Sunday
06/02/2015
“Graeme’s Road to Sunday”
or Life of a small church production Volunteer:
Fellow Church Production people, How do you go about preparing for a Sunday morning at church? I’m always fascinated by other churches practice’s and ways they get prepared production wise. I devour articles and random interviews I come across to see how others prepare and I have a tendency to imagine how I’d like to organise our Church if I could.
For me the best place to start is where you are at right now, so here is how I currently go about prepping for Sunday services.
Most of my role involves Audio only, however I’ll play around with some of the few lights we have access too as well as prep displays
We are pretty loosey goosey when it comes to planning, we don’t really do a huge amount of forward thinking as me and the rest of the production team all have full time jobs elsewhere.
##Sunday Sunday involves getting there at 830 or 900, usually this is prearranged sometimes just a text message the night before what time but sometimes I’ll arrive a bit earlier just to keep on top of things. Band arrive at 9/915 so there’s not that much prep time for us, that said there’s not much for us to do, as things are usually setup from practice, unless there is an event or two in between.
A quick tidy up and double check of the patching is all that is required most weeks, pretty strait forward (see attached the sheet we patch from, it’s really volunteer friendly)
Sound check is usually 915/930ish depending how keen the worship leader is and how prepared they are,
what equipment do we use? (I shall write a post and link to it here in the future)
after a quick line check and the band are happily rehearsing one of us will usually sort out the words, and pre load weekly adverts and sermon slides (on propresenter, ready for yet another volunteer) and briefly tweak the lighting, We can’t have the exact same week to week,
added to this all else we do is make sure we hit record and pick some walk in music and we are set to roll.
We’ll usually be done 10:15ish to give us time for a quick cuppa and pee break before the service
During sound check we will all try to listen, and make a trip downstairs from the gallery, and offer suggestions to each other.
Other than that we’ll usually talk through the latest project we are attempting, be that reinstalling the os on the iMac or buying a new light or planning an upcoming event (I must confess to talking this during the service too)
##Monday Hopefully the worship leader sends out an email, with song lists, music, band info from the rota (we try to use worshipteam.com but nobody who uses it really likes it) it’s assumed I’ll cover music practice unless I let people know, I’ll try to let them know on the Monday if I can’t make it.
##Tuesday
Music Practice Music practice, a great time to train volunteers, and well to get things setup for Sunday,
##Wednesday Home group - Several members of the band are in a small group with me that meet most Wednesday eve’s and this is not an official worship team meeting or anything, usually we end up talking something, depending on who’s on the rota for that week and who could make practice etc. if there’s no worship team talk then it’s great just to hang out with these Godly guys n gals.
##Thursday Tends to be my Date Night :-) my favorite Night of the week although that has nothing to do with Production, thought I’d sneak it in here.
##Friday off
##Sat Off / Conference / Event
Special event’s tend to arrive on a Saturday, and yeah there’s a whole bunch. keeps us busy. :-)