Probably one of the easiest things to overlook when planning your startup church is figuring out how much power you’re going to need, and where you’re going to get it from. Kids Church, mailouts, set up and tear down crews, signage, etc. are all top priority. At home, when you need to plug something in, you just plug it in. At worst, you throw a power strip in the mix.
When you’re considering power requirements for a startup church, especially in a portable location, it’s a whole different ballgame. So here’s some different points to consider:

1) Distribution
Running a church probably requires a significantly higher power consumption than your facility is prepared for. Most of the outlets on the wall in a movie theater are designed to run a vacuum cleaner, not a lighting system. A classroom distributes power to run lots of low-draw computers, not a powered speaker array. So your number one priority is to distribute the load, and not rely on the facility’s distribution.
Break down your power needs into the basic categories, eg.
i. Lights,
ii. Speakers/amps,
iii. Stage,
iv. Soundbooth,
v. Projectors,
vi. Nursery,
vii. Kid’s church sound,
viii. Kid’s church lights, etc.
Then figure out (google “Ohm’s law”) how much power each one of these categories will draw, then PUT EACH ONE ON A SEPARATE BREAKER CIRCUIT. Plan to have each of the categories draw less than 15amps. If it looks like your lights will need 20amps, split them on to two separate circuits.
Next, find where you can run the power from. In a movie theater your best bet is to drop power from the projection room. In a school or storefront, you may need to find a maintenance closet/room with the breaker box. Figure what your location does that draws a lot of power (giant movie projectors) and start from there.

2) Grounding
The next issue to consider is grounding. This is most noticable when you get the incessant buzzing sound in the speakers, and can’t figure out what’s causing it. This is called a “60 cycle hum” and is caused because US power is ~110 volts AC, and cycles at 60hz, and somewhere that is bleeding in to the sound signal. The number one way to lose that hum is by making sure that ALL the band and sound equipment are on the same circuit, thus having a common ground.
Another major factor in eliminating the hum is making sure the lighting power is on a totally different circuit to the sound power. Make sure the power cords don’t run along side each other, or near the sound snake.
One more grounding issue. It’s worth spending the $3 at Home Depot to get a circuit tester that will tell you if the outlets you’re plugging in to are polarized correctly, and grounded properly. Bad ground could be potentially very dangerous (electrified lighting towers, etc), and bad polarization can permanently damage equipment.

In my next post I’ll cover 2 or 3 more issues to consider when setting up power. Stay tuned.

Volunteers are crucial, no doubt about it. Start up churches probably require a much higher ratio of volunteers to attendees than a more established church with a large paid staff. ESPECIALLY portable churches. I don’t think this is a bad thing, in fact I believe that high volunteer ratio church can be very effective, because it frees up money for making more of an impact in the community. There is a major pitfall, though.
We recently ran a service at a new location that we’ve only been at for a few months. The day before the service I got a call from our sound guy for that service that he had a family emergency, and wouldn’t be able to make it. I wasn’t too worried about it though, because we have a couple of other sound volunteers who run other services who might be able to jump in, and worst case scenario, I could run sound. We got to the location a little earlier for set up, and the pinch-hitter sound guy showed up. But we suddenly realized we had a HUGE problem. The sound board had NO labels. Zero. Zip. Nada. All those channels, and no way of telling what instrument/mic was assigned to which channel. Regular sound guy had run this service long enough that he had all the channels memorized, but last-minute sound guy was lost at sea.

The biggest pitfall with relying on volunteers is allowing a single volunteer to take on too much responsibility. It’s SO easy to do, and oftentimes the good volunteers want to take the lionshare of the work. But replication is VITAL to the life of the church, more than just getting extra volunteers.
The number one thing to teach a volunteer is how to do the job with excellence. But as soon as they’ve got that down, the number two thing to teach them is to duplicate themselves. And YOUR job as the volunteer manager is to number one, make them feel appreciated for their time and skills, and number two, make sure they’re not taking on too much, and that they have someone they’re training up in their job.

A lot of places I visit, whether it’s a portable church, a wedding, or even a conference, they usually have a volunteer running sound. And they are usually fighting the fine line between “loud enough to hear” and screeching feedback. Most places I find the compromise normally ends in the speaker having a distinct ring bordering on feedback.
The first time a volunteer looks at a sound board it scares him (or her!) because there’s a gazzilion sliders and turny knobs. Then they realize that it’s really not that hard, it’s just the same few controls repeated for each channel. But there’s more to good sound than just learning the controls.
There’s a lot to be said for proper speaker placement, eliminating stage sound, and teaching people how to use a mic, but I want to give you a simple solution from the sound engineer’s point of view.
I always tell my non-proffesionally-trained sound volunteers to remember 2 things about EQ. Because a bad EQ can ruin an expensive mic. You can crank it up as loud as you want, and the audience will still be straining to make out what the speaker is saying. These are my 2 simple solutions to a good EQ:
1) Turn EQ controls DOWN, not up to adjust the sound. Instead of cranking the bass, try turning down the highs and mids a little.
2) If you learn nothing else, learn this… the 1khz is the sweet spot. When the speaker is mic checking, or even speaking, start turning down the mids very slowly until he/she sounds great. All of a sudden the mic will lose all of it’s mudiness, and will sound crystal clear, even at lower volume. If your board is a little more advanced, you may have adjustable high-mids and low-mids. Playing with these controls will be magic for your sound. Basically, you want to cut the 1khz, or a little either side of it, and it turns an ameteur sound mix into a professional sounding conference/wedding/church service with very little effort or training.

Years and years of working as a graphic designer has taught me one thing: expertise in photoshop is no substitute for a talented artist.
I have a certain amount of artistic ability, otherwise I would be a poor choice as a graphic designer, but I’ve never considered myself an artist. We do, however, have some amazing artists in the church.
A young man, Ryan Manthey, is a PHENOMENAL photographer. He can take 10x better pictures with a camera phone than I can with my Canon 40D with expensive lenses. When he volunteers to take pictures at an event every shot is gold. And what’s important is that he makes the church look good!
We also have a gentleman in the church, Vladimir Dunayev, who is an antique painting restorer from Russia. What he can do with a paint brush and 60 minutes will blow your mind. For 18 months we struggled with set design issues inherent in a movie theater church. But then Vladimir started volunteering his talent, and now we have a veritable masterpiece as a backdrop for every series. Out of 1,200 churches participating in oneprayer.com I’m pretty sure we have the coolest backdrop! =)
All this to say I’m profoundly grateful for these amazing artists (naming just two of many) who refuse to bury their talent, and make us look great!

Wow, first post and I’m already apologizing for slacking. Truth is, I’ve been wanting to do this blog for like 2 years, felt God tell me a year ago I needed to do it, and then I just kept shelving it.

I’m the tech pastor at Shoreline Church, which started back in 2005, and has grown well ever since. We’ve always had a strong emphasis on media and tech, and I’ve been a big part of that.

However, we’re still learning as we go, and I figured there’s so many different areas involved in starting up a church, others might benefit from some of our experience.

I (Sam) will probably mostly post about running sound, ligths, video, web stuff, tech purchases, etc. I hope to have other authors on here, too, though, that can talk about other aspects of starting a church; finances, location, preaching schedules, marketing, etc.

Anyway, I’ll value all feedback through comments and eMail. I’ll be as transparent as possible.