Every year, Las Vegas hosts the National Association of Broadcasters, a conference for 180,000 tech nerds. Many churches might have a problem paying for a staff person to go to Las Vegas for 4 days, but I’m blessed to have attended three times now in the past 6 years.
The NAB covers a broad spectrum of industries, TV stations, recording studios, news rooms, custom antenna builders, podcasters, indie film makers, and churches, to name just a few. This year “Technologies For Worship Magazine” hosted 4 days of seminars and workshops right on the showroom floor for free. I took as many of the classes and workshops as I was able, and really, all I could do was take copious amounts of notes, and process it later. Having said that, here are my thoughts from this past week:
1) The bell curve on return on investment for ministry tech is frustrating!!! My job, when I was hired at Shoreline, was to take us to another level technologically, spending as little as possible, preferably using what we already have available. We were able to implement live video in the service using equipment we already owned. Granted, it wasn’t great, but it was acceptable. Then we upgraded the system piece by piece. So for zero expenditure were able to go from slides during the message to live video. For a small amount of money we were able to increase the quality of that system 1000%. The problem now is that then next level will cost in the tens of thousands of dollars, for only a slight visual improvement. The same with sound. The next level is so expensive, but for minimal return. Lighting, ditto. There’s entry level (eg. Camcorder), which is cheap ($400), then there’s prosumer (Canon XL2, HDV, etc.), which is expensive ($4,000) for a startup church, then there’s pro (Ikegami studio camera), which is expensive ($40,000) for anyone!
2) A LOT of church tech/creative people seem to have been thrown in the deep end. Of the sessions I attended at the NAB, 70% of my fellow attenders had stories like, “I’m the church secretary, but my pastor told me he needs me to design his powerpoint slides.” or “My dad’s the pastor, and so now I have to figure out how to run sound.” The other 30% were being paid to do tech/creativity. I think there’s a lack of teaching of very basic church tech, for complete beginners. I think a lot of people feel totally out of their depth.
3) A lot of church staff are frustrated by their employers! So much of the feedback at the NAB was from church tech people trying to figure out how to convince their pastor that what he was asking was unreasonable. Or complaints that they were being micromanaged on every decision. Or that they were overloaded, and overworked, with very little support, help, or funding. I thank God for my job. My boss has never once micromanaged any of my projects, never once vetoed any creative direction we’ve taken, and has always trusted me to research, and find the best deal on all tech purchases. I also thank God for a solid team of volunteers that do the lion’s share of the hard work, allowing me to manage, and be creative, and spend time figuring out new systems.
I really enjoyed the NAB this year, and took plenty of notes, and got lots of inspiration. I would highly recommend it for anyone in full time church tech.