Pastors seem to be especially smitten with Disney these days and not without reason. Disney has done a great job of creating a culture of high quality and excellent customer service. This is never more evident than on a trip to one of Disney’s theme parks. The attention to detail, the story-telling, the way cast members go out of their way to serve guests, and even the fact that they call employees “cast members” and customers “guests.” For these reasons, many church leaders at least draw inspiration from Disney’s best practices.
Recently, Disney World announced what has become an annual promotion. They offer a free dining plan for any quests who stay within certain dates at their resorts. Many people plan their trips around this promotion and others are enticed by it to plan a trip they would likely have not otherwise planned [guilty!]. Unfortunately, every time this promotion goes live, it seems Disney misses the mark. This year was especially troublesome.
I’m friends with a few Disney Travel Agents and also listen to a couple Disney podcasts. The outcry this year was loud. Agents (and individuals) who tried to book the promotion were left on hold for hours and when a cast member answered the phone, they were disconnected. The website crashed. The internal site that Disney cast members use crashed, so those that had waited on hold for hours were still unable to book the trips they were trying to book. It was a mess.
Now, if a multiple billion dollar company like Disney has trouble with technology, maybe we can give ourselves a little bit of a break when the video doesn’t play quite on queue or the church website crashes for a day. Trust me, I am a stickler for quality and push hard to make sure transitions are clean and technology works, but there are times when we do need to go easy on ourselves, our staff, and, especially, our volunteers. When we have done all we can do and something does not work as planned, we can be thankful that even Disney gets it wrong.
[image via Disney Momma]
Jeremy Smith says
Jared, you are so right, though I wonder if this same detail to quality and grace for accidents was something that was self-imposed or came from pastors and congregation members. Imagine you took a second too long to transition a slide, congregation members turn their head at you. Or a mic is not turning on (maybe the speaker forgot to switch it on) and look at you for crisis management. I do think we can be our worst enemy at times, but sometimes staff and members don’t help too. I’d love to see this article written for them as well to be shared by church techies to their leaders.
Jared M says
This is one of those cases where context is key, I suppose. I actually wrote this from the position of being a pastor who just happens to also be a tech guy. The heart of it is actually what you are referencing, pastors/leaders need to not hold tech people to unrealistic standards. This is a tough one for me, because I do always get a little frustrated when things don’t work, but that isn’t necessarily targeted at the sound guy, just at technology in general. Making sure that is correctly interpreted is important.