Build the Sandbox
“If you’re not actively seeking out the pulse of your church and figuring out its unique needs, you’re focusing on the wrong things.“
A challenging part of the job of a church production leader is learning what your church needs. The temptation we all face is to nerd out on the latest gear and tell ourselves that our church NEEDS TO HAVE IT. Or, we see a megachurch online doing something extraordinary and immediately think, “We have to start doing this at our church to be successful or relevant.” While I’m sure there are cases in which those things would enhance your ministry, not understanding what your church needs and implementing new equipment or solutions is like playing billiards with your eyes closed. You’ll hit something, and a ball may even go in the pocket occasionally, but you’ll be wasting time, energy, and resources. If you’re not actively seeking out the pulse of your church and figuring out its unique needs, you’re focusing on the wrong things. Take it from someone who’s gotten it right and gotten it wrong.
In this four part series, I’ll share some of my thoughts and approaches on figuring out what my church needs from the Production Team. My hope is that this helps you as you seek to support your church’s ministry and move your Production ministry forward.
Know Where Your Church Wants to Go
What’s the point in investing time and resources into your organization without knowing 1) what’s actually important to the organization and 2) how your team plays a role in furthering the mission of the organization? You guessed it. There is no point. Yet, some production directors don’t clearly understand how their team is supposed to support the organization effectively and, instead, play pin the tail on the donkey with the church's resources. Production equipment is expensive and is likely one of our churches' larger investments. Before doing anything, you must clearly define what a win for your organization looks like. Likewise, you must identify what a wasted effort looks like. This requires building a “sandbox.”
What Do I Mean by Building a Sandbox?
A sandbox is a phrase I use to describe the parameters in which our team gets to play. There are clear borders where we can build our sand castles (do our work). If we go outside the sandbox borders, we risk getting lost or distracted by new technologies or what other churches are doing. Here are two easy examples of clear directives or goals that help my team build our sandbox:
Our church prioritizes the guest experience. We want to create a distraction-free environment that allows us to consistently bring our best to our services.
Our audio during worship should be immersive, like listening to your favorite song in the car. Not so loud that you’re in pain, but loud enough to sing along to it and not care how your voice sounds.
These examples give us a clear filter to use when making decisions. Whether it’s gear purchases, processes, or targets for our volunteers and contractors, we know these boxes need to be checked at the end of the day.
But How Do You Build the Sandbox?
Conversations—specifically with your team and leadership. Here’s the tricky part: You may need to lead those conversations. Your boss or pastor doesn’t know what they don’t know. There’s a good chance they don’t understand the world of production. They may not understand why it’s important to define the parameters of a sandbox for your team, but it’s crucial that they do. Defining the sandbox without the input of your church’s leadership is a waste of time and will create frustration for all involved. Having these conversations and defining clear parameters takes time. We didn’t get there overnight, but we had to establish the sandbox to know, without a doubt, where we could play. I’m sure we all know, but production teams get a lot of feedback from many different people, and feedback can quickly focus our attention on the wrong thing if we haven’t established a proper sandbox.
Next week in part two of this series, we’ll dive deeper into feedback and how we use it to get better!
