”. The idea that nothing will ever be fully done, and so you need to become disciplined to just get things out the door. Especially in the world of technology, the minute we decide to head in a certain direction, the technology will be obsolete. This can make the speed part of the equation so difficult to handle, because we want to get the most technology for the money.

So what is the right balance of speed and cost? Somewhere in between. When I think about it, it might have more to do with what will help our church the most right now? Where is the momentum? Will we lose it if we take too long to figure out the perfect solution? Maybe we’ll lose it if we hurry up and make the wrong decisions.

Wherever it is, make sure that you are on the same page with your senior leaders in each given situation.

 Some rights reserved by Alan in Belfast