Through my trips with a traveling music ministry, I have worked in many different churches across the country. That has given me the opportunity to work closely with many music pastors, church sound staff members and volunteers, and I have one pet peeve about those individuals ­ they are often exceedingly ignorant of the equipment they work with every week. HELLO!!! My questions about simple things like "what console do you have" or "how many mic stands do you have" or "which amplifier drives this stage monitor output" were often met with blank stares.

Forget about my problems of interfacing our road gear with the church's sound system ­ I'm in awe that they can even get through a single worship service if any technical problem crops up. So here are my recommendations. These are the basics, guys. This is not difficult. An entry-level volunteer should know this stuff from memory within a couple of months of serving in the sound team ministry. Knowing this stuff is part of achieving technical excellence in your ministry. So take your ministry seriously.

Know Thy Stuff

As a member of your church sound team, you need to make it your business to know all you can about the equipment that you use. For example, you should know from memory details like: the brand and model of each piece of sound equipment that you use each week (each mic, the console, each stage monitor, what speakers make up the main cluster, etc.).

You should know specifics about those devices (e.g., the polar pattern and bandwidth of each of your mics plus a sense of its frequency response. You need to know how many monitor sends you have available and you should especially know if those are prefade or postfade auxiliary sends. Learn the dispersion pattern and impedance of each stage monitor, the dispersion pattern and power handling of the devices in your main speaker cluster, etc.).

You should understand the signal flow of your sound system and exactly how the signal is carried from each piece of equipment to the next. At the very least, you should have these kinds of details written up in a separate document so that when you need to find that kind of information you can quickly locate it, rather than give up out of frustration from trying to dig it out of an equipment manual each time.

Fix Thy Stuff

Make it your responsibility to ensure that all of your mic cables and speaker cables are in proper working order. Insist on an internal time limit, or your stuff will stay broken for months, even years. For example, make a commitment within your sound team ministry that you won't let broken cables stay broken longer than ten days. Be good stewards of the gear that God has entrusted to your care. It's His anyway, right!?!

Make certain that broken equipment like headphones, mics, power amps, stage monitors and the like are repaired in a timely manner. That broken equipment represents a wasted investment of your church, and allowing it to stay broken indefinitely is fairly poor stewardship of that investment. If you don't need it, get it fixed and then seed it into another ministry either in your own church or in that church across the street from yours.

Make certain that you have at least a one month supply of batteries for your wireless mics, your flashlights, and every other battery dependent device that you use on a regular basis. Don't want to spend that much money? Well, it doesn't cost any more to keep your car's gas tank full than it does to keep it empty, now does it? Buy the inventory ­ it's cheaper to buy in quantity anyway. Keep in mind that traveling musicians often ask the local church for replacement batteries wherever they go. Isn't it amazing ­ these guys virtually never have to buy their own batteries!?! Further proof that "the rich get richer" is scriptural.

Deal With Thy Stuff

Likewise, make it your responsibility to ensure that the relationship between you and the other production team volunteers or staff, music pastor, or anyone on the worship team, is always at its best. Make sure that you quickly deal with any strife that comes up between you and anyone you serve alongside. Make sure that you treat everyone in each technical area and everyone in the worship team as equal members of the same team with a single common goal ­ honoring our Father with our gifts to bring the lost into His Kingdom. Only if you do this can you expect the same treatment and respect from them.

Okay, enough with that. It may sound like I'm jumping up and down on your feet, and I don't mean it that way at all. Please take this as an encouragement, and just do your level best. I realize that we're not dealing with brain surgery or the national defense, but quite honestly, if more church sound team volunteers would take their service in the ministry a little more seriously, we would all find that achieving technical excellence is not quite as elusive as we often make it out to be.

Go for it!