The Nuts and Bolts of Music and Worship Arts Ministry: Part 3 – AV/Technology

Please note, these are not comprehensive lists but examples of how you might create an inventory of equipment and subscriptions that thoroughly and quickly communicates key information with staff and volunteers who intersect with your church’s AV/tech needs on Sunday mornings and throughout the week.

Equipment Types and Their Purposes

If you’re already an AV/tech expert, feel free to skip ahead to the next section. But if you’re like me and could use a refresher on the primary parts and purposes of a sound system and the minimum functions needed for livestreaming, feel free to stick around.

The primary purpose of a sound system, whether in a church or elsewhere, is to amplify sound for an audience to hear and participate. The most basic sound system is a microphone plugged directly into a speaker. A microphone receives sound input (i.e., a person singing, talking, or playing an instrument) and converts the sound into an electric signal. That electric signal is sent directly to a speaker(s) or through a mixer to a speaker(s). A speaker takes the input from the microphone and converts the input into amplified sound energy—i.e., a louder sound that carries throughout the space. When you have two or more inputs (i.e., microphones), a mixer takes multiple audio signals and blends them into a single sound output. So, if you have a choir singing into multiple microphones or a band with each instrument feeding into the sound system, a mixer enables the sound board operator to adjust the levels of each sound to enable a cohesive single sound to come through the speakers and/or a video feed. An additional element that primarily benefits worship leaders on the chancel is a monitor(s). Since speakers face outward toward the congregation, any worship leaders on the chancel need a monitor—essentially, a type of speaker pointed toward the chancel that does not interfere with the speakers pointed toward the congregation—so that they can hear the same thing the congregation is hearing in real time.

In addition, if you are recording your services, you will need at least one device that can take in visual and audio input. For some, this is a single iPad or tablet equipped with a camera and a microphone. For others, this includes multiple cameras that feed into a recording and livestreaming platform that is also connected to the mixer. Note that in the latter case, the mixed audio is directly piped into the livestreamed or recorded version of the service. In the former case, sound quality is limited by the iPad, tablet, or phone microphone’s capability to receive and record the mixed sound coming from the speakers in the worship space. Since 2020, many communities have found ways to make a single tablet or phone work well for recording and livestreaming worship. However, if you want to upgrade your online worship experience over time, a first step may be exploring what it would take to invest in a good camera and a recording/livestreaming platform that would enable you to connect the camera and mixer directly to your video feed.

Training and Supporting an AV/Tech Team

Whether you use a single microphone and speaker that someone has to turn on every Sunday or a full setup of video, slides, and soundboard that requires three trained staff every week, your church has an AV/tech team! Though their work is often unseen by most congregants, the AV/tech team members are liturgists as much as the worship leaders up front. When AV/tech is going well, no one notices them, yet their impact is felt immensely. When AV/tech is not going well, everyone notices, and it can distract congregants from the worship experience. So, training and supporting the AV/tech team is important.

Whatever your church’s current and future AV/tech needs, everyone on the team should have a basic understanding of how the equipment works. The youth running the soundboard do not need to become certified sound engineers, but they do need to know the basics of how the board works so that if—or really, when—issues arise, they know how to do basic troubleshooting. The same goes for the slides and/or the recording/livestreaming. Everyone on the AV/tech team needs to know the basics of each job. Even if that job is just turning on a speaker and a microphone on Sunday morning, make sure the team understands the capabilities and limitations of those pieces of equipment. It is a given that equipment will fail at some point and often at the worst possible time. Prepare ahead of time by gaining and sharing a thorough knowledge of the equipment with those who might be responsible for it on a week-to-week basis. To that end, also decide as a team what the contingency plan will be if major issues occur just before or during worship. Will you always have a wired microphone available if the wireless goes out? Will you always have a backup recording of worship in case the livestream cuts out in the middle of the service? At what point do you go to Plan B, C, or Z so you’re not spending half the worship service trying to get Plan A to work and thus distracting from the actual worship experience? These are all questions to discuss as a team with the pastoral staff before the inevitable occurs at the worst possible moment.

Also, remember that supporting the AV/tech team means having regular check-ins. Whether it’s every week or once a month, ask them: “What’s working well? What’s not working well? What would help you do your work well?” When they answer, listen to what they say and do what you can to accommodate. If a $10,000 mixer would make their jobs easier, but your church’s budget is barely $100,000, that’s just not going to happen. By listening to what the AV/tech team members are experiencing and brainstorming solutions together, you should be able to find a way forward that benefits the team, the pastoral leadership, and the congregation. If you are a worship planner or leader, be prepared to come to those conversations with notes about what would help the congregation’s experience. If the slide operator is consistently late in switching the slide, make that note and work with that person on how to time slide changes. If one microphone is consistently dying in the middle of service, talk with the team about who can keep fresh batteries in it and/or what they would recommend as a workaround. Through training and support, you can form an AV/tech team full of truly collaborative partners who deploy these tools toward the theological and formative aims of worship.