If you have any investment in ministry with a church or non-profit, regardless if you are paid staff or a volunteer, you understand what it means to be busy. As a church techie, this busyness can be a huge issue if the very limited resource of time is not held with proper boundaries. If you ever worked for more than nine months on the church’s soundboard, video team, or presentation team, you more than likely have stated ,”I’ll just do it Sunday morning.”
Waiting Is A Faulty Way of Thinking
As Chip Dizard points out below, waiting until later instead of doing it now can prove to be disastrous. Here are just some that I have experienced:
- The computer crashes halfway through designing your ProPresenter presentation and you do not have anything ready.
- You copied the MediaShout presentation, but did not include the images and videos and so your presentation is only text.
- The batteries in the microphones are dead and you do not have any fresh batteries at the church.
- Your audio presets have been changed.
- The Internet has been down for a week and you do not have a connect for your streaming service.
Have Boundaries for You and Your Church
The fact that you have intentionally waited till the last minute might be showing something deeper going on in your life. Is this tech position a priority in your life? Be honest because you are impacting the rest of the church. Serve them well or do not serve them at all. At the same time, do you need more training and therefore need to have assistance? Many times a person without the proper resources to draw from will be impacted time wise.
It should be noted that life happens and computers crash no matter how much organization and scheduling we do. At the same time, I am note saying that you must do your assignments immediately. Boundaries for self include soul care and that might mean you not sit in front of a computer the rest of the night after work. It might be time to take a self-assessment and see if you are qualified to continue in your position.
How do you stay on top of church tech projects so you are not running behind?
Paul Alan Clifford (@PaulAlanClif) says
Agreed Jeremy. I’m great at procrastinating. I’m so good at it that I’ll write a book about it…some day. (Little joke there).
Anyway, when you’re in tech, you need to allow MUCH more time than you actually need because you will have problems often enough that the service could be put in jeopardy.
I get to our satellite campus at 6:50 am every Sunday to make sure everything is ready for the 9:30 service. Why 2.5 hours? I can set it all up in 30 minutes, but we have a 30 minute run through at 8 that sometimes becomes a 50 minute one. If I have problems, that gives me 1.5 hours to fix them if I discover them when I arrive, but most of the time I don’t find problems until 30-60 minutes after I get there when everyone is practicing.
If all is fine, I can calmly grab an extra cup of coffee or muffin, if there are problems, I can fix them. It’s worth the extra time to know that other than a few catastrophic failures, I can fix whatever happens.
Of course, this doesn’t account for the editing time (30 minutes to several hours) on Saturday night and the work I do to set up everything so that I know I can do what remains in the morning with an hour to spare.
Sometimes “plenty of time” becomes “just enough time” and you never know when, so always have extra.
Jeremy Smith says
Love that approach and for those that say, “I do not have time to do that much” my push back as a leader is “Should this be something you lead in if you do not want to give it priority?” I may not require three hours of setup on Sunday (especially since my church practices on Saturday), but I do expect time to be given to potential problems. If it all blows up 5 minutes before worship, at least you have given the effort needed.