[Editor’s Note: Be sure to read the previous installment from the “Confessions of a Church Tech” series.]
Close your eyes.
No, wait!
Keep reading this, but just imagine that you’ve closed your eyes so that you can imagine this:
You’ve worked hard all week at your job, clocking in between 40 and 60 hours depending on the chaos that has or hasn’t presented itself, and instead of relaxing on Saturday, you’re unloading an organ as heavy as a Volkswagen and hauling into a school auditorium so that your church can function the next morning.
Crazy, right?
That’s the exact kind of crazy that Jim and Josh Palmer call “dedication.”
They are “church tech volunteers.”
Josh & Jim
Like Matt Drury from last week, I’ve known these church tech veterans for over two decades. In fact, Jim was—and regularly still is—my church tech mentor. Like the above scenario would demonstrate, these guys are dedicated to serving their church with intensity…and longevity—Jim has been serving for 43 years, and Josh has just crested his first decade of church tech volunteering!
So, to get the flipside of the coin, we turn this week to the Palmers to see what insight they can offer us regarding technology and the church.
What are some of the biggest obstacles you face as a church tech?
Josh: MONEY!!!
Jim: Bang for the buck. In church tech ministry you always dream of the best technology, but money always gets in the way. Since my role at this time in tech is in the planning, installing, getting to work right/troubleshooting role, I have to remember that just because I have an understanding of how “it” works does not mean that a volunteer will. Keeping the cutting-edge simple is not always possible. A digital board with saved settings helps, but everyone has a different taste in the “mix,” so keeping technology from actually hindering worship also comes into play. You don’t want to offend, but everyone likes/wants something different. God just wants us and our worship.
What—if any—new areas of technology are you wanting to add to your church’s repertoire?
Josh: Video in an effective way.
Jim: Would love to see video ministry added if we could do it well and right by the standards the world has come to expect
Have you ever implemented some new technology only to find that it did not actually improve your ministry’s effectiveness?
Josh: I don’t think so.
Jim: The least effective technology that I personally was involved in was putting PDF files on a web page so that the violin player would be able to practice by loading them on her iPad. Well, even though it seemed simple enough for me to use, I had to adjust and use email to send the files every week to her because the iPad app was too hard for her to figure how to use.
What was your biggest success as a church tech?
Josh: I didn’t do it alone, but picking out and installing the sanctuary sound system.
Jim: Well, to pick just one “biggest success,” and I’m not sure not all will agree with my choice, I’m going to have to choose when we were designing the sanctuary the ceiling tile design. I felt—and still do—that a flat room was going to be vey important. Reverb can always be added but audio reflections and sound that is unintelligible because of echoes are hard to eliminate with electronics. The people involved with aesthetics did not want an open (industrial) look in the ceiling and wanted suspended ceiling tiles used. The large, flat, reflective surface presented challenges that were eliminated by making the ceiling not flat but more saw-shaped. (Author’s Note: The tiles are arranged in peaks and troughs like a saw blade’s teeth.)
In your experience, has technology negatively impacted the Church? Could it do so in the future?
Josh: I think that technology has a positive impact on church services and can really make guests want to come back. If they see that our church is a modern, a “place to be,” there is a greater chance of them coming back. I could see technology having a negative impact on the church if we let that take the place of what God wants to do in our church. We must be careful to let technology aid us and not direct us.
Jim: When relying on, worrying about, or any type of obsessing on tech we spend way too much time and effort on [these] things. That can very negatively impact our relationship with Christ—you know, the One it is all about—and can effect relationships with others within the church. We can’t forget the time “away from all the noise” that we still need. Time that doesn’t require ANYTHING new, modern, or tech[nological], just an ageless, eternal God and someone willing to enter into relationship with Him.
I want to again thank our interviewees—you can hit Josh up on Twitter—and let you weigh in:
Are you a church tech volunteer?
What has you’re exeperience been?
[Image via mikael altemark]
Sam says
It is sooo biblically refreshing to see old and young working together in one direction, rather than the old guy being made to feel he should go as “the youth is the future”. This also comes into play when it comes to church publication – all printed, all digital or both. The Bible encourages us not to look to our own things but also that of others. Internet and digital is cool, exciting and a great blessing in Gods kingdom but sometimes an older medium enables no longer young non techs amongst Gods family to be blessed and encouraged, too and not left out – everybody can read, not everybody can handle on line.
Phil Schneider says
Thanks, Sam! It really is a kingdom-first mindset that embraces diversity, of age, gender, race, etc.