Sunday, January 11, 2009

Thoughts about unplanned changed

I was thinking about how we (church techs) react to unplanned change during a service. When the pastor, worship leader, guest speaker, etc. make an unplanned change to the service and we are not expecting the change things can get ugly. We get mad that they didn't tell us, they get mad we're not instantly on top of the change, we are scrambling trying to get it fixed, they make an unnecessary comment to the audience about us (they really don't mean it), that hurts our feelings, we get the issue fixed and sulk the rest of the service, they never apologize. This is simply not good and unacceptable. So what can we do?
I feel there is a simple solution. Communication. We need to have a nice friendly chat with anyone who will be leading ANYTHING at your church and let them know one thing. "I (insert your name) and the tech team will do EVERYTHING humanly possible to accommodate the unexpected change in as little time as possible, IF you (insert leaders name) will refrain from making comments about the team and instead let the audience know you (insert leaders name) made the change and the great, awesome, fantastic, (insert favorite positive adjective here) team will accommodate the change in a few seconds." I am going be having these conversations this week and next.

1 comment:

Legendary Tom Brooks said...

Excellent post! I'll hsve to mention this concept to a couple folks who talk into the other end of the mic and then blame the tech folks why things don't work!

I actually thrive on the challenge of last minute changes - most times, I'm on it - sometimes - sorry, that's just too much work to do at this point.