Worship Musician November 2018 | Page 168

FRONT OF HOUSE FIVE-HOUR ENERGY | Kent Morris The ritual is the same, though the ingredients 1. IT IS WHAT IT IS. is powered off and nothing is touched until may vary. Early Sunday morning, while most It is hot in the kitchen, cold shoveling snow and Sunday morning. Yet, on power up, everything people sleep, worship techs are snatching scary on the roof. Being a church tech means sound-wise has changed, one of the projectors coffee, Red Bull or black tea and barreling early mornings, late nights, bad or no food and won’t fire up and the lighting console has lost down the road toward church to prepare for little recognition. In other words, it’s not for the all its memory. Welcome to Sunday morning. the day’s events. From before 7AM to noon, faint of heart. But, the rewards are superior to Lionel Ritchie was wrong – Sunday mornings there is no downtime to reflect on anything; it’s monetary gain, public admiration and comfort are not easy. They are hard and ever changing. just make it happen time. Every week is a new since everything flows from the platform through No one knows why and how this happens, but adventure in what can go wrong. Sometimes, the booth and out to the congregation. It is an it does. Don’t waste time chasing blame. There quitting seems the most logical solution to an essential role and that means it will be difficult at is one hour available to fix it before doors, so intractable problem. We know we need to keep times. If it were unimportant, it wouldn’t include spend that time addressing the problem. What going, but the job can be so frustrating. Given donuts as an incentive. can we do right now to make the service the nature of the task, how do we stay positive happen? Start at the last working piece in the and fit anything like life into the chaos? Well, 2. ASSUME NOTHING WORKS. chain and go from there. Always have a spare here are some ideas: After AVL is dialed in Thursday night during for each critical component most likely to fail: rehearsal, all the settings are saved, the system pastor’s body pack and mic, WL mic, projector 168 November 2018 WorshipMusician.com